Taking time to adjust to a car is a sensible thing to do. In order to drive in safety, the driver should be fully conversant with all the controls and be familiar with how the car reacts. A car which possesses good dynamic behaviour should provide driver confidence, through linearity of responses and producing expected results from any given input. There will be those who speak of a car which provides a challenge to the driver, requiring acclimatisation and ever-increasing skill to keep up with the responses. However, this is usually a result of flawed (if ‘loveable’) dynamic characteristics. So how about adjusting the car?
We have been adjusting the caster and camber of these cars since before the MGF was launched! Actually, the MGF press fleet all benefitted from the time taken to adjust. Careful measurement followed by repositioning of the outer ball joint can achieve a good result, by removing the inherent tolerance problems suffered by short, closely spaced suspension arms, attached to a fabricated subframe. It does, however, rely on a highly accurate initial measurement and also works best with arms which are new and haven’t suffered the ravages of corrosion. Hence our desire to produce new, fully adjustable arms which are a direct replacement for the original arms.
Accurate caster and camber settings provide the steering feel and responses that the development team intended. It also avoids a myriad of problems such as steering pull, veer under braking, tyre wear and stability concerns. Inaccurate caster (especially when different across the axle) causes a change in the bump steer characteristic (the steer change of the wheel generated as the wheel moves up and down), which is often responsible for the car just not feeling right.
Our adjustable front lower arms for MGF and MGTF are finally in production. It has taken a significant amount of time to design, develop and test the parts (rig and vehicle based) to ensure ease of adjustment, integrity in use and capability to resist impact damage. They have a turnbuckle arrangement to adjust caster and a cam bolt to change camber. It can be adjusted on the car and then locked in place to prevent movement. Whilst designed to achieve nominal values at standard ride height, there is sufficient adjustment to cater for the likely ride height and camber choice variations that may be encountered for road and race applications. The arms are supplied with new original bushes, or Powerflex road/track poly bushes as desired.
Take time to adjust your car. It will reward you every time you drive it.