I finally stopped procrastinating and have begun rebuilding the front
suspension. Purchased new British Motor Heritage A-arm pans, QH king pins,
new king pin bushings, fulcrum pins, and polyurethane bushings. I'm using a
spare set of stub axles that I so that I don't have to disassemble my Midget
until the whole assembly is done. The local British car parts supplier
(only blocks away from my house) has a press and the proper king pin bushing
reamer. Today I cleaned all the parts to be reused, pressed out the old
bushings, pressed in the new ones, and reamed them with the king pin tool.
Tomorrow, I'll paint and assemble stuff. The last time the front end on the
car was rebuilt was 1987'ish. I didn't know how susceptible to wear the
lower fulcrum pin area was until I began investigating clunks from the front
end.
My plan is to clean and re-pack my current wheel bearings. They are ball
bearing type, and were new in 1992, with probably no more than 25,000 miles
on them now. Currently no signs of noise or play. Shocks were replaced in
April, and I'm hoping that the wear in the fulcrum pin didn't toast them. I
guess I'll know more when I get to that point.
David Riker
74 Midget
63 Falcon
70 Torino
http://personalweb.sunset.net/~davidr
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