2011: MOT and more

Robert visited for a week in May with the aim of getting an MOT. Less than 12 hours after flying in he had the MOT. This page is going to be boring if we can't talk him into making some modifications.

The standard rear suspension setup has two lower trailing arms but only one upper arm. This turns out not to be quite so theoretically OK as was suggested earlier. Problem is the lower arm bush compresses under torque on one side but not on the other, and that results in torque steer.

The Rochdale was annoyingly wobbly on it's first outings so a fix was devised - a second upper arm.

For the second upper arm not to add roll resistance at the rear the upper arms needed to be parallel to the lower arms and about the same length, so two new arms and axle brackets were fabricated. In the photo the axle is going back on. The change fixed the torque steer and we went out for a nice (if noisy) test run.

The first proper trip was 150 miles to Dorset, and the Rochdale made it there, but needed the assistance of a breakdown truck for the last part of the journey home.

Turns out the advance weights on the distributor had stuck and dislodged the distributor shaft. It was an easy fix in the workshop but we ran out of time on this visit.

Meanwhile the car rests under cover in a workshop that smells of petrol. There's a leak from one of the glassfibre fuel tanks which apparently will be a pain to fix.

As much fuel as possible has been pumped out of the tanks so hopefully the smell will go away.