Rover 2000TC

[Willy Eckerslyke]

Since blogging in the old forum about putting this P6 back on the road, I've been driving it as my everyday car for a couple of years. The bodywork has been a mess though, with fibreglass wings (the front ones still in their native white, and rusty door bottoms).
Last year I began a facelift by picking out a spare set of better panels and enlisting the services of a local chap to work on them in batches. They're being blasted back to bare metal, primed and finished in two-pack to a nice standard but unfortunately, it's been taking a while. So far, only one corner has been completed, but it is the one I can see from my office window, which is nice.

[Willy Eckerslyke]

A rattle had developed from the front suspension, most noticeable over uneven road surfaces. I put up with it rather too long so when I finally investigated I found half an inch of vertical play in the driver's side top ball joint. And the passenger one was just the same. Luckily, I had a pair of replacements in the cupboard.

Removing them was easier than I'd feared: Undo the three retaining screws, loosen the big nut, hammer a sharpened cold chisel into the joint until the strut drops, popping out the ball joint. I smeared copper grease onto the sockets before fitting the replacements.
The rubber boots on the new ones left a lot of the shiny metal unprotected so I cleaned out the old boots and popped them on top. They don't restrict any movement and can't be doing any harm.

[harvey]

With the old and new joints side by side, the mounting faces are at the same level, but the pin looks a lot longer on the new one, with the taper a lot higher up. Whether that's just a trick of the photo I don't know, but if not that's going to increase the ride height and alter the camber.

[Willy Eckerslyke]

Oh dear, you have me worried now. I did compare them side by side without noticing any such difference but have thrown the old ones away so can't check. I did confirm that they were the same height to the top of the thread so am hoping it's just an effect of the angle and wide angle lens.
What effect would you expect it to have on the handling if these are different?

[harvey]

May 8, 2017 18:39:52 GMT Willy Eckerslyke said:

Oh dear, you have me worried now. I did compare them side by side without noticing any such difference but have thrown the old ones away so can't check. I did confirm that they were the same height to the top of the thread so am hoping it's just an effect of the angle and wide angle lens.
What effect would you expect it to have on the handling if these are different?

 If the height to the top of the threads was the same then the chances are it's just a trick of the camera.

If the taper was further up from the mounting on the pillar then you would have reduced negative camber at a standstill. Think of it by way of an extreme example, when you jack the front of the car up the wheels hang with a lot of positive camber, which remains when you drop the car down again until you move the car to correct it. Lowering the pillar by extending the joint would do the same to a lesser extent. Quite how much difference it would make to the handling would depend on how much lower the pillar was sitting, but any resulting positive camber could make things interesting I would think. In normal suspension movement, as the suspension is compressed there's an increase in negative camber, but I have no of the correlation between the two, and so the same applies the other way, when the wheel drops down, (say into a pothole) then the negative camber is reduced, but I couldn't say at what point it moves from negative to positive.

[Willy Eckerslyke]

Thanks for the explanation Harvey. I've just been comparing it with my spares car and really can't find a measurable difference. I have noticed some feathering to the outside of the front tyres but don't know if it happened before or after fitting the new ball joints. And I'd replaced the passenger side rod at the same time but haven't had the tracking checked so it'd be hard to pin anything down.

[Willy Eckerslyke]

Update:
The tracking was clearly out so I checked with the string method on Sunday. With the car on level ground I looped the centre of a length of string round the towbar then stretched the ends along each side of the car. Beginning on the driver's side, I pulled the string tight against the rear tyres and forward across the front ones, low enough to clear the bodywork. I straightened the steering (it was slightly out) until the string glanced across the front tyre on both sides.
Then I moved to the passenger side, did the same again and found it was about an inch out. Hardly surprising since I'd replaced both side arms. So I adjusted the tracking until it was as close as I could get to straight ahead, while rechecking the driver's side thoughout. It's only the passenger side that's actually adjusted on a P6.

Problems with this method:
Aligning the walls of the tyres is never going to be as accurate as working off the wheel rims.
Assumes that the axle width is the same front and back.

But as a cheap fix, it's better than none, and probably better than paying £50 for someone who doesn't know what they're doing to get it wrong with fancy laser kit.

[bent8rover]

Ah yes - pointing straight ahead, I remember that was best advice from Rover forums.  I remember messing about with tracking years ago on mine.

Just for thread reference, the factory setting is 1/8" toe-in +/- 1/16" - but it is (or was) said the P6 drives better having the tracking dead straight.

[bent8rover]

Oh before I forget... I do have all the pages intact from your original Willyeckersblog on this lovely Mexico brownness

Would you like them resurrected?

[Willy Eckerslyke]

Thanks for the tracking figures. As you say, collective wisdom now does suggest straight ahead.

Oh dear, it actually looked tidier in that photo before I started work on it!
But yes please, if you have time to resurrect them it would be nice.
I'm currently having a load of panels blasted so it might actually get spruced up before too long.