I drove my car today for the first time since I got the
distributor put back together. Wow what a difference! This
beast can really accellerate! :-)
Only one problem, I now get a clunking sound from the right
front wheel, but only when I brake. It sounds like something
on the tire hitting something on the brake. I looked at the
brake caliper and sure enough the back edge of it has been
scraped by the spokes coming around. My theory is that when
I brake the caliper actually moves outward a bit, just enough to cause
it to come in contact with the spokes of the wheel.
The splines on this particular hib are very sharp. Looks like they'll
have to be replaced, maybe soon :-(
Hmmm. Sharp splines are what you want, nice sharp Vs. You have to
worry when they start to lay over on their sides, or when the tops
get worn down into something kind of like a square-wave pattern
(there, see, I *do* know how to talk like an electrogeek! :-)
Could the wear on the hub cause
the wheel to sit closer to the brake caliper than it normally
should? Hopefully, it's just a spoke that got bent backwards
the wrong way, but I couldn't see anything that looked abnormal.
Sigh. MGB (and presumably C) brake fittings seem to be prone to
odd fitment problems. I went nuts on my first B trying to fix a
scraping problem in hard cornering. It turned out that the caliper
was actually grinding against the brake disc when things flexed
enough in a serious turn (this was my first autox B, so I got into
serious turns as often as I could afford to). I ended up shimming
the caliper by putting washers between the caliper mounting bolts
and the stub axle. You can try that.
Also, I know the C's front end is a little different from the B's,
but from the catalogue it seems similar in at least one known
trouble spot. Inspect the bolt at the outer end of the lower A-arm,
the bolt that goes through the lower trunnion on the kingpin. If
the bolt isn't centered in the A-arm piece, there's your clunk.
Also also, note that old wire wheels just clunk, particularly if
it's been a while since you serviced them. Jack up the car and bang
on the wheel nuts to tighten them *while the wheel is up in the air*.
You're not supposed to tighten the knock-offs while the car is on
the ground (but I do it anyway... gotta get a new floor jack, maybe
tomorrow). This will center the wheels on the splines and help you
cut down on the clunk.
Or you can get the really truly ultra-cool way hip centre-lock Minilite
replicas from Moss et al and never be bothered with flexy wire wheels
again (reserving them, of course, for concours use). They happen to
be exact duplicates of the wheels used on the last factory MG race car,
a lightweight MGC-GT used in the '68 (or was it '69?) Targa Florio...
--Scott
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