Major body roll on both sides!

Technical Area Steering & Suspension
2

In last 6-8 weeks i have noticed my mx5’s (mk2 1.8) handling/suspension has been getting progressively worse. at first it was just excessive body roll but then it got to the point where the car was becoming unpredictable, like a sharp turn to the right was causing instant over steer and a turn to the left was just bottoming out the suspension.

so i jacked the car up checked all of the suspension parts for any obvious causes. turns out my rear drivers side anti roll bar drop link had corroded and broke loose. The other 3 were all still pretty strong and intact with no play what so ever, however they are all very corroded! (literally had to grind the old ones off)

since then i have replaced both rear ARB drop links and instantly the car felt MUCH better… exactly as i’d expect! BUT my car only a couple of weeks on is now feeling excessive body roll again, i have checked the suspension over again and the new ARB drop links are still good no issues and the front ones are fine with no play. i didn’t particularly notice any oil seeping from the shocks however the shocks are all corroded quite badly same with the springs and are quite obviously from the factory so 15 years old and have done 50k miles worth, now all i can think of at this point is that it must be the shocks that need replacing and that they’ve had their time… 

if anyone out there has some knowledge on what the problem could be it would be much appreciated, i’d be happy to pay i make it around £350-£400 for all round new shocks,springs and bump stops and labor (stock but new) but only if it’s worth it and actually solves the problem!

I plan to keep the car for over a year and i commute it and enjoy a spirited drive at least once a week so a handling fix would be well worth the money! 

 

i’m also half expecting i’ll need new ARB droplinks for the front as i said the back ones needed to be grinded off when failing to remove them, so having to remove the front ones to change the suspension may require new ones.

 

any thoughts/knowledge would be great! 

Thanks 

3

The bracket on the rear ones can rot through as the wishbones rust over the years.

4

How do the suspension arms look ? Is there anything on the MOT about suspension problems.

5

Drew,

I’ve just replaced everything bar the subframes on my Mk1…and I mean everything.

It became apparent when the car was on the 2-poster lift…I had cracked springs on 3 corners…almost invisible on two hubs untill you stuck a torch into it all.

The wishbones were badly rusted, and the rear anti-roll bar had the tensional attributes of a slice of uncooked bacon.

No wonder it became 2 sheets to the wind in the bends. I’d go as far as saying it was dangerous.

I think you really need to bite the bullet and get that chassis aggressively examined to take away the guesswork and run the risk of injecting cash less bad than others…all of which  are MOT fails these days.