Morris Minor Owners Club

I gave up trying to fit the rear tie-bar bushes currently being sold as they are too hard and it's impossible to compress them. I think they are too thick anyway.
Trawling ebay I found these anti-vibration dampers 30x 30 x M8 and shore hardness 55° which I think should be alright for the rear bush. They were very cheap at 1.50€ each. The poly and rubber bushes being sold are ~32mm but for an experiment 30mm should be ok.


Cut the ends of at about 5mm to clear the steel insert-the second attempt is much easier


Dress each end with a file

Drill the hole-the last cut with a 10mm reamer having had the bush in the deep freeze overnight. The original bush is 9.7 and a 9.7mm drill is tight even after using a 10mm reamer. A dress with a file gets it just right.

Nice bush and the test in the vice shows that it compresses lovely

Now all we need is some warmer weather for a road test. We have 10" of snow here at the moment.
Happy Christmas all!

The simple answer (as I have said before) is to use rubber bush on the rear and a poly bush on the front. This gives some compliance - but the necessary 'firmness' under braking.

Roy,
The rubber bushes currently being sold as rubber are rock hard-that's the problem-they are like golf balls!. At the moment I have the old rubber bush at the rear as it is softer and I just want to replace it with a bush of similar shore hardness. Hence the idea of starting with shore 55°.
Regards
Declan

Sorry if i sound stupid,but what are "rear" tie bar bushes? I'm only familiar with front tie bar bushes.

Mog-nuts,
You can see what we are talking about on the pic below. Rear as in "rear" of the bracket which is attached to the chassis. This is the problem child I was referring to. If you try to fit a very hard rubber bush there it's not easy. The "front" one is easy.
Regards
Declan[frame][/frame]

Thanks for the clarification Declan. Fitted poly bushes to my trav without any probs.

Mog-nuts,
Glad to hear you had no problems fitting them. When my colleague fitted the Wolseley brakes on his trav just before Christmas this is what he found. A poly bush cut back by the previous owner.[frame][/frame]
Regards
Declan

Ok Declan - I have a 'stock' of good rubber bushes so that explains why they work for me. I ceratinly could not have fitted the poly bushes I got from Tom Roy to front and rear. There was not enough thread - and the castor angle would have been hopeless even if I could get the nut started.

Thanks Roy,
Could you measure the thickness of those original bushes?-it would be very easy to make a mould for them.
Regards
Declan

Declan, now I'm confused. Your pic shows washers on both sides of the rubbers, but neither the service manual or the parts manual show the washers on either side of the chassis mount.
I recently but new rubbers from BM on our car and w/out the additional washers they went on with only a bit of squeezing. The rubbers were soft enough but not overly soft.

Katy

The dished washers are spot welded to the tie bracket on the original chassis leg and should come attached to replacements.

That's right - there are no additional washers. The picture shows the asembly as I like to do it - the rear rubber squashed up and the nut would all the way down the thread - thus giving best possible castor angle.

I have been experimenting moulding the bushes with different shore grades. I tried a different chemical over the last few days. These are better as the first ones ended up too hard. I try and fit them over the weekend.
Regards
Declan


The mould and lid are made of PVC[frame][/frame][frame][/frame]