Please excuse the non-Chevyness of this, but I need some advice, and haven't found any elsewhere.

Here's the problem I'm having. The upper part of the kingpin doesn't line up very well with the shock arms. I made a little bushing compressor from allthread and a couple of fender washers, and I can get the kingpin to go in between the shock arms and bolt it all up. It takes a little persuasion.

After doing that the shock wants to leak at the pivot shaft. The shock doesn't leak when it just sets on a bench for a few days. So I'm thinking that by forcing the thing together there's enough pressure to cant the shaft that goes through the shock and cause it to leak after it's installed. It's getting on my nerves.

Now I have have this bright idea...
Plan A:
1) remove the coil spring
2) loosen the lower spring pan bolts
3) loosen the wishbone to lower pivot shaft nuts
Note: This should allow the wishbone/pan assembly (which is sort of like the LCA on our real cars) to be sort of flexible.
4) loosely refit the lower kingpin bolt
5) leave out the coil spring, and see if the upper part of the kingpin can be moved around enough to center it in the shock arms
6) loosely refit the upper kingpin bolt
7) tighten the wishbone-to-spring pan bolts. Hopefully doing this will make things line up when the spring is installed.
8) take it all apart
9) reassemble with the coil spring installed and hope for the best

I'm thinking that I may have messed up by tightening the wishbone-to-spring pan bolts before assembly.

Plan B:
Similar to Plan A, with the exception of snugging instead of tightening the wishbone-to-spring pan bolts. Then, after the upper and lower kingpin bolts are in, tighten them. I'd rather tighten them without the coil spring in there because the spring will want to mess up the threads on the bolts.

Thanks

well, i've heard that British cars like to leak oil (the Brits say they're marking their territory). shocks have oil, so i guess they are supposed to leak...

I currently own a 63B. I replaced the shocks last year.

The kningpin only cames out with a big effort. Often it is beyond use after the removal.

The whole system has bushings everywhere. I assume you were trying to install a new shock? My friend in the business says that 50-70% of the good used or rebuilt shocks are no good. I.E leak. ??? Because of all the bushings it should be easty sort of to line up the pin. If everything is bent up then that is another problem. Usually to replace the shock you just set in in place and very loosly bolt it to the frame. put the pin in place and then tighten the bolts to the frame.

Twenty minutes to replace the shock, two hours to get the pin out and one trip to the parts house for new pins.

I'm too cheap to install new shocks, especially when they're $200 each for the front. I was changing the bushings to polyurethane bushings and ran into this problem during reassembly. While I had it taken apart I removed the shocks, drained out the old fluid and replaced it with 40W motorcycle fork oil (a lot cheaper than the so-called special shock fluid that the vendors sell, which I believe is 20W). That really stiffened them up. What gets me is they don't leak until installed.

The upper part of the kingpin came out ok. I used an 10 or 12" piece of 1x2 and pulled. It's just not centered very well to the shock arms. I'm going to try to find some adjustment by playing with the spring pan and wishbones with the coil springs removed.

When I had it apart I completely disassembled the pan/wishbones and cleaned them up a little and it's very possible that there's enough slack in the bolt holes to allow things to get screwed up. That's what I'm hoping anyway. Nothing looks obviously bent, but I know the car hasn't had a sheltered life. I think they dropped it off the boat when they brought it over here.

Fortunately, there's a cheap tube shock conversion for the rear if it needs it, but I have 3 qts of fork oil and will try that first.
www.teglerizer.com/mgstuff/tubeshocks.htm (http://www.teglerizer.com/mgstuff/tubeshocks.htm)

There are few variations in the approach to this, but they're pretty similar to each other.

I recall hearing of a conversion kit to switch from the lever-action shocks to regular telescopic shocks. The caveat is that most of that type for the MGB end up stressing areas under the car that weren't designed to handle the direct stress. There was a company that made a kit that addressed that. The name escapes me since it was about 20 years ago that I heard of it (I must blow the dust off those old Road & Tracks in the basement)

There are tube conversion kits for the front, but they're pretty expensive, $500 for the Spax, $260 for the Monroe/Moss. I just can't see it myself. A little oil leak never hurt anybody.

You're probably right about stressing areas...funny how the people selling stuff forget to mention that.

The factory manual recommends using 20W mineral type oil in the system temporarily in warm weather(1963 shop manual). 40W is considerably heavier. The Tube shock conversion for the front is somewhat expensive. The sock is part of the stearing system. Rebuilt shocks ar $80 each in the Dayton area.

The factory manual recommends using 20W mineral type oil in the system temporarily in warm weather(1963 shop manual). 40W is considerably heavier. The Tube shock conversion for the front is somewhat expensive. The shock is part of the stearing system. Rebuilt shocks ar $80 each in the Dayton area.

It sounds to me like a bad seal in the shock. It may have been bad for years.

good luck. Yahoo has a MGB group that I am a member of. You might post there and see if ytou get any good answers.

You're lucky (if you can call it that) that you can get MG parts locally. I have to mail-order just about everything from either Moss or Victoria British. I think that VB has rebuilt Armstrong shocks for 89, but that's not my concern right now. I have a feeling that I misaligned something when I put it back together, so I'll try to get to that later this week. The fact that they don't leak until installed makes me think two things: 1) I screwed something up, 2) if I did replace the shocks, it would only be a short while until they started leaking. Maybe I'll get lucky.

Just an update:

I had the car on jacks at the front of the frame rails and also had the outer wishbones supported on wood blocks. Then I loosened the spring pan to wishbone bolts/nuts. Only the rear wishbones were on the blocks and both kingpins were leaning to the front about 1/4-3/8", so I stacked washers to support the front wishbones, varying the total thickness until the kingpins leaned back in line with the shock arms. Then tightened the spring pan bolts, put the wheels on and let it down.

I'll check in a couple of days and see if the shocks are leaking or not.