A lot of our focus on sloppy Spridget front ends is focused on the king pins. It’s quite common to find slop in the king pin assembly, which contributes to vague and less than precise road feel and handling. (You can learn more about this type of situation by reading our most recent article on king pins, available by clicking here.) However, in this post I want to talk more about the control arm mounts, because lately we’ve had a rash of sloppy suspensions with significant play present at the mounting point for the lower wishbone.

Spridgets are fit with a stepped washer attached to the threaded end of the control arm bolt, and that washer needs to be located in the front of the body to properly support the suspension of the car. You can see in the picture above that the proper location is easily identified by a threaded end and a lock nut (original control arm bolts used castle nuts; the new ones use nyloc lock nuts) on the forward portion of the mounting point. In this way, the step washer locks into the hole in the frame and ensures that the control arm will not wobble.

In the photo shown above, you’ll see a slotted screw on the forward portion of the frame instead; on this car, that’s an immediate clue that the control arm mounts are installed backwards. Click “read more” below to see more pictures and video on this topic!

We received an MGA recently for a mechanical sorting session. The first thing we did was put it on the lift to check for any front end issues. We were shocked to find an obscene amount of play in the front wheels.

Click “read more” to see the video below, where you can see that the play in this front suspension wasn’t due to king pin wear, or bad bushings, or old wheel bearings; rather, it was all because the spokes for the wire wheels are loose, and each wheel is effectively no longer supporting itself. Yikes!