How to correct Rear Toe Out

[tsp]

Hi all.

Recently purchased a 1982 mini. However the car isn't tracking perfectly true. On further inspection I noticed that one rear wheel appears to have toe in and the other appears to have toe out. This is causing the car to crab ever so slightly. I haven't had chance to get the car on an alignment rig so I can't accurately tell the severity of the problem. And from what I can see there is no adjustments for toe on the rear wheels.

I'm new to mini's so any help on how I could fix the problem would be appreciated. Is there anything I can adjust ?

Thanks in advance.

[Matt_E_Mulsion]

I'd check that the rear subframe is bolted in square, that can cause the car to crab. I'm not too sure that back in the eighties rear alignment was ever that critical or even spot on.

[Lotobear]

...it may have had a bang at the rear which has shifted the subbie, however these might be sufficient to correct a small toe in/out difference:

http://minispares.com/product/Classic/Suspension/R...

[LTP]

I support the fact that it's 99% down to the rear subframe being in crooked - seen many an Mini and 1100 driving down the road crab-wise.

The next question is why. In my dim, distant past I've changed a couple of Mini subframes and the rear subframe mounts bolt directly to the body panels via captive nuts in the back of the body/sills - the worst problem I had was the heads of these bolts rusting and rounding, but I had a hardened hex socket that I used to hammer on which worked in both cases - then just new bolts There is no adjustment but the mounts are isolator-type and have a special bolt running through them and the rubber bushes into a captive nut in the subframe.

In theory, it should be a case of unbolting, bolting a new one in and it's as aligned as a mini needs - the rear of the body aligning the subframe via the front mounts, the rear mounts holding the subframe up to the body.

So. Has the body been repaired badly, so the mounting surfaces are no longer true? It'd be a tricky thing to check without a CMM table but you could set it up on a garage floor and with string and a tape measure you might get an idea. Or has the subframe been made badly, with the holes for the isolator mounts out of position? As one rear radius toes in and the other toes out, it looks like they are both pointing in the same direction so there may not be a difference side-to-side.

One possible solution would be to pack one of the front mounts of the subframe where it mounts to the body to get it square - you'd have to make flat plates to achieve this and know what dimension you need.

There is another possibility. The outer mounts of the radius arms are bolt-on brackets to the subframe - at a stretch you could get new ones fabricated where the position of the main hole that takes the radius arm pin is adjusted on each side to get the radius arms true to the car - but that offends my engineering sense as it'd end up with crooked radius arms in a crooked subframe and you'd have to check clearances between the radius arm castings and the subframe.

Edited by LTP on Thursday 30th January 19:16

[tsp]

Thanks for all the feedback. After reading all your comments I went back and looked at the sub frame again more closely. It looks like someone has jacked the car in the wrong place at some point, on the rear portion of the subframe where the metal is thinnest. I believe this has slightly deformed the subframe, how ever it is only very slight.

Next step is going to be seeing if we can correct the sub frame. I have also found some adjustable radius arm brackets from KAD which I think would be worth purchasing as they also allow camber adjustment so I could get a really nice geometry set up on the car.

Thanks for your help.

Edited by tsp on Friday 31st January 12:55