MG-Cars.info

Welcome to our Site for MG, Triumph and Austin-Healey Car Information.

Parts

MG parts spares and accessories are available for MG T Series (TA, MG TB, MG TC, MG TD, MG TF), Magnette, MGA, Twin cam, MGB, MGBGT, MGC, MGC GT, MG Midget, Sprite and other MG models from British car spares company LBCarCo.

MG Midget and Sprite Technical - MOT passed .......but....

My 948,frogeye passed it's MOT yesterday but with two advisories.
Firstly......groan.....the front wheel bearings have enough play in them to be noticeable, and secondly, the steering column has a little play in the top bush.
Tightening the hub nuts has not made a scrap of difference to the play in the bearings, and I now gather from previous threads that this is an ongoing problem.
It looks as though this topic has been done to death and, without wanting to raise it again, my simple question is : am I right in thinking that where this problem has arisen, most owners just live with it. I certainly don't want to start sourcing and replacing the bearings, or adjusting the width of the spacer, especially if it is generally considered that a little play in the bearings is acceptable. The fact that the frog passed it's MOT suggests that some play is acceptable?
Moving on to the steering bush, I think I've read somewhere that you can fit a plastic bush from the steering column of a mini to take the place of the felt bush at the top of the steering tube. Has anyone experience of this please.
Any help appreciated.
Many thanks
Phil
P J Dent

as regards the unmentionables, and please don't, depends how bad they are, could it be that if a different tester had tried them he would have thought them acceptable if not perfect but enough to pass

the same person at the next MoT with things in the same condition give an advisory, or not and pass or refuse

in 2009 I had a unmentionable replaced (should have been both but that's another story) the parts were just bought from a local motor factor about for £20 (for one or both can't remember)

in 2011 I had the other side replaced, parts from Brown & Gammon, £18, not all of their parts are good quality from them I've had to take some back but no problem with this part

to give you an example of MoT tests -
2009 Advisory - Slight play in both front kingpins
2011 Advisory - Nearside Front wheel bearing has slight play
2012 Advisory - Slight play in both front kingpins

no advisories since then and I have the same kingpins (from purchase of car) and no parts fitted other than those mentioned

since 2008, my first MoT with the car, I've taken it to the same place and either one or the other of the testers has tested my car

I've always greased the six front nipples before the MoT but last couple of years it's been only a day or two before so perhaps that has helped but I do grease them every 3 months anyway

as I always put a MoT test is only to say the car has passed minimum standards at one point in time to one qualified person's opinion not that the car is as good as it should or could be and something could break or go faulty as you leave the testing station that would be a fail if it happened on the way in

obviously I can't know about your situation but generally "play" is often mentioned for this area at Mg owners' MoTs, sometimes verbally other times written advisory and sometimes as a refusal of MoT - but some play seems normally present
Nigel Atkins

My car failed on FWB and I bought FWB's from Moss and they didn't assemble properly, but a bit of messing and shims and different sets of bearings all was well in the in the end. Moss couldn't have been more helpful in helping me resolve the problem.

I did spend some time on the phone with their tech guy and he was looking into the supply of the parts.

My MOT said 'noisy bearings' - then they failed, I think until you get noisy bearings you are ok, once they go noisy it means the case harden has gone and you will be replacing next year.

MOT your car one month before its due and you should be ok.

Malc
Malc Gilliver

Phil, #1 yes; some play is acceptable (otherwise you would have received a Fail not an Advisory).
#2; don't know about the Mini bush but later Spridgets also had a plastic top bush. If your felt bush is present and undamaged just drip-feed it with light engine oil and it should swell up a bit and hopefully reduce the play, as they dry out with age.
David Smith

As David says, if it passed, then some play must still be acceptable.

How many miles do you do? If very few, it'll probably pass again next year. If you do more, then it may fail next year.

Tightening the hub won't make any difference, because the spacer prevents you from moving the inner races closer to eachother.

Now for some controversy.

From sussex, bearings per side will cost you £15 plus delivery, and likely won't solve the problem without farting about with shims. 40 degree SKF's will cost circa 120 quid for both sides, and need some spacers. But once done, you can forget it for 20 years plus I would think

New spacers however are only £7 each plus delivery. So it's cheap enough to buy a couple of new spares and alter your own. So if you don't race, and don't do 'that' many miles per year, but would like to remove the play in your existing bearings, then alter your spacers.

Grind a thou or so off the spacer(easier than grinding the inner face of bearing). This will allow you to tighten the nut a little more and remove the play.

Has the case hardening gone in your bearings? Are they now going to wear rapidly? Not in my experience. I ground the inner face, of the inner race, of my outer bearing. This removed all play in the hub, and that was several thousand miles ago. Still no noise and no play. Next time, I'll just get spare spacers and grind the face a little.

Lawrence Slater

Phil,
my start point would be to verify that the problem is actually the wheel bearing. This may seem untrusting,butthe MOT tester's job isn't to identify exactly what the cause of the problem is. So if he feels a bit of slack at the wheel rim - unless he is an enthusiast himself - he would probably just mark it down as wheel bearings. But it could just as well be the bottom fulcrum pin, or the kingpin - both of which testers of modern cars would be relatively unfamiliar with.

So your start point is to check and find out exactly where the "wear" is occurring. Check the 12 and 3 o'clock diameters for movement. And then with one finger spanning the gap between the brake disc and the hub carrier, feel for relative movement between the two parts.

It may indeed turn out to be wheel bearings, but in case it isn't, then you don't want to be wasting time, energy and money fixing the wrong thing, only to find it is no better than before you started!
Guy Weller

Thanks for all comments.
I forgot to say that I had rebuilt the hubs about 24 months ago using new bearing kits....which came from Moss I think.
This was before I started reading this BBS and knew of the problems others had experienced.
I was very careful to extract the old bearings and fit the new ones in the correct way. I didn't check the radius on the inner bearing though!
When I picked up the car, the Mot man showed me that the play is across the 3 o'clock diameter, so I'm fairly sure the fucrum pin and kingpins are ok. They jolly well should be as I rebuilt them at the same time as the fwbs, and the nipples are well greased!
I think I might leave the bearings alone for the moment, and maybe buy a couple of new spacers as suggested by Lawrence so that I can fiddle with spacer widths.
Even though a I'm a sprightly oap I don't drive the frog too energetically...certainly not in the way I used to when I started in 1968. Annual mileage in the frog is about 2k.
Many thanks again for all comments.
P J Dent

I'll echo Guy's comments, even though the MOT chap showed you the play at 3 o/c. I'd verify it for myself.

But as you've already recently used Moss bearings, it seems likely that the play is in the bearings. I assume you didn't shim them in, but were lucky enough to have a set that were 'close' to the required spec, -- albeit with a 1mm inner radius.

It occured to me when I posted earlier, that rather than shim the cheap generic non face adjusted bearings, you might just as well reduce the length of the hub spacers by the required amount, to bring them near enough into spec. But that will still leave you with the inner bearing sitting off the rear face of the spindle by 1mm. I'd put a 1mm shim in there to fill the gap. Easy to make. You obviously don't have a problem with the disc fouling the caliper, or you'd have noticed it by now.

Lawrence Slater

Its easy enough to check if there is a problem with the inner bearing radius, and without dismantling. All yo need to do is check if the disc is running central ly in the calliper gap. If there is a problem with the radius,then the bearing won't snug up tight on the spindle and the disc will be out of position.
Guy Weller

This thread was discussed between 10/06/2014 and 11/06/2014

MG Midget and Sprite Technical index

This thread is from the archives. Join the live MG Midget and Sprite Technical BBS now