Assembly or the A-Arms and spring plates

30th May 2008

I had already cleaned up my A-arms and spring plates by sending them away to be media blasted and then zinc plated and rebuilt them with their respective bearings and axles. With the A-Arm mounts welded in place and the gearbox made to fit the frame horns I was ready to re-build the read suspension. I decided after a great deal of debate that I would refit all the bearings with the Urethane type. Popular research at the time indicated that the Urethane substance was good as a bearing surface and stronger than the rubber alternatives. I ordered two A-Arm Urethane bushes and new spring plate bushes in Urethane and two new cover plates. The all arrived from SSP quite promptly.

I started with the Urethane A-Arm Bushes These are quite easy to install and can be pressed into the arms with a reasonable sized vice or cramp. SSP does not sell its bushes with Urethane grease and It is fairly common knowledge that normal motor grease will slowly wear the Urethane bushes faster.

Once I had the bushes in place I was able to put them aside and make a start on putting in the spring plates. The inner bushes where pressed onto the inner side of the spring plate and then the knobbly outer was placed on and driven onto the spring plate with a wooden mallet. I had previously bought a digital level and had used this to set up some angles on the A-Arm brackets. This had proved to be a good method and as I new that the spring plates should be set at 20 degrees I found them fairly easy to get set up in the right position. I set up both sides so that they spring plates where pushed in tight . They needed lifting over the bottom of the block on the torsion bar end. This should really be done with a special tool to lift the spring plates. I used small luggage straps around the suspension arm and the spring plate. These are the ratchet type that can allow you to ratchet up the spring plate to maneuver it over the bottom hump so that it can be driven in with a mallet further into the torsion tube. Once the spring plate had been hit into position so that it fits into the shell at the end of the torsion tube. You can fit the spring plate cover with the four bolts before releasing the straps. This can be repeated on the other spring plate . The shorter spring plate design makes the force needed to pull up the spring plate more than the amount usually used.

With the spring plates fitted the A-Arms can be pushed into their brackets with the bolt pin securing them. This allows the washers to be placed in situe. i placed a washer ether side of the bush. Some people seem to place the washers on the same side but I figured the washers should be placed on either side.

With the bolts pin loosely done up I was able hoist the A-Arm up so that it was at the same height as the spring plate. This allowed the three bolts to be placed in the holes and tightened up to 11kg m or 80 lbs ft. With the spring plate bolts torqued up you can use an Allen key 87 lb ft 12 kgm.

Next I would have to install and make up the drive shafts.