Twisting surprise

A few days after the Driving Safety Training the “new” noise on the front suspension became louder and louder. Initially I thought that this originated from the alternator belt. After removing a bit of slack one new noise was gone – just to make clear that there is a new noise from the suspension. Earlier this week I checked and greased up the suspension and noticed that the front left ball bearing is the problem. A quick call to Mr. Kischka in Cologne and not even 36h later the new bearings arrived via mail.

When I restored the Mini back in 2019 it took me quite a while to take the front suspension apart. It was certainly a learning curve back then but since then I did the swivel hubs on four other Minis as well. This time I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could do the entire bearing replacement on the left in less than hour. Especially as I own an impact driver now – which makes the removal of the drive shaft a breeze.

Even though I use the Mini quite a bit I managed to keep the entire suspension clean. This made the removal of the swivel hub was amazingly easy. Sure, there is some surface rust on some parts again – but overall, I am happy on how well the Mini holds up after the restoration a few years back. However, when cleaning the hub, I already noticed that the outer bearing race just falls out.

It is a bit of a premier here – below is my first blog post with a short video. And to make it clear for those who wonder: The twisting race that you see is unwelcome news as it translates into an unserviceable/broken swivel hub.

As it was early Saturday afternoon, I hoped that Mr Kischka might still be reachable. And he was – but the call was forwarded to his mobile and I disturbed him on a weekend trip. A quick search on Ebay and Ebay-Kleinanzeigen didn’t bring up any spares in proximity. Next, I texted the local Mini guru – but got no response – most likely I also disturbed on a weekend activity.

A bit embarrassing to create “spare part panic” just to get the Mini finished this weekend. Mental note to myself: only do calls during opening hours in the future 🙂 A bit frustrated I left the Mini in front of my garage and walked home. MiniSpares has new swivel hubs – or upright or bearing carrier. As they write on their website – on a Mini it is all the same. It costs 66GBP + 21 GBP shipping + import & tax. – summing up to approx. 105€

Mr Kischka just has a catalogue and price list on his website and is asking 115€ for a replacement. Quite all right. Ordering from the UK only makes sense these days if you need many parts. If he has one on stock, I am more than happy to pick it up asap. But either way – it also results that the Mini needed to be moved into the garage. So today I used the perfect weather to clean up my garage and free up space. The MG engine “buff up” is almost complete. The flywheel just come back from honing this week. A new alternator and new a heatshield for the HS4 carbs should also hopefully arrive soon.

With the engine out of the way, I decided to wrap up some smaller tasks on the Morgan. The most annoying problem is oil spray on the right side of the engine bay. And the only way to find the leak – is by driving as there is nothing to find when the car is just idling. Even after attaching some cloth with tape around the dip stick, dip stick tube, oil pressure hose connector and around the PCV valve – I had a bit of oil spray on the inside of the hood and under the carburettor.

One of the few things I have not replaced is the hose from the rocker cover to the PCV valve. This is what I will replace next. Along with attaching an oil catch tank and getting rid of the hose that feeds back from the PCV valve into the inlet manifold.