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May 19, 2025

Rear Suspension

MGA rear suspension consists of a pair of conventional semi-elliptical leaf springs, damped by a pair of Armstrong lever arm dampers.  Suspension travel is limited by a check strap, and a rubber bumper on each side.

At this point, the repaired frame, complete with its front suspension and front brakes, was still up on the rotisserie. 




The rear axle with the leaf springs and rear brakes were on the floor.




My job for this day was to connect the two.  The axle assembly is pretty heavy--surely over 100 pounds--so it seemed to make more sense to lower the frame on to it than to try to lift it up to the frame.

So the first task was to get the frame off the rotisserie and on to some stands.  The frame was very front-heavy at this point.




Then, put wheels on the front, lift up the rear, and position the rear axle assembly underneath.




Finally, attach the springs to the brackets on the frame--single bolt at the front, and the shackle assembly at the rear.  The shackle uses lubricated polyurethane bushings.




Finally! A rolling chassis!




I dug out the old limiting straps.  They were pretty dirty, but appeared to be intact.  These were replaced in my 70s work on the car, and have been in storage since then.  Once cleaned up, they appeared fine, so I decided to use them.




With no load on the chassis, the straps are too short to install.  I used a cargo tie-down strap to compress the spring enough to install the limiter.




Next up were the dampers and links.  They mounted without much drama.




Last up were the bounce bump rubbers.  Like the straps, these looked pretty bad at first, but after cleaning, blasting, and painting, they looked plenty good to use.  This is one of the few places where I found original factory fasteners.  I always keep these if I can, usually re-plating them.




All done!  The rotisserie now gets retired.




Every stage on this overall project is a milestone, but this seems like a big one.

Since this was mainly just bolting things together, the cost of this work was zero.

Comments to Ed at elhollin1@yahoo.com

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