Morris Minor Owners Club

I took the Morris in for wheel alignment yesterday as the offside trye had worn badly on the inside edge. I phoned first and asked if they could do a Morris and they said " yeah sure bring it in" so I did and it took them 3 hours to fix a puncture and do the tracking!
They tried fixing the tube three times but it kept puncturing. If they had asked I would have told them there was only a tube in it because the last fitter couldn't find a valve! It's a land rover valve if anyone is interested! Anyway they didn't know what the setting should be for the tracking. If I had known before they started I would have checked before I went. I had an idea that it it was 1/8th of an inch and I seemed to remember reading that it was .4 degrees. They were doing their best and were a nice enough bunch so I'm not having a pop at them, just pointing out the problems one can run into! They thought .4 was too much and suggested .04 I wasn't sure so asked if their machine does mm. It did, so I reckoned 1/8 was 3mm and we went with that. Here's the readings I ended up with.

Can anyone tell me if they're ok or not?

1.5mm toe in each side (3mm total)
Camber: nr side + 0* 17' offside: -0*09'

I hate to think what it cost you! Just do-it yourself in future. Obviously - one wheel is showing a small amount of negative camber (good!) and the other is showing a little more positive camber (bad) - but not enough to worry about. I hope they equalised the track rods when setting it up - and no mention of castor angles ??

Toe-in for a standard Minor:

3/32 inch or 2.4 – 2.5 mm or 0.8 degrees

Hmm, so i was a bit off with 3mm. Is the 0.5mm extra toe in likely to affect tyre wear or handling?
I'll have to read up on castor angles, to be honest I'm not sure how to check!
They only charged me the standard price (thankfully) of £39 for a valve and tracking, but I guess if you do it often enough it's worth making up a tool, I might read up on that too!

20 thou additional toe will make no odds! I just thought the fancy report would have included castor angles.......

What are the alignment specs for a '61 2 door? Are they the same as listed in the BMC manual (page GD5) for series MM and seriesII?
TIA

Same for all - but of course - radial ply tyres hadn't been invented then! You may find parallel works well if all your bushes are in good condition!

My 1967 Traveller is due an MOT at the beginning of next month and the front near side tyre has been badly worn on the outside edge.

This weekend I was planning on taking it to National (http://www.national.co.uk) to have them do the tracking/wheel alignment and replace any MOT failure tyres with 155/80/14 (for £42.32 fully fitted inc VAT).

I was a bit worried about what would happen when I asked them about tracking/wheel alignment for a Minor, I know nothing about how they fix tracking/wheel alignment so if I tell them "Toe in is 3/32 inch or 2.4 – 2.5 mm or 0.8 degrees" I'm hoping they'll understand !

I also hope they'll know how to adjust it.

If only one tyre has worn - on outside edge -I suspect the CAMBER angle is wrong - too much +ve camber. It must be quite bad to make that much wear - or, other possibility - do you have lots and lots of round-abouts loaclly and go screeching round them at high speed ?

I now have 4 new Nankang 155/80/14 tyres. The tyre fitters told me that the tracking was at 12 degrees, which is not right, but they didn't do anything becuase the camber on the wheels was wrong and they don't adjust camber, which is a job for the garage. The only problem is that the garages say that you can't adjust camber.

I'm currently going to get the tracking fixed using old skool methods of brackets on the wheels and mirrors, and not the laser tracking that the tyre place use.

I know that the camber should be 1 degree. We put a spirit level against the wheels and there was not much in it between both fronts.

You simply add thick washers (or steel plates!) between the eyebolt mounting of the lower suspension arm - and the chassis rail through which it fits, to adjust the camber. You must make sure there is still a 'full nut' of thread on the inner side of the chassis rail. Then set the alignment - a home made 'caliper' gauge works fine and costs nothing!