by TonyG » Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:54 am
Hi Geoff,
I believe the axle stops are small lugs at the axle ends close to the king pins. These prevent the wheel hub turning too far lock to lock. However, while these are visible on my ‘37 saloon, they have been removed on my 36/37 Tourer. My assumption was that this modification was undertaken to improve maximum lock when the car was used in competitions pre-war, since it has various other mods for that reason. Your query makes me wonder if this was actually quite usual for P1 Tourers.
Clearly, the intention is to avoid excess strain on the box. This might happen if,say, a kerb was bumped on full lock as the impact would transmit directly to the box. That said, this has never been a problem for me and, when I stripped out the box to replace the nut, there was no evidence of adverse wear on either the worm or nut at the ends or with the casing or mountings.
What I did find was that the steering box drop arm fouled on the o/s spring, preventing full left lock. To overcome this I fitted the drop arm upside down and turned the steering rod end over. This problem also existed on my P2 saloon when I first bought it so I modified it in the same way when I refurbished all the front suspension and steering.
Also, it was necessary to set up the ‘straight ahead’ position of the box with the wheels on and jacked off the ground so that full lock each way could be established without either tyre rubbing on the chassis. Quite simple but involved removing and refitting the drop arm a number of times to get the optimum operation. I’ve yet to do this with the P2 as the wings have yet to be fitted after spraying but I suspect the lock available to be less because of the inner wing arrangement on this model.
In short, I doubt you are doing it wrong. More a matter of fitting it and ensuring that everting operates correctly. It may be, of course, that the box has been rebuilt with less movement than the original?
Hope this helps. No idea where you are but you are welcome to look at my cars if you are near Colchester.
Tony Gilbert
Tony Gilbert
P1 12 Tourer
P2 12 6 Light Saloon
Discovery 3
Discovery Sport