A couple of months ago, the Healey had a catastrophic front suspension failure. After performing some pretty harrowing surgery, I had the front suspension back together only to have it pulling hard left.
Full story here:
Well, I pulled the wheels off and started to have a root around. The front brake pads were almost gone and the front wheel bearings had way too much play in them. This was causing the driver side disc to bind after about a 3/4 turn. That was most likely the cause of it pulling hard left.
So, I pulled the front end apart, put new wheel bearings in, and then rebuilt the front calipers with all new seals, pistons, and pads. Of course, in the process, one of the brake hard lines snapped, so I had to make a new one of those from scratch. Then I wanted to check the rear brakes, but one of the rear hub bolts (which you have to remove to get the drum off) rounded off and gave me hell for about three weeks.
I finally got the bad bolt and stud out and a new stud in with ten new hub bolts on both sides. Got it back on to it’s wheels today and made a rig to check the front toe-in (essentially a flat metal bar that I clamped two L-squares to so I could measure the distance from the outer edges of each front tire). With the toe-in in spec, I took her for a drive and man does she drive great now.
No more pulling to the left, the brakes feel nice and strong, and the steering feels light with good feedback and a decent on-center feel (I mean it is still 50 years old). We’ll take her on longer and longer test drives to get a proper shakedown into her, but that’ll have to wait until it isn’t so hot out that my face melts if I’m in the sun for more than 10 minutes.