TA XPAG steering box bracket - conclusions

[Graham Knight]

Dear All, Long message you may prefer to ignore ... Thanks to everyone who has helped me with advice and photos. Here are my rather speculative conclusions. Stewart Penfound sent me a photo of the TC and TA brackets - TC on the left. [img]https://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/AGzIn_Dtf ... 1Small.JPG[/img] As you can see, they are not so different. However both the location and orientation are quite different. I have tried to show this by superimposing the approximate dimensions of the two brackets on a photo of my car. [img]https://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/AGzIn_Dtf ... sSmall.png[/img] Red is TA, Yellow TC. This suggests the mount point for the steering box on the TC is considerably higher, which not only gives clearance for the starter motor but also raises the drop arm and drag link so that it is well above the driver's side road spring. This should permit a greater range of movement to the drop arm and hence a tighter turning circle. However, this conclusion is not supported by Blower which lists 37 feet for both cars. My car has what I presume is a modified TA bracket which raises the steering box by about an inch from standard. I guess this was necessary to clear the larger 3-bolt starter which was on the Morris 10M (MPJG) engine fitted to the car when I bought it. The XPAW engine now fitted has the smaller 2-bolt starter which was fitted to later XPAG engines. With this starter I find there is plenty of clearance even with the standard TA bracket. The main clearance problem I have is between the bracket and the exhaust downpipe. However, this is exacerbated on my car by the fact that the engine seems to be about 1/2" further forward than it should be. At some point I may try modifying my bracket to get the steering box close to where it would be in a TC but there are obviously limits to how long the bracket can be without ending up with something willowy. The option of drilling the chassis to take a TC bracket is not possible as, on my car, the chassis is not boxed at that point. For now I will put everything back as it was. At least I have now crack tested everything as advised on this list (new drop arm needed) and I now have a nicely painted steering column. Graham