portafold.co.uk

Looks like my suspension arms have been off in the past, judging how loose the bolts were !!!
both units seem to be OK but both tyres have been rubbing on the arches ( quite a lot on one side
Can anyone tell me the correct position of the arms on the splines. Failing that could someone tell me what angle they are, either with the wheel off the ground or on
Thanks

Hi, on my Ansfold the trailing arms point downwards about 25 deg.with no weight on the suspension. I've got the square-section abutment with a leaf spring used in torsion so I can't give a spline position for your (presumed) earlier axle. I had this problem on mine, tyres fouling the wheelarch tops, when I first brought it home. The fault turned out to be nothing to do with the suspension, it was caused by the fracture of the plywood sheet between the upper & lower hull mouldings, on which the axle relies for its mounting. I cured it by first removing the axle & A-frame which has plates on the ends supposed to act as load-spreaders for the axle. I then welded lengths of angle to the A-frame plates to feed the axlemount bending moment into the rear end of the wheelarches. This restored the wheelarch clearances when reassembled. On mine I had very little ground-clearance at the rear jacks as well, this turned out to be caused by the hull 'drooping' over the axle, increasing the bending-moment on the plywood & making the failure more likely. This body distortion can all too easily be seen by looking along the side-seams in the hull, these should be straight to keep the hinges in line. Seems it's a good idea to always put the rear jacks down when storing the van!
Steve

Hi, I've now printed off & had a good look at the Rubery Owen service & maintenance instructions. According to that, the only trailing-arm units used on these vans were the square-section torsionbar ones, as on mine. So it isn't possible to realign your splines, as there are only 4 positions available! Thinking about it, your axle fixing bolts being loose could well indicate damage to the plywood mounting board, mine were certainly loose for this reason. I should have mentioned, this wood is completely covered in fibreglas above & below, its existance can only be inferred by a step of about 3/4" in the storage lockers floors, in front & behind the axle position. Look underneath at the fibreglas where the plates on the ends of the drawbar finish, just behind the axlemount brackets. The 'glas should be flat. If there's a significant 'sinking-in' of the A-frame plates' rear edge, which on mine was accompanied by splits in the fibreglas, you've got plywood death like I have.

The drawbar box-section cantankerously finishes just in front of the axle position, being thus absent right where it's most needed. The plates on the ends, unsupported, bend upwards into the 'glas. A quick-&-dirty repair would be to add a couple of lengths of 1/4" plate between the A-frame end plates & the fibreglas hull, preferably extending these to the rear edge-position of the plywood to re-support it. This raises the running-height as well. You'll need new bolts anyway as they'll be rusted within the plywood, get ones that are at least 1/2" longer so you can add more packing between the axle & A-frame plates if it still looks a little low.

If you can weld, 2 lengths of angle-iron butted to the outer edges of the A-frame plates & coming round the wheelarch sides is a better repair, this was what I intended to do to mine before I realised its whole back was broken........

Hope this helps, or is at least of interest.

Steve

Thanks for your replies, very interesting, but I think you are talking about something completely different
My suspension units are like indespension units, IE rubber, which are bolted to a steel crossmember
The bolts which were lose were the bolts which "pinch " the splined arms to the suspension units
I set the arms at about 30 degrees ( originally horizontal) and have just had our first camp with no rubbing of the arches despite packing every thing including the kitchen sink. I seemed to have cured the problem


Thanks again for your replies

Oops, sorry Petman, I had hold of the wrong stick there, not just the wrong end! I didn't know they used Indespension units, I've only ever seen the 'van I own.......

Steve