Update by Tim Suddard to the
Sunbeam Tiger project car
Nov 12, 2007
Our Tiger's front suspension, all lined up and ready to go.
Here you can see the Midget steering rack on our Tiger.
The completed cross-member assembly, almost home.
We next turned our attention to the steering. Tiger steering is notorious for having Ackerman angle problems, especially when trying to back the car up. Our wheels were not turning in unison, as one would go one way and the other would go the opposite way.
With the engine finally in place, our attention turned to the front end. On a Tiger, the entire front suspension and brakes attach to a separate cross-member. This cross-member is then held to the unibody (yes, a Tiger is of unibody construction) with four massive bolts.
As we will outline in the magazine in more depth, the Tiger front cross-member has some issues that need to be addressed. Although our cross-member had not failed, we did some strengthening in the spring tower area before we had it powder coated. With these mods completed and the entire assembly powder coated, we began reassembly.
One of our front springs had collapsed, so we sourced a pair of good used springs from a local Tigers East/Alpines East club member. We installed new control arm bushings, ball joints and Koni shocks. We’ve had very good luck with Konis on many of our project cars, and since this car is a definite keeper, we again wanted to use the best.
While we might modify the front suspension further after some testing, we wanted a near stock baseline before we dove into changing things like spring rates. We made one exception to this rule when we installed a 7/8” Addco front anti-roll bar. These are recommended for Tigers and I don’t think we have ever built a British sports car that didn’t need a bit more front anti-roll bar.
We next turned our attention to the steering. Tiger steering is notorious for having Ackerman angle problems, especially when trying to back the car up. Our wheels were not turning in unison, as one would go one way and the other would go the opposite way.
Again, we will cover this in more detail in the magazine, but we used a Midget steering rack along with a kit from Dale’s Restorations that allows this rack to be mounted on a Tiger. The Midget rack positions the front wheels at better angles to each other. While the kit is well-made, it comes with very poor instructions and is not straightforward to install. We’ll outline complete installation in an upcoming article.
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