Front ride height

[Jack Horner]

My TR2 is sitting about an inch lower on the front drivers side. I have had the wheels off and taken a look, but can not see anything obvious. The car was fitted with new Spax dampers and coil springs several years ago. The springs are both fine, as they would have been my first idea. I can't see any damage to any of the suspension mounting points.

 

Any Idea's

 

Regards Jack.

[stuart]

My TR2 is sitting about an inch lower on the front drivers side. I have had the wheels off and taken a look, but can not see anything obvious. The car was fitted with new Spax dampers and coil springs several years ago. The springs are both fine, as they would have been my first idea. I can't see any damage to any of the suspension mounting points.

 

Any Idea's

 

Regards Jack.

Difficult one without taking the springs out to check settlement or wether the insulators have flattened out or given up and splayed out from mounts. Did you fit rubber insulators or polys? Is the one inch measurement from chassis to floor or is that a measurement from a point on the body to the floor.

Stuart.

[ianc]

Is this a problem which occurred suddenly (which would suggest breakage of something), or has it been sinking gradually?

If the front coil spring has broken at the top, it can be difficult to spot as it is partly hidden by the turret.

If the car is sitting down on the driver's side at the front, it follows that (assuming the chassis has not suffered some breakage or twisting) it must also be sitting down at the rear on that side, too. So, have a good look at your rear spring and its supports on the driver's side.

Ian Cornish

[Don Elliott]

The front bumper on my 1958 TR3A looked about an inch lower on the driver's side (LH side here in Canada) and it had been creeping there over the years. No one ever noticed and I never lost points in judged concour events because of this. Most events were on grassy un-even surfaces and a judge cannot see both sides of the car at the same time. See the attachment. The watercolour painting done by a chap from England was useful to help hide this.

 

I measured up from the concrete floor in my garage to the highest top round part for the front wheel cut-outs. There was 1 and 5/8" difference. This March I wanted to correct this. This is what I did.

 

I took apart the front suspension on both sides and measured the spring forces. Both were a bit lower but they were the same so that was not the cause of the problem. A friend sent me one of his spare aluminium spacers that go at the top of the spring. My neighbour who has a TIG and a lathe turned the spare spacer so it would telescope into the existing one and we decided to add 0.750" to the height. Then he TIG welded them together so it would be like one solid spacer. When I put it all back together, I re-measured the heights from the floor. The LHS was up - but so was the RHS which surprised me. But the difference was only 5/8" now. So I removed 3/16" of rubber body pads from the RHS front corner where the body is bolted to the frame just behind the front bumper and I added 1/4" to the rubber pad on the LHS. Now the LHS is still lower but it's within 1/4" and I have already forgotten that it appeared so far out to me before

 

And the front bumper is horizontal again, instead of looking so sad - sloped down at one end.

[BrianC]

A lot of sidescreen cars seem to have one or other front corner down (including mine ). Sometimes it's an optical illusion, exaggerated by the positioning of the bumper irons and can be easily corrected. The important thing is to measure the height of the main chassis rails at several points on both sides. If there is any significant discrepency, then I would suspect either the chassis itself or the suspension - springs, uprights or turrets, although if the problem is recent then one should know whether the car has suffered any major impact. Otherwise some improvement can be achieved by adding/removing body mount packing pieces.

[Jack Horner]

Thanks for the replies. I will measure up along the chassis tomorrow. This seems to have just come about recently, I did feel a clonk from the front when reversing it of the drive last month. Sounds like I need to pull off the spring and shock to be sure it wasn't the top of the spring, or the insulators.

 

 

Regards Jack

[Ian Vincent]

Would the fact that the sidescreen cars have a small packer on top of the rear leaf spring on the passenger side contribute to them not looking level when they are unladen.

 

And on the same theme, when rebuilding a sidescreen car should one replace the packer or throw it away?

 

Rgds Ian

[Don Elliott]

My 1958 TR3A came with two extra packer plates on the spring for the passenger's side (RHS in Canada) when new. I had to change the springs in 2000 and the new springs (Made in UK) did not have them. So I removed them from the original springs and attached them to the new springs.

[greasemonkey]

Would the fact that the sidescreen cars have a small packer on top of the rear leaf spring on the passenger side contribute to them not looking level when they are unladen.

 

And on the same theme, when rebuilding a sidescreen car should one replace the packer or throw it away?

 

Rgds Ian

 

What's this 'packer' on the rear leaf spring?? I don't remember seeing/fitting one to my 3A when I rebuilt it. I've just checked the parts catalogue & can't find it. Could you give more detail please?

[Don Elliott]

Here is a photo of the rear leaf springs from my 1958 TR3A - TS 27489 LO. These are the original springs from new and the photo was taken in 1988 while I was doing the total body off restoration. The packer plates were on the RHS (passenger's side in Canada).