Journal: Skye's Mgb Saga

For a while now I've been trying to find the source of a "clonk" sound that comes from the rear-right hand side of the car when I go over bumps. If you search through the rest of my story you will find that I've done quite a few things to try and solve it, with no luck. Well today I decided to really dig in and try and solve it. I jacked up the rear right wheel, put it on a jack stand and removed the wheel. Then I removed the brake drum and checked out all the brake parts, but there was nothing loose in there. I carefully checked around the axle and leaf springs, pulling and pushing to see if anything loose. I even checked the fuel pump and 12V battery, which are on that side. Nothing seemed loose, but then I noticed the top of the shock link arm was loose. On closer inspection the fastener that passes through the top of the link to the shock arm had somehow come loose, and there was about an inch of slop in that area. This fastener or bolt is built-in to the link arm, so it can't be fixed or replaced as far as I could see. The slop in the link arm seems to have damaged the shock itself, possibly from the forces being put on it at weird angles, because it was leaking shock oil all over the place. I removed the nut from the shock link to the spring bracket - trying to turn this nut was causing the bolt that extends into the bottom of the link arm to simply rotate. I thought I would have to saw the bolt, or split the nut, but then I realized I could clamp the bolt with a pair of vice-grips which kept it stationary while I removed the nut. Removing the shock was easy, after wire brushing the two nuts in the wheel well and lubing them up, they were easy to remove along with the two long bolts that attach the shock to the body.

Today I exchanged the shock and picked up a new shock and link arm - driving the car over felt a bit weird without one shock, but there was no clonking so I'm sure I found the problem! I'm coming down with a cold, so I'll have to finish the job later. Update: installation was a snap, pictures are below.

The second question people always ask me about the Bomber, after "What is it?", is "Parts must be expensive". In actual fact owning and running this car is pretty cheap, once its restored to an acceptable condition. Case in point, this shock replacement job. With a total cost of $100 (canadian), about 2 hours in my own labour, with no special tools other than a jack and some SAE wrenches, I replaced the entire damping system at one corner. Can't beat that! I love working on this car..