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MG MGB GT V8 Factory Originals Technical - Ride height, turning over an old leaf

I've got what used to be a '75 rubber bumper. I reduced the rear ride height a while ago by re-drilling the front spring hanger, which got it almost to chrome bumper height. Now I've a hankering to go all the way, or a little more maybe .
Some one suggested that I should turn over the top leaf of the spring, there-by turning the eye from up to down and dropping the ride height roughly a further inch. The only draw back that I can see is that in order to do so I must cut about a cm or off each end of the second leaf so that it might not interfere with the now downward pointing eyes. This does not strike me as a significant weakening of the spring, but I wouldn't mind hearing a second opinion, or two.
Has anyone tried this or heard of it?, even it you haven't, what do all you experienced people think?

I'll post this in in the MGB technical as well.


Peter

About 1" of height different was from the hangers and crossmember, the rest from the springs themselves. Then again the factory V8 had the altered hangers and crossmember without the extra height from the springs in order to get adequate ground clearance. Having lowered (raised?) the front eye I would have thought that turning over the top leaf would move things a lot more than the eye centres because now one leaf would be working against the remainder instead of all in the same direction, unless you reverse-arch the top leaf as well. Because of this I've always imagined that turning over the top leaf alone i.e. without re-arching it or altering the hanger would move things too much anyway. It would be simulating very tired springs, so you would always be operating very close to the bump-stop with very little actual spring movement left. OK on smooth tarmac. I've recently fitted lengthened shackles to my CB roadster as two-up I was fed-up with hitting the bump stops and grounding, even with new OE springs.
Paul Hunt

This action will lower your springs indeed, but it is not recommended by the people who make leaf springs, like Eeltink in Heemskerk. The chap there is in his eighties, and has worked for decades with leaf-sprung car. His quote: "seen it all when I was young. Racers do this, but they don't care for longevity. So..this is not the way to treat my beautiful springs, asshole!".
Basically he claims you would need to re-temper and re-arch the springs to get the right springing characteristics. Therefore he doesn't recommend it, to put it mildly.

Frank
Frank de Groot

Peter,

I would have thought lowering blocks would be easiest.
Mine runs about 1inch lower than CB and the exhaust can only just clear speed bumps and had to use Mikalor exhaust clamps.

Front bump stops can be a problem but you may be able to get competition ones that has spacer removed.

Paul
Paul

Just out of interest where can you buy lowering blocks in the UK for an mgb ive been thinking of doing this for a while.

Cheers Dean
dean.s

Don't try this any one, I had a go on the week end and once you've got them apart it becomes obvious thats it's not especially workable. There's allot of arch in those leaves. Rebending or replacing is the way to do it.
With reguard to bottoming out, I notice that the bump stops on the rubber bumper seem to locate on "an extra bit". The chrome bumpers have recessed bump stops and the rubber bumnpers seem to have this extra semicirclular fill just tacked on. up below the shock abs' you can see clearly. If this is the case then theres no reason why I can't cut this off. Or rather, cut out a square in the bottom of the add on semicircle and recess the bump stop a little. Has anyone tried this? is there still a captive nut in place under there or could you use a nut cert.
Paul et. al. I've been thinking about it and I'm not too much in favour of blocks as I think this will give the axle more moment to move about above the springs (the little tramp!). At the moment I seriously thinking about bolting a shock absorber (an MG hydrolic one) above and to the front of the diff' to stop this. I believe it will be more effective than antitramp bars. Only spculation at this stage.
Peter

This thread was discussed between 22/01/2004 and 28/01/2004

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