Rob Christopher wrote:
>The rebuild of CF28217UO is coming along slowly, very slowly. The
>latest snag is the lower wish bones on the passenger side front
>suspension. I just reassembled the whole lower assembly last night and
>have noticed that the mounting brackets that hold the lower wishbones to
>the frame do not sit level on my work bench.
>
>The brackets I'm talking about have the two bolts that go through the
>frame, then the wishbones get bolted to them in turn. Well, the bottom
>of these brackets are square and would expect the bottoms to lie flat on
>the bench. I already know that my car had a major front end collision
>well before I owned it, and I did put a tree trunk into the exact middle
>of the bonnet (thus the rebuild). The first accident was enough to bend
>the frame so much a piece had to be patched in, and as I discovered two
>weeks ago, the vertical link was also bent at the top where it bolts to
>the ball joint.
>
>Should the bottoms of these brackets be square with each other and lie
>flat on the bench? How can I tell if the two bolts of the pivot points
>are aligned with each other to determine if it is the bracket or the
>wishbone that is bent?
Rob:
If I understand you correctly, it sounds like you have the wishbone
brackets inverted. When the bracket is mounted to the frame, the
diagonal edge of the bracket goes on the bottom-side, the flat edge
faces up. In other words, note that the hole which accepts the pivot
bolt is not centered vertically on the bracket. The brackets should
be installed so that the hole is ABOVE the vertical center of the
bracket, rather than below.
Apart from that, you really should be installing the wishbones on the
chassis independently of each other. It sounds like you're
'pre-assembling' the wishbones and if that's what you're doing,
you'll soon find out you have to take it all apart again in order to
install the front suspension on the chassis.
Bolt each wishbone onto its bracket (and watch the orientation!) and
then bolt each bracket (with wishbone arm attached) to the chassis.
You'll notice that there are FOUR holes in each chassis bracket. In
each case, use the REAR pair of holes. Attach the upper wishbones to
the upper fulcrum pin (again, orientation is important here. The
upper arm with the greater bend goes in the front). When this is
done you'll have 4 arms hanging off the chassis on each side. Then
install the vertical link. This ties the two lower arms together (at
the trunnion) and the two upper arms will be tied together at the
upper ball joint. At this point you can move the suspension up and
down through its range since you haven't installed the spring yet.
Also note that you should NOT have installed the lower spring pan
yet, either.
Do you have a spring compressor? Time to make one. I can offer a
description of this if you'd like, let me know. It's absolutely
necessary for this job. It's pretty simple, too. You seat the
spring in the spring pan and then lift the spring pan up, install
your spring compressor and then crank the compressor down until you
can bolt the spring pan onto the lower wishbones. Once the bolts are
secure, remove the compressor. Now it's time for the shock.
Good luck!
--
Pete Chadwell
1973 TR6
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