Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Fitting sifab steering bearing

Managed somehow to get the spring in, and reassembled except for the caliper and bottom stay. Any tips on lining up the top oiler bolt? I've seen somewhere mentioning a long screwdriver but there's little gap to get anything much bigger than the oiler bolt to go down the hole.

Best tool to use is a shortish tapered drift that can't fall completely down the hole or damage threads. Work it gently around to align stays and kingpin then carefully remove and engage threads of oiler bolt by hand, not forgetting washer(s) underneath. Only when sure of engagement tighten with spanner.

You may need a few attempts. In typical sods law fashion it took a while to get one side in but other engaged on first attempt

If you have later car with round ended kingpins and adjustable camber plate, assemble the split washers with plenty of grease and tapers facing each other. They should then settle into natural position immediately under oiler bolt as it's tightened.

My king pins have flat tops unfortunately. Sadly I have to start again as I missed putting a washer on the bearing. Hopefully will have better luck tomorrow. By my calculations the main spring is 2cm too long. What's your thoughts on removing the bottom king pin bolt and sliding the king pin up by hand, to the point it meets with the oiler bolt to try and fit it that way?

The mainspring will have extra pre-load equal to thickness of new steering bearing minus that of damper blade assembly if removed. Mainspring sag over time may mitigate this pre-load issue though. You could loosen bottom plate bolts and/or kingpin nut to allow articulation to fit mainspring and engage top oiler bolt. As a last resort spring compressors may help. Such situations are sometimes a balancing act.

Note the mainspring pre-load has no bearing (pun) on kingpin fixings since it sits between fixed upper and lower crosshead tubes.

I now have this to intend with. The compression of the main spring is forcing the stub axel off straight. The instructions and everything I've read elsewhere makes this job seem a doddle. I think spring compressors are the way to go.

The only way that can happen is with bottom plate nuts/bolts not fully tightened. You may need extra pair of hands but tightening same whilst pushing spring/kingpin into correct position at top should work.

I don't fit the bottom plate until the end. I just slot the stub axle into the lower frame mounting, locate the top and start the lube bolt in the threads while it's all loose. Then add the bottom plate and use two threaded rods to compress the main spring, and ease the rebound spring into place.

The two fiddles are if the stub axle fouls the dust cover, or if the rebound spring goes a bit off centre. Either way, a bit of necessary force fixes it.

I used motorcycle spring compressors the first time I did this, but they are not necessary.

Thanks Dave. I managed to get the first one done using thin nylon straps, a bit like ratchet straps without the ratchet, to compress them a little. On with the second one. I'll give what you suggest above a go now.

All done but harder than anticipated. I couldn't get the stub axel all the way down as the track rod was resting on the overider bracket. Didn't have a seperator and tapping the track rod end with a hammer didn't work.

On a slightly different topic. I noticed when working on the suspension that the King pins were in good order. Not sure if they were stainless steel or hardschrome. If in the future I needed to replace the king pins, could I just order off the shelf, and they'll slip right into the hub, as from what I've read, devol bushes don't require reaming, and they don't wear like the bronze bushes? I know devol bushes have a bad rep, but again from what I've read, they seem to work well as long as they aren't paired with mild steel kingpins.