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Car Forum / MINI / June 2004Front Suspension mods
Would appreciate any suggestions. We have a 1984 Mini Mayfair which has had about ?1700 spent on restoration and respraying. We've fitted 12" 165/60/12 alloys to it. There is no issue with the back wheels but the fronts rub on the bottom of the wheel arches when turning. We've been advised to have the knuckle joints replaced whch has been done but its still rubbing. This weekend we've bought the adjustable Hi-Los and are going to get them fitted. However other people having looked at the car have advised cutting away the arch to allow clearance and not putting the Hi-los on "as its not s'posed to look like a 4x4". Getting lots of advice but just want the right solution so we can get round the bends like a mini should. Anyone who's had this problem please advise. Also we were told to try spacers but don't think this will improve clearance on the wheels to any great degree. > ... fronts rub on the bottom of the wheel arches when turning. > > ... This weekend we've bought the adjustable Hi-Los and > are going to get them fitted. The tyres shouldn't contact the bodywork in ANY combination of steering and suspension movement right down to the bump stops. So raising the suspension is only going to disguise the problem, you'll still make contact when the front suspension responds to a bump and compresses. Raising the suspension to prevent things rubbing is not the answer. Have you replaced the cones? Dean. > Would appreciate any suggestions. We have a 1984 Mini Mayfair which has had > about ?1700 spent on restoration and respraying. We've fitted 12" [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > advise. Also we were told to try spacers but don't think this will improve > clearance on the wheels to any great degree. Graham's answer is right on. And what's this about Hi-Lo's making your Mini look like a 4x4? Last I looked, I couldn't even see my Hi-Lo's, and at their highest adjustment they are not all that high. Regards, Geoff As a follow-up to everyone on this: I propped up the front end and (with the nose facing OUT of the garage) put it into gear. The left tire didn't move much; the right one did. So I blocked the right tire and put it in gear again, and the left tire spun but with a slight vibration - and this did seem to be the area where the noise was coming from. I loosened the driveshaft nut and played around with rotating the hub, pressing it down vs. releasing pressure against the bearings. It spun pretty freely when the outer bearing was not under pressure, but seemed a little gritty while pushing the hub in (as though tightened) so I suspected that a bearing had gone out. I removed the hub, got it on the workbench, and pulled off the grease seal. Sure enough, the outer bearing was quite gritty in its resistance to movement. I had a brand-new bearing kit on hand, and after replacing the outer bearing only (the sleeve was perfect), all is well - problem solved. I didn't replace the entire bearing set, because this is the set I replaced less than a year ago. I looked at the old grease seal and bearing, and I think I know what happened. The outer grease seal has a spring inside it to apply pressure to its fitting; this appeared to have sprung out of the rubber and delivered its pieces into the bearing sleeves. The sleeves actually look OK; the grittiness may only be from the pieces of spring in there. From what I've heard the sleeve bearings can take a lot of abuse (though I won't try to reuse this one!). I may have been careless in seating the new grease seal last time, resulting in this problem eventually. Thanks, all, for your suggestions! Regards, Geoff > Here's a stumper. I have a strange noise in the front end; it's not really > a vibration, just a WOH...WOH...WOH noise with a frequency that matches the > rotation of the tires, in or out of gear, engine off or on. > [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > I have some front-end shaking under hard braking, but I had chalked that up > to misalignment. > > It doesn't change if I steer left, right, or straight. I can't isolate the > exact area in the front where it's coming from. > > Recently I have done the following things to my Mini in the following order: > 1. Replaced the oil seal on my left driveshaft > 2. Front-end alignment [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > My bushes are all in good shape, and with the front end jacked up the wheels > are nice and tight in all directions - I've had both front hubs apart before > without finding any problem, and no longer have any reason to suspect > front-end looseness in any component. > > The driveshaft nut is torqued down properly and the wheels are a few months > old with no visible problems. I rotated them front-to-back and did notice > wear on the inside of the front tires, so obviously I had too much toe-out [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > I've been told that getting an alignment in the U.S. may be a problem > because the car is so narrow that most shops won't have alignment equipment > that can handle it - can anyone confirm this? > > Thanks all, in advance! > > Geoff > Would appreciate any suggestions. We have a 1984 Mini Mayfair which has had > about ?1700 spent on restoration and respraying. We've fitted 12" [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > advise. Also we were told to try spacers but don't think this will improve > clearance on the wheels to any great degree. Not clear where the tyres are rubbing. Do you mean on the edge of the wing , either at the back or the front, or on the back of the inside of the wheel arch, where it joins the floor? And you didn't say what width of wheels you have, and what the offset is, or the depth at the back. If you were fouling the top of the arches, raising the ride height would help. But if you are fouling at the bottom, the problem is maybe not so much about the height as about how much the tyre moves back and forward as you steer. And if you think about that, you will see that the farther out the wheel comes from the hub, the more it will move back and forwards. So you get these problems more with bigger diameter tyres, but also more with wider wheels, so it will happen with 13x7 wheels more than 13 x 5.5. and more with 12x6 than 12x4.5 for example. But also more with wheels with less offset, that stick out more. So don't fit wheel spacers, that will make the wheel stick out more and make the problem worse. It is routine to cut the arches for 13 inch wheels, but not for 12", and I did not think 165/60 tyres should be any taller than the standard 145/70 x 12. Sure they are 165/60, not 165/70 x 12? What width are your wheels, and what depth are they at the back? Is there an offset marked on them? Lock Thanks for replies so far. To answer some other questions you've posed: The wheels rub against the arch when turning, they contact the bottom of the arch where just behind the bottom of arch meets the front bodywork. Also forgot to mention that the passenger side tie-bar has been bent at some point probably as a result of incorrect jacking. Will this have any affect on the front suspension geometry? As we can get 2 fingers width all the way around one wheel and roughly 1 1/2 fingers around the other. Would a bent tie bar be enough to 'pull' the wheels into the position where they may rub as we're finding? I appreciate that the Hi-Los will raise the car slightly but won't necessarily give more clearance in terms of room for the wheels to turn. But we were told when we bought the wheels that no body mods were necesary as they are with 13" wheels. I appreciate every car is different but its frustrating trying to find the right solution. I've read bits about "offset" before but don't really understand what it is. The tyres are 165mm wide and I presume the 60 refers to the tyre wall height and finally the 12 being the actual wheel rim size. But how would I find out about the "offset"? Cheers again, as you can tell one's automotive education is sorely lacking! > I've read bits about "offset" before but don't really understand what it > is. The tyres are 165mm wide and I presume the 60 refers to the tyre wall > height and finally the 12 being the actual wheel rim size. But how would I > find out about the "offset"? Imagine two Mini steel wheels. Cut the centre out of each wheels. Weld the centre back into one wheel as far towards the outside of the wheel as you possibly can. Call this wheel A. Wled the centre into the other wheel, B, as far in as you can. When you mount these wheels on the car, they still have the same diameter, the same width and the same size tyre. But wheel B sticks out of the wheel arch a long way and probably touchs the front and rear edges of the guard at full steering lock, whereas wheel A doesn't stick out as far as it should and probably now fouls on the inside of the inner guard or the suspension components. These wheels have different offsets. The offset is measured as a distance parallel to the axis of rotation from the centreline of the tyre and rim to the face of the rim centre which mounts to the hub. > Thanks for replies so far. To answer some other questions you've posed: > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > a bent tie bar be enough to 'pull' the wheels into the position where they > may rub as we're finding? A bent tie-rod would be shorter, so would pull that wheel forward; so it should have more room at the back, not less. > I appreciate that the Hi-Los will raise the car slightly but won't > necessarily give more clearance in terms of room for the wheels to turn. [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > height and finally the 12 being the actual wheel rim size. But how would I > find out about the "offset"? The tyre size and the wheel width are not the same thing. You can put narrow tyres on wide wheels and vice versa. Is the sidewall of the tyre wider than the rim, about the same, or the other way round? The tyre size is always marked on the tyre, the wheel size is often (but not always) marked on the wheel. Look for something like 12J x 5 or 12B x 4.50. The offset is often marked on OEM wheels, less often on aftermarket wheels, but if it is there it may have the prefix ET eg "ET19". If you can't find a marking, you can measure the depth with a straight edge across the rim and measure the distance to the inside face of the wheel hub. Wheels made for drum braked minis had different offsets from those for disc braked minis, because the hubs stuck out an inch further on each side with discs. So the wheels were "deeper" at the back to compensate. Do the wheels stick out past the arches? What kind of wheels are they? Were they made for a Mini, not an Imp or Viva or some such? Lock. I also have 13" wheels, and when I replaced the tires, they rubbed something awful. It was entirely corrected by raising the front (which to do this, I installed the hi-lo's and steel springs). You said "I appreciate that the Hi-Los will raise the car slightly but won't necessarily give more clearance in terms of room for the wheels to turn." - I would say that raising the car will DEFINITELY give you more clearance - it just may not be clearance in the areas you need to keep it from rubbing. Note where it's rubbing, as much as possible. Some of my pre-mod rubbing was actually on the inside of the plastic wheel arches! Easily corrected by sawing away some of the arch (not visible from the outside). Your bent tie bar will definitely affect your geometry; this I would correct ASAP if I were you. > Cheers again, as you can tell one's automotive education is sorely lacking! Relax, we are all in different places; a year ago I knew nothing about classic Minis (which is easy in the USA since they are scarce)...but I know a whole lot more now, and the nice thing is that I will always know it in the future (unless Alzheimer's gets me!). Geoff > Thanks for replies so far. To answer some other questions you've posed: > [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > Cheers again, as you can tell one's automotive education is sorely > lacking! Found this. http://www.minispares.com/ms/Wheels___tyres___Problems_with_12_inch_wheels_rubbi ng.htm Lock Thanks Lock, sounds like a solution to me. |
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