Ride height continued

[canuck]

A follow up on my quest for an improved ride height of my MK1 car.
I am somewhat embarrassed to admit up until now I have not been particularly scientific in my approach.  During a ride this weekend presented a 'white knuckle' moment after hitting a mega size pothole at highway speed.  I have realized that 'full suspension travel' is super important,    and I have my car dangerously set up wrong.

As I detailed in my previous post on this subject I do have now factory lowering blocks on hand so will persevere to install these and sort the front height out per the notes in the manual.  

This lowering by the factory happened with MK3 cars? and I don't have access to MK3 cars to see what the factory did. FWIW the MK3 never made it to Canada shores.  
I need your collective help.

Please, would any of you with a MK3 car be able to measure the rear bump stop height,  (click on photo to enlarge)




and the front bump stop heights,



for me?

As clearly shown the front suspension travel is very little, scary little actually, and part of this situation may be the bump stop height? 

I have heard 1/2" as the magic number for lowering the front and FWIW this is the  thickness of the rear lowering blocks. 

I am puzzled about the rubber bump stops and their respective heights and if possible a part number,  if one exists and will really appreciate any actual measurements you can provide. 

Thanks in advance

Bruce
 

[ozriley]

Hi Bruce,

I will be picking up my repaired fuel tank in the next few days and hopefully will refit on the weekend/early next week. As my car shows no signs of being modified at any stage I will take the measurements on mine for you and post here.

Scott

[kiwimc]

Hi Bruce,

when I picked up the 1/2" Series III rear lowering blocks I was also given the rear bump stops.  They were 1/2" shorter than Series I/II with flat tops and a profile that looked exactly like they hacksawed the top 1/2" of the 'points' off, buffed the edges and recast.

The front bump stops that the wrecker gave me were no shorter than the ones I already had on the car so I left them off.  Unfortunately this still leaves me with two different ones on left and right sides. 

The one I am happy with is about 43 mm deep and gives a clearance of about 33 mm

The one I am not happy with is about 10 mm longer leaving only about 21 mm clearance. 

[I'm pretty happy that my torsion bars are set correctly.]

Series I/II part number is 21G 4022, parts book says replace with Series III part which is 31G 88.

They are not the same as Morris Minor (on which the base mounting plate is angled).

John

[2robert4]

Hope this excerpt from the manual will be of some help sorry for the late reply.

Regards

NP

[jA40]

Hi Bruce,

Spanner in the works? My car is 1961 in which we compete on historic rallies, so ground clearance is an important issue.

Starting with the rear, when I restored the car I stripped & rebuilt the rear springs, so I guess you could describe them as
being 'fresh'. I have installed 40mm lowering blocks, which may need reducing in due course. The gap between bump
stop & chassis is presently 35mm.

At the front, the bump stop gap is only in the order of 20mm, but confess to using 'moggy' items which are far from perfect!

Dimn from ctr of torsion bar to ground is 222mm.
This all equates into a gap between tyre & wheel arch of around 75mm at the front & 50mm at the rear.

At this moment in time, we've done just 2 events in this car, so the ride height will be continually monitored as 'things'
settle down. I may need to adjust the torsion bars as due to the deep sump pan, the sump guard has less clearance
above the ground than is ideal. I have no concern about raising the front slightly, due to using 185/65x14 tyres on 140mm -
sorry 5.5" wheels, & having tweaked the negative camber. Apologies for quoting all the other (useless) metric data!

Cheers, Jeff

[canuck]

A quick thank you to all of you for piling on my frustrations and I appreciate the conversation.   Hopefully my shooting from the hip approach will help someone wanting to do this,  and avoid all my nonsense mucking about.

I do believe have the rear height understood or at least I think,  and this is much more straight forward  to remedy than the front. 

I sorted the leaf springs out many years ago, and have non leaking OE dampers. The only non OE item at the rear is poly spring pads versus OE rubber. I maintain OE rubber bushes at either ends of the springs.  
I have now proper OE alloy lowering blocks and these measure 1/2" (previous post)  .  I will remove my modified Spridget lowering blocks that I machined twice in my quest from originally 1.25" thick and now at 3/4" thick.  Probably bin them.
I did not yet cut the bump stops, recently procured some MM ones so I will do so as John suggests.

The front height remains a puzzle to me. All the measurements I glean are referenced from the road surface. This varies as is dependent on the tyre size etc.  

The factory manual shows a reference to this;



but not at a lowered situation, unless I misunderstand. This of course is a very strong possibility.  

I suspect the front bump stops are shorter to accommodate the 1/2" lowering so this remains a sticking point in my garage.

Perhaps I am overthinking this and should simply trust the factory schema,




showing the height DATUM and subtract  the 1/2" of lowered height? then all I will need to do find a shortened front bump stop?  Anyone have a source?

Thanks again all further guidance is appreciated.

Bruce

[canuck]

A little bit of progress and one step back. 

I had a few hours of garage time  today so I decided to tackle the rear height of my car.  I have already 1" lowering blocks fitted 



and I wanted to swap out for my spanking new NOS factory 1/2" lowering blocks.   

To accommodate this I also needed to 'trim' the bump stops height the 1/2" as has been suggested by you chaps.  This was a pretty straightforward exercise. 
The regular MK1 block measures 3" tall. I put a new one in  the bench vice and using a metal hack saw I lopped off the required 1/2" of rubber .  I thought it best to round off the now square top. A couple of minutes on the bench grinder and VOILA! new looking bump stops. 





The step back is my existing U-Bolts to hold the springs in place are too long and run out of thread with the thinner lowering block I need to pick up some shorter ones. Perhaps my OE ones are proper length but these are in storage far from me. I re assembled everything as it was to be completed another day.   

Salut

Bruce

[kiwimc]

Yep, no change in U-bolts between Series I/II and Series III, so your originals should fit.  Parts book also confirms this.

MM part numbers don't align for the U-bolts.

However for future reference, there is a match between the 'truncated' rear buffers (like you have just prepared) and late Morris 1000.

John

[canuck]

Thanks John,
I am puzzled by your comment, "there is a match between the 'truncated' rear buffers (like you have just prepared) and late Morris 1000.".  

All the listing I find for MM bump stops are like the one I show, and measure at 3" tall. The part numbers listed are 21G5162 (21G prefix Riley specific) and the SUS710? that all MM spares outlets seem to list.  Do you know of a source for these? 

FWIW these new bump stops are considerably 'harder' rubber than the OE ones so I will need to see how these play out. I may decide to cut down my OE ones if these new ones become unbearable.  

salut

Bruce
 

[kiwimc]

Hi Bruce,

Yep, sorry the match is with Riley R-HSR1-1062 on buffers, not the (R-HS2) Series III.  My bad.

Here are pages from Morris 1000 parts book.  There was a change in buffers at car 584312 that coincided with an unspecified change to the axle casing.  Car 584312 was produced around February 1958.

Buffer '13' shares the Riley parts code.

[Just checked my '59 CKD Morry which likely has original buffers (and which should therefore be 21G 5162 according to parts listing).  They are definitely longer than the Series III 1.5 buffer, and probably a match for the Series II if I could find where I have put them .]

[ozriley]

Bruce,

I spent some time under the rear of my car today and my car measures 60mm for the rear buffer. Didn't get a chance to measure the front but will get back to you.

Hope that is of some interest.

Scott

[canuck]

Jun 27, 2022 10:31:33 GMT ozriley said:

I spent some time under the rear of my car today and my car measures 60mm for the rear buffer. Didn't get a chance to measure the front but will get back to you.

Hello Scott,
I appreciate you taking time for the confirmation of the bump stop height.  As shown in my photo I just about nailed 60mm by 'chopping' the standard bump stop height.   

When you have the front bump stop height this will be nice to know.  

FWIW I did a little more 'investigation' into this, and I find that  the front  structure pieces that are welded in vary by 0.025" in height, best I can measure. This is the vertical box section that the rubber fastens to.
This variance is understandable I suppose when need to rebuilding a rusty inner wing.    

Salut
Bruce

[canuck]

I was finally able to find some time to crawl under the car a install my shortened bumps stops and lowering blocks properly. 

I drove about for a week or so not being too kind to the roads I chose.  
As I suspected these new bumps stops are quite a bit harder than the OE ones. To help soften the 'bump'  I removed them again and I drilled a 13mm hole,




about a 25mm down from the top. This softens the initial bump quite a bit (my calibrated backside) and I think will leave this alone for the rest of the season as a 'long term' test. 
If I determine I want softer bump I will simply drill a slightly larger hole.

Finished for now, 1/2" lowering block and cut and drilled bump stop installed.



salut
Bruce

[cygnet61]

Good idea drilling a hole in it. A simple solution but I wouldn’t have thought of it!

[canuck]

Jul 18, 2022 12:14:44 GMT cygnet61 said:

Good idea drilling a hole in it. A simple solution but I wouldn’t have thought of it!

Thanks for this Gordon,  
Every now and then my many years of university serve to inspire. 

I am still working on my front bump stop solution but I believe I have this is in hand.

I will post as I progress.

Salut
Bruce