Topic

Does anyone know anything about the MG-F suspension kit that Brown & Gammons are marketing. It does away with the hydra-gas spheres? Am about to order a kit as pictured in the attachment.

Auseff

Auseff wrote: wrote:

Does anyone know anything about the MG-F suspension kit that Brown & Gammons are marketing. It does away with the hydra-gas spheres? Am about to order a kit as pictured in the attachment.

Auseff

I've seen and read the technical blurb on them and they seem to be a clever substitute for the harder to find spheres.
They are basically coil springs in an enclosure that fits in place of the hydragas unit, and an uprated damper
You are the first person i know of who's getting them.

I will be fascinated to see how you get on with them. Please keep us up to date on this.
Any pictures of the installation will be gratefully received.

My only slight concern would be if the top mountings positions are OK for the uprated dampers.
I know people have experienced failures of the top mounting after fitting Bilsteins etc.

Oh, and of course Welcome to the forum.
Feel free to ask any questions, and we'd love to see any photos you have of your car.
Please use the welcome section if you want to introduce yourself.

Auseff wrote: wrote:

Does anyone know anything about the MG-F suspension kit that Brown & Gammons are marketing. It does away with the hydra-gas spheres? Am about to order a kit as pictured in the attachment.

Auseff

A BIG WELCOME TO THE T BAR FORUM Please introduce your self and some pictures of you car would be good. Is that a VA tourer in your photo????

The MG Owners Club published an article about these new units which are made by SUPLEX in the UK, they have a "test bed" F with the prototypes fitted and were going to do another car and an article in one of the major MG Magazines, then everything went quiet!!!!
I was not aware that anyone was selling them yet! The projected cost in the UK was going to be around £900 sterling plus our VAT currently 20% plus the cost of new adjustable dampers, a good set such as Spax, Gaz or Bilstiens are around £600 including VAT ~ i would be interested to know how much you are paying B&G for the set.
Again, welcome to our forum

Welcome Auseff!
Word has it that B&G are selling them for 830gbp, and are offering an introductory discount of 100gbp for MGCC members.
Seems pretty reasonable, but it will be good to hear some reports on their performance.
I also haven't heard yet if they can be fitted with lowering pins.

Rich

Dave,

The upper mounting points are normally an issue but in my case I've already strengthened this area substantially.

About three years ago I decided to convert my F to coil-over spring/shock units. Until recently I've been extremely happy with the conversion that we did here in Aus. However in the last couple of months after nearly 15,000km on the conversion I've had two unusual failures of the bolt holding the coil-over units to the control arm. The driver's side rear bolt sheared without any warning while driving down a road near home. No pothole or anything else to cause it. Replaced the bolt with hi-tensile bolt. As a precaution I replaced the bolts on all corners of the car. Now the passenger side rear has sheared. Now again there is no apparent reason for this. We're currently taking a very hard look at the situation in conjunction with two leading figures in race and rally suspension business. Neither of us can work out why sort of the unlikely scenario of faulty bolts. So have ordered the kit for the F as its a great car in top condition and my wife and I enjoy touring in it. Its going to be interesting to see how it handles against my current set up which is brilliant.

Bryan,

In the pic are my TC and SA Saloon. Both fully restored and get plenty of touring miles....

Cheers

I also am very interested in the Suplex kit being marketed by B&G.
As I wil be over in the UK next month I was planning to visit them a have a .closer look.
I am not worried about my turrets as they were ripped out when I put adjustable shocks and PU bushes on some five years ago.
In fact my turrets were reinforced as per the X power racing guide and I think when my F goes to the wreckers the rear turrets will be the only thing that survives.
Will be very interested in your experience if you go down that route and if you can get hold of our September issue of Wheel Spin our club publication you will find the report refered to in above posts.

I'd love to see any pics you have of your current system. It may enable someone to comment on your bolt failures.

I would think that the problem with a suspension bolt is not that it would get a huge shearing load when hitting a bump etc (but it does and can happen) as the bolts should be designed with that in mind. I think the problem could be that it is constantly attacked with smaller loads in different directions as the suspension itself bounces up and down. This would result in a constant bombardment of smaller loads from above and below.

I wonder if this constant hammering could cause annealing and possibly soften the bolt to a point where it fails, in the same way as if you take a piece of metal and bend it backwards and forwards quickly, eventually it becomes softer and fails.

I remember reading about 5 years ago a guy in Greece shearing bolts all the time even up to 12.9 strength

Unfortunatley the only other info I can remember was that the MGF had a poly bush kit and adjustable dampers, by all accounts it was only the rears that kept breaking

I'll post up again if I find the info for you

Edit: Old age just had a flash back, I'm sure it was down to the guy just not using a torque wrench to set them and just nipping them up but I'll still check

rough luck wrote: wrote:

I remember reading about 5 years ago a guy in Greece shearing bolts all the time even up to 12.9 strength

Unfortunatley the only other info I can remember was that the MGF had a poly bush kit and adjustable dampers, by all accounts it was only the rears that kept breaking

I'll post up again if I find the info for you

Edit: Old age just had a flash back, I'm sure it was down to the guy just not using a torque wrench to set them and just nipping them up but I'll still check

it was Perry-MGTF if i recall correctly.

cjj

I am thinking along this line too. In the original design this bolt only carried the shock absorber. In my situation it carries the coil-over shock unit. Knowing the weakness of the upper mount we reinforced it so much it could carry two Fs. The conversion has done 15,000km and the only dramas have been these bolts. After the first breakage we replaced all of them with super high tensile bolts to aircraft specs at about $100.00 (60 quid) a piece.