[Healeys] Bent axle part 2

[Peter Linn]

G'day again

Thanks to all who responded to my  question. Following the advice of several
people, I had the local Bridgestone centre do a laser wheel alignment. This
found 3.5mm toe in on the LH rear, 2.5mm on the RH rear. This didn't seem to
be enough to cause the amount of wear that was happening. One of the local
Healey guys put me on to an "old school" suspension guy, who did an alignment
check with his earlier light beam equipment. He found an aggregate 15mm toe
in! He couldn't differentiate from side to side, but if this amount is
primarily on the LH side it would certainly cause the wear I'm experiencing.
He also found the axle skewed slightly in the chassis, though he though not
enough to add much to the problem. This is probably partly due to an upright
from the chassis to a cross-beam that is part of the tubular shock mounting
contacting the axle case.

Anyway, bottom line is that the axle will have to come out for the casing to
be straightened. There was another old school guy around the corner from the
one above who did this work, but he retired 4 months ago! He sold his
equipment t a diff specialist in Brisbane, so I'll try them.

Something else happened shortly after my first post, that may or may not be
related. On my way to the AHOC club meeting on the freeway I had the LH rear
tyre begin to delaminate. It's a 5 year old Kumho 185/15 and has done only a
few thousand miles. Possibly the inceased heat generated by the misalignment
accelerated its demise.

Cheers

Peter