D front Suspension

D

dustyLHM

New member
Tadpole
Joined
Oct 17, 2018
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7
Location
Narooma 2546NSW
1972 D Special rises quickly on starting , but front locks at set height ,solid as Mont Blanc. Back free, up and down to light pressure .
Car has been off road 6 years .
Do I have frozen shocks???
Any suggestions re cause and fix? Ken
 
The first thing to look at is how much nitrogen your front spheres have in the top part. Someone in the NSW club will have a rig to test the pressure. If they are out of gas, the membrane in the sphere could be damaged or maybe it will just have leaked out slowly.

If your spheres will unscrew in the middle, you can replace the membranes otherwise if they are one piece, you may need to replace them.

Cheers, Ken
 
dustyLHM said:
1972 D Special rises quickly on starting , but front locks at set height ,solid as Mont Blanc. Back free, up and down to light pressure .
Car has been off road 6 years .
Do I have frozen shocks???
Any suggestions re cause and fix? Ken
Click to expand...
I strongly suggest that you do not drive the car in that condition.
The hard ride can cause cracking of the suspension mounting structure, which then requires the engine out to repair properly.
It sounds very much that the spheres have lost all of their precharge gas.
Put the car up on jacks and rigid supports, put the height lever fully down, open the bleed screw on the pressure regulator 1 turn only,( 12mm head deep down left side of engine, below fuel pump.)
Then unscrew the front spheres, and immediately put them into a container to gather the fluid that comes out of them
If it is only a teaspoonful, the diaphragm may be ok. If it dribbles half a cup or more, the diaphragm is probably ruptured.
 
I had a similar experience, with the same symptoms, a number of years ago. I would follow the advice above and check/test the spheres. If the problems persist, then it could be a blocked return line from your height corrector. This is what I experienced (took a while to figure out). There’s a thread here titled D special front suspension of February 2016, with a part reference number and picture of the offending section of return line. I ended up heating it up over the kitchen stove and blasting the dried out bits of gunk inside with compressed air.
 
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Front height corrector may have seized while the car was sitting in the 'low' position. Check it is capable of being moved by hand.
 
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