Morris Minor Owners Club

Hi all,

So, Monty has a dodgy crossmember bodge-fix (previous owner) whereby the end was rotting away so someone welded a strengthening plate onto the side of the crossmember, between the two nuts that hold the torsion bar/plate in place. It effectively means, that until I renew that part of the crossmember, I won't be able to undo that end of the torsion bar since the two nuts are now effectively welded in place.

I know this will all need to be rectified at some point in the future, but for cash reasons I want to delay it a bit as to do that fix would really mean the whole floor panel that side (front and back) needs replacing since that isn't great either (i.e. there's no point in putting a new crossmember/end onto a dodgy floor.

So, I was trying to think what this means I won't be able to do on the front wheels (i.e. cleaning up the lower/upper trunnions, arms, replacing bushes etc) until this job is done. I have totally dismantled/cleaned/refitted the rear suspension and I wanted to do the same to the front at some point......but is me not being able to undo the rear end of the torsion bar going to stop any/all of this happening??

Assume that the crossmember is temporarily strong enough to do its job for the timebeing, allbeit it looks like a dogs dinner

Make sense? I've not read up the manual on the front suspension yet, I guess that would tell me.....but I've gone and typed all this out now

Thanks

Matt

if i understand correctly the cross member is strong but unsightly.

it should not stop you taking all the front suspension apart cleaning it up and re-bushing it all. the only problem that i can see is that when you put it all back together the ride hight might be slightly different ( new bushes etc ) and you will not be able to modify this until you get the cross member sorted.

so it depends on how bad your bushes are it might be better to "let sleeping dogs lie" so to speak.. but if the ride hight of the car is wrong and different on both sides i would be tempted to get on and change the bushes.

It's actually easier to take the tension off the torsion bar at the suspension end so replacing the bushes etc wont be a problem. Only issue is if you do need to adjust the height then only very coarse adjustment is possible by moving the suspension arm around the splines on the torsion bar - but one spline equals nearly 1 1/2" in height. The manual explains it very well if you do a search for the PDF down-load version

Thanks Panky and Charlie for your speedy response, that sounds like very positive news.

Matt

Of course you can do the front _ I never touch the rear of T bar.