July is usually a big month in the Magnette calendar containing, as it generally does, the annual gathering of the register. Not in 2001, though, when we have to wait until 18th/19th August for our extravaganza. But rest assured, the wait will be worth it because, as regular readers will already know, this year's meeting is centred around the Shorten's popular Norwich event. At the time of writing in mid-May, there are already over 40 cars signed up, so it looks as though last year's record attendance of 54 may be beaten. Full details are below.

In this month's spread, there's a historical theme as Warren Marsh reports on the discovery of a very early Magnette in Denmark, a car with something of a story to tell. Warren is also responsible for sending me the splendidly sexist advert featuring the Manumatic gearbox and a lady who couldn't possibly be allowed anywhere near a clutch!

The output from Neil Cairns' word processor is amazing and this month he tackles Gerald Palmer's front suspension. No easy problem after more than 40 years of neglect!

And the history lesson continues with an interview with Don Hayter. Don is, of course, famed as the designer of the MGB but what is less well known is his involvement with earlier models both at Abingdon and at Pressed Steel in Cowley. He is a near neighbour of mine, and the morning I spent sitting in the sun listening to tales of the motor industry in the 1940s and 50s was quite fascinating. Some of his contemporaries also still live in the area, which gives me a bit more work to do for future editions……….

Paul Batho

Gerald Palmer's Independent Front Suspension. As fitted to the ZA, ZB, ZBV, 4/44 & 15/50.

By contrast to the MG YA, YB, TD and TF, whose independent front suspension (ifs) lived on through the MGA, MGB and MGB V8 to the RV8 in the 1990s, the Palmer designed and styled 1950s medium saloons of Nuffield, the MG Magnette ZA, ZB, Wolseley 4/44 and 15/50, were unique in their chassis engineering.

From the 1960s to the 1980s these were quite easy cars for the DIY enthusiast to work on as they were generally well engineered - apart from the chronic lack of drainage from the floor pan closed box sections and sills which rusted prematurely and sent many an otherwise good car to the scrap yard. But now that they are in their late middle age, anyone preparing to rebuild the front suspension may need a little guidance as to what to expect. The workshop manual will just refer to simple dismantling and re-assembly. The car was only designed for a maximum ten year life, and the problems wrought by thirty five more seasons of wear, tear, and corrosion will not be mentioned.

The system is actually of unequal length wishbone design. The top wishbone, of pressed steel, locates the top of the kingpin. The lower one is less obvious, as it only appears to consist of a single forged arm with the coil spring mounted on it. The other 'arm' is a rear facing compression rod, which is actually a tube with the ends welded on, which is both bolted and doweled to the forged arm. This rod stops the suspension folding rearwards under hard braking. The upper wishbone also has a forward facing tie-bar, just like the Minor and Mini, which further braces the suspension both from road shocks and braking. To be honest, Gerald Palmer really used a 'belt and braces' approach to this new-fangled ifs, and rather over engineered the whole lot.

He was not alone, as Ford on their first ohv 1960s Ford Escort also used a rear facing compression rod, later fitting a forward facing anti-roll bar-cum-tie bar instead. So bits of the Z Magnette's ifs were seen on Morris, Austin, and Ford models.

Inside the coil spring is a telescopic damper, an original coil-over-damper system years before the racing boys coined the phrase. The damper is the rebound stop, and limits how far the suspension can drop. It is located at the top by a steel tower structure located with four nuts on studs. The studs are welded to a ring which fits into the chassis cross-member and which acts as the upper spring seat. The bottom of the damper is held in a split eyebolt arrangement, which also locates the lower fabricated steel spring-pan. Hidden out of sight are two small bolts that locate the spring pan onto the lower suspension arm.

The rear end of the compression rod locates inside another fabricated steel bracket, with synthetic rubber blocks for insulation, and is held by a split-pinned castlellated nut. This bracket is bolted to the floor of the car with anchor nuts welded inside the box section under the driver's feet. These nuts can be found by taking out the front carpets and removing a panel secured by four small self-tapping screws that is in the extreme forward end of each footwell.

The kingpins run in plain reamered bronze bushes, with thrust washers at the top to take the weight of the car and another split-pinned castlellated nut holding everything together. The lower trunnion is also bushed in a similar fashion, and all are lubricated via grease nipples. This trunnion is where you find that the rear compression rod is the rear half of this trunnion's location. The rear compression rod and the lower forged suspension arm, sometimes called a track-control arm, are doweled together to locate them accurately.

Rebuilding

First it must be stressed that a coil spring under compression is quite a handful if it escapes. If it should get lose, it will shoot out towards you as you sit at the wheel arch. The spring can be taken out with the car on axle stands by using a trolley jack, but safety says fit THREE spring clamps to assist its removal.

With the car firmly on axle stands, equip yourself with a good serviceable trolley jack plus a tool kit that can cope with both BSF and Unified 'A/F' bolt and nut sizes and spring clamps, then remove the road wheel. Now study the suspension using the workshop manual and this article as a guide.

Starting at the top, corrosion is the main problem, due to the age of everything and the poor climate it has to work in. When removing the four nuts from around the damper tower sitting on top of the suspension cross member, the nuts will often shear off their studs. To prevent this, soak them in WD40 or diesel oil a week before stripping it down. Later, once the spring is off the car, new studs can if necessary be welded into the steel ring and filed off flat so as not to interfere with the coil spring seat. At this stage you must NOT undo the two locking nuts at the very top of the damper without the lower suspension arm being supported on a jack, as the damper is the spring's lower suspension stop.

Next is the forward tie-bar. This corrodes badly under the rubber blocks at its forward end. It is not unknown for the rod to twist at its thread and shear off when undoing the castellated nut. The other end of this forward tie-bar is bolted to a bracket fixed to the top wishbone. The bolt is often well and truly rusted in, and will require drilling out. The bracket itself often works loose, elongating its hole. This can cause rattles on rough roads and brake judder. It is held on with a rather thin nut and a large spring washer underneath the brace between the two halves of the upper wishbone.

This top wishbone is fabricated from three steel pressings. Front and rear halves differ in that the front one has a hole drilled in it for the tie-rod bracket. The two halves are linked by the small central brace referred to above, which is located by four nuts and bolts. This often rusts away at its centre, which can act as a water-trap. The inner and outer ends of the wishbone run on silentbloc rubber bushes. The outer holes in the wishbone can wear and get too large if the nuts are not sufficiently tight. The cure is to weld in a thick steel washer. The top kingpin trunnion rubber bushes are often in poor condition and the rubber-steel-water mixture can cause the steel pivot to rust.

To remove the spring, it is easiest to remove the lower trunnion with a jack under the lower arm beneath the spring pan, (car on axle stands, remember.) The lower trunnion is removed by splitting the lower forged arm from the compression rod. To do this undo the large bolt at the outer end of the arm. Hitting a rod in the dowel hole with a hammer will assist the two halves apart. Then with some blocks of wood lift the king pin up and fix the top wishbone arm out of the way.

To strip out the lower trunnion, take the weight on the jack and fit the coil spring clamps. Undo the top damper nuts to free the top of the damper. You can now simply lower the jack and the lower arm will follow in an arc, or you can remove the inner pivot bolt and lower the whole arm.

With the spring now safe and off the car, either clamped or loose, you can look at the lower items. The spring pan, if original, will almost certainly be rusted out, but replacements are available from Magnette specialists. The two eyebolt halves can be seen once all the road crud is brushed away from the lower end of the damper. Undo the two 7/16" A/F nuts holding them to the lower arm. These locate the spring pan and the lower end of the damper. The damper will probably be very rusty, and many leak with old age. It may just pull out of the lower arm, but often a bit of force is required. One the damper is out, study the eyebolts. There are two types and they are often re-useable, but that cannot be said of the two bolts that hold the spring pan to the lower arm. It is possible you cannot even see them, so rusted do their heads get. Either way, you must undo them, or drill them out, if you need to remove the spring pan.

Getting the lower trunnion to bits may have meant removing the rear compression rod, and its bracket. Attempting to undo the four bolts that hold on the bracket to the car's floor can cause them to shear off. To try to prevent this, put some more WD40 or diesel oil onto the threads poking up inside the box section, accessed via that plate in the footwell. The bracket itself is often preserved by old engine oil from a good old-fashioned British leaky engine. Whilst the end of the compression rod with the doweled end is usually in good condition, the other end is often almost extinct - the rubber-water-steel combination will have eaten away the its threaded portion. This is easy to repair by drilling out the threaded end and welding a suitable shank from a long large bolt back into the rod.

The kingpins have very large working surfaces and, if well greased, they last for donkey's years. If not they can almost seize up. If you renew the bushes, you can use the new bushes to press out the old ones using a vice. New kingpin or lower trunnion bushes will require reaming out to fit their respective pins. Some MG specialists sell ready reamed exchange kingpins.

The coil spring itself will have settled with age. In the 1960s you could purchase spring steel clips with rubber blocks inside, which fitted between the coils, to raise the front of the car. An MOT examiner may have a poor view of such practices today, so check the free length of the spring, and renew it if required. Always renew springs and dampers in pairs.

About the only item that seems to not suffer any problems is the lower inner pivot nut and bolt, though the silentbloc rubber/steel bushes will need renewing. The inner end of the lower suspension arm, where the rubber bushes live, can corrode inside the bush holes, making even new bushes loose. The cure is to have it sleeved and re-machined.

Remember, when fitting new rubber bushes, it is VITAL to not clamp them up tight until the car is sitting normally on its suspension. If you do not do this, the bushes' life will be drastically reduced, as they will be constantly under stress even when parked.

Finally, if you find a Wolseley 4/44 or 15/50, (which are identical to each other except for the engines/brakes/rear axle) available as spares, are the front suspension parts the same as those on your MG? Well, not quite - the compression-tube bracket that bolts to the car's floor is very different because the Magnette's front sub frame is mounted differently to make the MG two inches lower than its sister car and the stub-axle assembly will also differ on Wolseleys with a combined hub and brake drum assembly. All the other components are the same.

The Magnette Connection An Interview with Don Hayter

In late 1955 an advertisement appeared in the jobs section of The Motor magazine seeking a body design draughtsman to work in the Engineering Department of the MG Car Company in Abingdon. It caught the eye of a young man at Aston Martin who had recently finished designing the prototype of what was to become the DB4 and on 1st February 1956, Don Hayter arrived to start his new career at MG.

Aston was at the time based at Feltham in Middlesex, but the merger with Lagonda meant that a move to Newport Pagnell was imminent.

"Newport Pagnell was too far north of Watford for me!" explains Don "So when I saw the job advertised at MG, in the area where I had been living, I sent a letter to them straight away"

His interview with Syd Enever went well, and the rest is history. But this was not the first time he had worked for what was by then the mighty BMC. He began as an apprentice with Pressed Steel at Cowley during the war when they produced a huge range of military hardware. Midget submarines and components for all sorts of aircraft - Lancaster and Whitley bombers, Spitfires and, later, the rear fuselage for the Meteor all rolled out through the gates.

After the war, production resumed with lightly worked-over versions of pre-war designs, but the development department was soon planning models for the 1950s. In 1952, Pressed Steel was awarded the contract to produce the bodies for Gerald Palmer's proposed mid-sized up-market saloon series, eventually to become the MG Magnette and the Wolseley 4/44.

Don remembers Palmer as the consummate designer, not just interested in how the car looked, but responsible for virtually every aspect, from the interior design to the chassis. In the case of the MG and the Wolseley his brief excluded the engine and gearbox, where proprietary units were to be used. But the rest was pure Palmer, which left the development department to translate the design into production reality.

"The first full-size, wooden model was painted bright metallic green" Don recalls "After seeing it we were given a full set of body plans and then produced the drawings for the castings to make the body pressings."

Don left Cowley in 1954 for the job at Aston Martin. By the time he arrived in Abingdon, the lines were busy churning out not only the Magnette ZA, but also the Riley Pathfinder and the new MGA. He was given the use of a Magnette works car, and the job of transforming the Pathfinder into the Riley 2.6.

"Syd Enever suggested that we tried a bigger rear screen in the car, so I took a Pathfinder over to Cowley where we drew the outline on the body. It then went on to the Bodies Branch at Quinton Road, Coventry where the drawing office, led by Eric Carter, provided the production plans"

As well as the bigger back window, the revamped Riley sported a two-tone paint scheme - the very height of fashion. Enever and John Thornley were very pleased with the result and asked the development team to work the same magic on the Magnette, which was about to appear in ZB guise. In designing the detailed changes, Don worked with Jim O'Neil, who had been at Cowley directly under Palmer, and Terry Mitchell, a specialist in chassis design.

The resultant ZB 'Varitone' was bang up to date, although there were differences in detail between the prototype and production models. Perhaps the most evident was in the rear screen itself, which originally had squared lower corners, a design which looks very 'right' and which can be seen in David Knowles' book ' MG - the Untold Story'. Though the rounded corners that made it to production may have been less pretty, they were a lot easier to seal effectively.

But something much more exciting was prowling around Abingdon in 1956 - enter EX 202, an experimental Magnette powered by a version of the Austin Westminster's 2.3 litre 'six'. No pictures of the car are known to exist, but Don recalls a longer bonnet terminating in a new, squarer grille designed by Jim O'Neil, thrust well forward of the standard front wings. The bulkhead was extensively 'cut and shut' to give the big engine room to extend rearwards.

"It used to go a bit" Don recalls with, one imagines, just a hint of understatement "And with a low rear axle ratio, we used to surprise Jags away from a standing start."

But the massive iron block mounted well forward meant understeer of supertanker proportions. The Magnette's naturally svelte handling was lost, so the one and only six cylinder model was eventually cut up and destroyed.

"I did a hell of a lot in 1956" says Don, and it seems that Abingdon was determined to get its money's worth from the new recruit. Not content with the two major projects, he was also drafted in to design modifications to the rally cars. Nancy Mitchell's needed a shorter steering column, so that she could move far enough forward to operate the pedals, while the other works drivers, Doug Johns, Peter Harper and John Gott, all had their own little foibles to be taken care of.

As the Magnette neared the end of its production run, there was little more for the development department to do on it, and Don' attention moved to the MGA. There were the inevitable detailed production changes, but more fun came in the design and manufacture of a prototype with independent rear suspension. Later there came an experimental successor to the MGA, based on the standard car's chassis. This was eventually abandoned in favour of his personal tour de force, the MGB. But that's another story, and one for a different register's column!

Don recalls the many projects in which he had a hand with pride, but his abiding memories are of the unforgettable characters, from Gerry Palmer to Nancy Mitchell, and Jim O'Neil to John Gott. It's these colleagues that focus his memories. As he remarks, as I prepare to leave:

"The jobs, and the cars I worked on…… I remember them through the people I worked with. That's what's most important to me."

KAC33/528 - An Historic Discovery

It was in 1984 when Jörn Rasmussen, then living near Middlefart, Denmark, came across two pale blue derelict Z Magnettes in a yard awaiting their final move to a crusher. Having already restored a Varitone to a very high standard Jörn knew enough of the history of the model to identify one of the two cars, which had no front quarter lights, as one of the first batch of 250 cars produced between October 1953 and April 1954. Luckily the production number plate was still fixed to the bulkhead and Jörn was surprised to find the number 528. This was indeed a very early car, despatched from Abingdon in February 1954. A quick check with the Register Historian indicated that not only was it the 28th car off the production line but it was the first ZA to be sent to Denmark and was the original Copenhagen Motor Show model.

Jörn moved quickly and the car was soon in one of the large barns adjacent to the old farmhouse where he lived. Closer inspection revealed that the overall condition was actually quite good and much of the missing chromework had been hidden in the boot. Jörn was busy restoring other cars, MGBs and Austin-Healeys, and the ZA was stored until such time as a potential customer might appear and offer to pay to have the restoration carried out.

This never happened, so last year, when a house move was planned, Jörn advertised the car more widely. Fortunately another Dane by the name of Poul Dalkov, who is a Z enthusiast with two rebuild projects behind him, bought the car and transported it to his home, north of Copenhagen. He began to make enquiries about its history and spoke to a relative of the first owner, who was named Ole Martens. Ole was related to the Nelleman family who were to become the biggest car importers in Denmark.

The history of the Nelleman family became better known after the recent publication of an article commemorating the 100th anniversary of the company in a Danish magazine. In 1900 Vilhem Nelleman, who was born in 1878 and had become a skilled blacksmith, began to manufacture bicycles in a cellar in Randers where he lived. By 1904 he had sold his first car, a Belgian made Minerva, and the business steadily increased. In 1916 he opened a garage and showroom in Copenhagen and by then, popular American cars like Chevrolet and Nash were being sold alongside Delahaye, DKW, Horch and Loveley.

Vilhelm's son, Svend, joined the firm in 1926 and three years later they began the importation of Morris cars. Initially the right hand drive proved to be a handicap to sales, but in 1934 Cowley began to make the Morris 8 in left hand drive form and sales in Denmark really took off. Bigger premises were opened and there was a period of great expansion up to the beginning of World War II when, not surprisingly, sales plummeted.

In 1946 the Dansk Oversoisk Motor Industri A/S (DOMI) was founded and a new factory was soon opened to assemble c.k.d cars and to construct van and truck bodies. Truck sales slowly built up and the Leyland agency was taken on. Naturally this led to sales of other BL products including Morris, MG, Riley and Wolseley. In 1948 the Morris Minor (always known in Denmark as the Morris 1000) was introduced and immediately became a best seller.

The first ZA into Denmark was exhibited at the International Motor Show at the Forum, Copenhagen between 26 February and 7 March 1954. This car was actually bought by Ole Martens, who was a son-in-law of one of the Nellemans, and it is said that Ole stood by the Magnette throughout the show, preventing people from entering or even touching it. On 26 March 1954 the car was registered A487 (later A20.487) but little is known about its later history other than the name of the second owner, Hans Christian Pederson, who bought it in 1966.

There is no doubt that the Magnette now in Poul Dalkov's workshop is the Copenhagen show car - under the pale blue paint can be seen the original dark red. It is possible that the car behind the chic model in the delightful period photograph is also no.528, although one detail tends to disprove this. Can you identify the difference? Keen-eyed observers will also note that the car has what appears to be a painted spotlamp bracket but no spotlamp.

In a recent letter from Poul I was reassured to learn that he hopes to restore his latest acquisition to its original specification, wherever possible using repaired rather than new parts to complete the car so it looks right for its 1954 production date. This is one of the very few non-quarter light cars known to the Register and, as far as can be ascertained, once back on the road it will be the oldest ZA Magnette anywhere in working order. We shall follow the restoration with great interest and I hope one day Poul may be persuaded to bring the car back to its birthplace here in England.