When I bought my ’99 +4 it still had the original Morgan leather-rimmed wheel fitted, which felt nice and chunky but looked pretty naff (in my opinion) with its cheap and nasty plastic cushion, so I replaced it with a Moto-Lita Type 9 wood-rimmed wheel, complete with boss and polished alloy horn push.
This wheel looks a lot better, but after a few years use I couldn’t help but think that a thicker rimmed wheel would be more comfortable – but I didn’t really want to fork out another 150 quid or so on a new leather-rimmed Moto-Lita wheel, or spend even more if I had to replace the boss as well. (I'm a bit of a 'Morgan Miser' really. I can't see the point in spending money unnecessarily!)
So I wondered if I could do anything with the old, original Morgan wheel. After unscrewing the cheap and nasty plastic cushion and applying liberal amounts of Nitromors paint stripper to the wheel spokes to get down to the bare alloy, I thought I might be on to something.
With a bit of elbow grease and polish, the alloy came up quite nicely, but the wheel still looked rather plain, so I asked a local engineering firm if they could drill a series of holes in the spokes for me, and gave them the diameters (20mm, 15mm, and 10mm, spaced 8mm apart) and I marked centres on the spokes for them to work to. A deal was struck at £15 - a bit of a bargain when the end result now looks the way it does.
The Moto-Lita boss has 12 mounting points, whereas the original Morgan wheel (in fact made by Astrali) has only 6, but 3 of the holes match up exactly so only 3 more holes needed drilling in the boss to make it a perfect fit. The centre horn push is exactly the same size as on the Moto Lita so this was no problem, and I’m rather pleased with the end result – especially as it’s only cost me £15!
But of course, the ideal solution would be a nice, thick-rimmed wooden wheel….!
