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Hi, stupid question but I will ask anyway! I was checking on my Cooper Mk1 under the car and noticed that the nuts on the 4 U clamps holding the Hardy Spicer's were not tight on each side of the car. Is there any reason why these should not be fully tightened? Thanks

If you do them up too tight, the rubber crosses get crushed and fall apart prematurely. Judging how tight they should be is always the trick.

Tim

Thanks Tim one was very loose and rattling around!! I've tightened them all up pretty tight now but will keep a close eye on them. Mine have white plastic circular housings and I guess it's these that get crushed?

Sounds like you're talking about standard rubber coupling drive shafts ....either that or my Hardy Spicers are missing some rubber parts.

jago2002 wrote:Thanks Tim one was very loose and rattling around!! I've tightened them all up pretty tight now but will keep a close eye on them. Mine have white plastic circular housings and I guess it's these that get crushed?

You have the Hardy Spicer conversion kit which fits to the original driveshafts, the white circular pieces are plastic housings for the hardy spicer joints. You just tighten them to a normal tightness, I found they are a little more sturdy than the rubber crosses which would not take any over-tightening, as said by Tim.

Yeah, thats what I was going to say, although its likely to be a Quinton Hazel QL5000 conversion kit, but maybe Hardy Spicer did them too.

The original centres were rubber and metal bonded crosses. Because they are rubbery you can keep doing up the u bolts until they are really badly compressed, which does them no good at all once they start working in the joint. Add a liberal coating of leaked engine oil and they sort of melt.

In the usual terminology hardy spicer joints are a conventional style universal joints using steel centres.

Tim

I suspect just a mis-speak... The Quinton Hazel (sp?) joint was marketed as a solution to squishy rubber syndrome....

The trouble was that the securing nuts were only done up to (IIRC) 5 ftlb. Of course no one believed that was enough and added just an extra twist... which then meant you got to do it again...

After a while you got good at it.......

Cheers, Ian

You're correct, Tim & Ian. I was using the name Hardy Spicer descriptively rather than as a brand name, mainly because I couldn't remember the QH part number