Michael,
Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and experience in this matter, much appreciated. I also thank you for the kind offer to use your Trackrite. I am somewhat confident that the bearings, king pins and bushes, all suspension bushes, ball joints and steering box are fine since most parts are more or less “new”.
I will give you some more data about the Wheel geometry, well the caster is a little bit off as I think I mentioned 4 degrees and 02 minute degrees on the left and 3 degrees and 42 minute degrees on the right side. So 18 minute degrees difference, if that is too much I don’t know.
The camber on my car was at least – 23 minute degrees on the left and - 10 minute degrees on the right side; again if this is acceptable or not I don’t know but I have seen a couple of Ace’s that race that are set up with negative camber.
When it comes to the toe-in I have made the assumption (right or wrong?) that when the handbook states 1/16 toe-in that is per side, so my calculation is that the total toe-in should be 1/8 inches. I recently bought a Track ace alignment gauge,
http://www.trackace.co.uk/ and when I use their guide to converting the 1/8 to degrees I end up with a total toe-in of 27 minute degrees.
So to answer your question where the 0.25 comes from it’s from the fact that I used to have the total toe-in set to 0.25 degrees. After trying this, which I believe corresponds to the factory specification, I have increased that to, at the wheel alignment shop 47 minute degrees, and when I measure it at my workshop with the Track ace, it’s roughly 40 minute degrees. I increased this after consulting with people with a lot more experience than me. When looking at the recommended toe-in for other English sports cars of the same era with 15 and 16 inch wheels, many of them seem to have a recommended total toe-in of 1/8 inches.
Anybody else out there with any ideas about this?
I very much regret that I didn’t check what toe-in 31 had before I pulled everything apart since it used to be less prone to high speed wander.
Furthermore what I meant about the angle of the steering arm relative to the box was that the arm, which I believe should be 3 degrees to the right, on a left hand drive car. If you look closely at the drawing in the handbook you can see that the arm is not straight in comparison with the column when in the dead ahead position. I’ve enclosed an image of a TR 3 steering box as well as the image from the handbook.
I do have a bracing strut that I have had for a very long time, I maybe got it when I had AE 25 in the early 1980’s but so far I haven’t fitted it, maybe I should?!
Thanks a lot for all the comments and help.
Jonas