Rear wishbones

[Matt450]

I have wishbones of unequal length (8mm difference) on my Wedge. Parts catalogues suggest they should be the same. As you can't seem to get them nowadays the longer one will have to be cut down. Anyone know if this is 'normal' or just an interesting anomaly!

Matt

[Wedg1e]

Hmm, 8mm is a bit of a wide variation, especially for something jig-built.
That said, any fabricator worthy of the name should be able to make replicas.

[adam quantrill]

I would measure, then measure again!

Do you mean that the hub carrier would be 8mm further out?

In which case, to keep the camber, the driveshaft might have to be 10mm longer (as it's at an angle to the wishbone) on that side. So your driveshafts "should be" unequal lengths to match... if they are not, then something is wrong somewhere....

[Wedg1e]

While I still have my A-frames and driveshafts off the car I'll hang a tape measure on them and see if there's any variation; I know the n/s has 3.5mm of camber shims while the /s has none, so there's a definite imprecision going on somewhere.

[Matt450]

Thanks, that would be a great help. Otherwise they're going to get cut down to try and get the camber right.

[B@man]

Hmm... I wonder...

On one side (the crashed side) my car has about 6mm of shims between the drive shaft and brake disk but only about 1mm on the other side, as the camber wasn't stupid on the side with the extra shims I wonder if they did change the length of the wishbone at some point, clearly the 2003 "tree" incident must have damaged the wishbone as the radius arm chassis mounting had washers welded to it as the holes were pulled oval.

The rear end is my next job so I will check my "bones" to see if they are the same...

[Wedg1e]

Right, measured my A-frames and along the 'straight' leg one is 772mm and the other 767mm long (overall, not hole centres). What I should do is establish which is the lefthand; all the camber shims were on the left so maybe it was to correct the difference in A-frame length.
I forgot to measure the driveshafts, watch this space...

[B@man]

I've dug mine out of the lock-up tonight and using the vernier eye Mk2 there looks to be approx 6mm difference.

Seems to be by more by design than by accident ?

[Wedg1e]

I measured the half-shafts; they are within a millimetre of each other at 620mm long overall. I suppose what might be a more critical figure would be the distance from the inboard mating face to the face of the stub axle that abuts the wheel bearing inner race...

[J400GED]

Wedg1e said:

I measured the half-shafts; they are within a millimetre of each other at 620mm long overall. I suppose what might be a more critical figure would be the distance from the inboard mating face to the face of the stub axle that abuts the wheel bearing inner race...

Correct, hence the requirement for shims at the inboard end to get that dimension correct and negate any other build tolerances.

[B@man]

I wonder if the shape of the diff prevented the diff cradle being symmetrical and they made up the difference on the wishbones ?

[J400GED]

B@man said:

I wonder if the shape of the diff prevented the diff cradle being symmetrical and they made up the difference on the wishbones ?

It's possible, stranger things have happened in Automotive Engineering.

[mrzigazaga]

Cut em down anyway....

[Wedg1e]

B@man said:

I wonder if the shape of the diff prevented the diff cradle being symmetrical and they made up the difference on the wishbones ?

It looks pretty symmetrical to me; I've been looking at mine almost daily for well over a year...