MG Midget Front Suspension Rebuild Naperville, IL - Saturday, May 2, 2009 We are gathered together here in the spiritual presence of Cecil Kimber to remove these rusty and worn out suspension pieces and replace them with new and rebuilt parts. Click for larger images. - Larger pics average 35KB. At least eight club members came with an interest in this procedure, and a few more may have come and gone during the day. Seth Jones made a prudent decision early and started on the easier side of the car where he knew it have been apart more recently. As a result the suspension came apart with only moderate encouragement from the big hammer. Set the car body on jack stands, jack up the A-arm to unload the suspension joints, and proceed to disassemble everything above the A-arm outer pivot point. When parts above are disconnected lower the jack to remove the coil spring, then disassemble the A-arm inner pivot parts. That top trunnion in the right photo was one of the least of our worries for the day, just install new rubber bushings and it will be ready to go again. Seth was doing well at this point, pulling off parts right and left while the onlookers were dually impressed. When the first steering knuckle and kingpin assembly was off Barney went to work with hammer and punches to replace the kingpin bushings. The new Midget kingpin reamer was then unwrapped for the first time and pressed into service to ream the bushings for a perfect match to the kingpin diameters. Well there was one little hitch. The new bushings were a bit too small on the ID so the pilot diameter of the reamer wouldn't pass through. A Dremel tool with a small sanding drum was used to open the bushings a tad. Then use oil liberally and turn the reamer clockwise only to keep the cutting flutes sharp, and that little task goes off without further incident. Meanwhile Seth was reassembling the right side with all new parts, as the rebuild knuckle would be a spare in reserve. Once the first side was finished a few of the people left including the chap who was taking the pictures, so we have a huge time gap here with no photos. Unfortunately things did not go as well with the left side as it was dearly resistant to being disassembled. After big hammers and bigger hammers and heat and more heat came to no success, the blue wrench was turned full up to cut away the lower suspension arm and the inner A-arm pivot shaft. New parts could then be installed, and lucky the new parts were already in hand. Below left is a picture of final assembly of the left side suspension in process. The car did finally roll out of the shop in late afternoon for the test drive with all new front suspension (and the anti-sway bar installed a couple weeks earlier), resulting in the appropriate big grin on the face of the driver (and one die hard enthusiast with an MGB still hanging in there). ©2009 Chicagoland MG Club, All rights reserved.