Caterham Wishbones

[Gourlay83]

I'm waiting on parts for the Caterham so decided to re furb the suspension on the Caterham, as it's pretty tatty looking.

The lower wishbones have spherical joints, which i will need to remove to get the wishbones re coated. When i went to remove the joints I found that the Circlips have snapped in two, on both sides. Had a look into why and noticed the circlip was at the bottom, meaning that the full force of the car is landing on a circlip not the load shoulder (on top).

It would appear that you can fit a left hand wishbone to the right (or right to left), but the load shoulder would be at the top rather than the bottom.

Any Caterham owners have a quick check to confirm my suspicions, very dangerous if I'm correct....

Quick doodle to help explain



Alan - Concerned

[Gourlay83]

Had another think on how the forces apply and I could be wrong but worth checking out anyway.

Alan

[David]

Your are right - the spring pushes down on the wishbone and the shoulder should be at the top. They may have been swapped round if the spacers are missing as they can bind without out them. This is an area that seems to have been changed frequently so you might want to talk to Caterham.

EDIT: Your diagram confused me I take it taht it is drawn upside down to the way it was on the car?.

The manual http://www.caterham.co.uk/assets/html/t ... nload.html states:

Wide track. The upright is located into the spherical joint on the lower wishbone. Prior to locating the upright, a spacer (5/8” mm id x 3/4” od x 8 mm) located in the polythene bag marked ‘front suspension’) must be inserted onto the bottom of the upright. The upright is secured using the special turned down nyloc nut supplied. Tighten the special nyloc nut to 55 Nm

There are also some photos that confirm the orientation on the wishbone.

[robin]

From that same manual, section 4, page 2, item 5

"The lower wishbones are assembled with
the longer leg forward and the bearing retaining
circlip facing downward."

I think Alan's point is that it WAS assembled the way up it is in the drawing and so the car was hanging on the (snapped) circlip!

[EDIT] OK, so actually I'm wrong and they were on his car the right way round (circlip down) which is correct. If you think through the forces, the circlip has to be at the bottom .... imagine no top wishbones and that the springs are completely solid for simplicity then the whole car will be hanging off the bottom of the upright and the circlip will be floating, if fitted to the bottom or crushed if fitted to the top.

Cheers,
Robin

[Gourlay83]

It was assembled correctly, so no idea why the circlips have snapped off.

Just need to figure out how i'm going to get them out, they're seized solid so won't be easy.

Alan