Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Phsst!

Brilliant day today but with an expensive ending.

I had to go to Linate to pick up the daughter of Japanese friends. Given the lovely weather it was an opportunity, not only to have a run in the Morgan, but to give her a nice surprise.

I arrived at the airport to discover that all flights for the last two hours had been diverted. A small plane had made an emergency carriage up landing and they had to evacuate the four unharmed passengers and clear the damaged aircraft and debris from the runway. The plane I was waiting for was only the second to be permitted to land after a delay of about 20 minutes.

The suitcase was loaded and the rack and backpack shoved down in the footwell then we had a nice top down run for the road home.

Arrived home, unloaded and then started the car to put it in the garage. That is when it happened: Phsst!!!! Followed by a familiar smell of burnt circuit board.

A quick examination revealed that the same thing had happened as on our return trip from Portugal last year. The circuit board that has the fan switch and the warning lights had blown. I membered that when this had happened I had discovered that a wire on a relay was also disconnected. I had thought that the relay had something to do with aircon and that the two events were not connected. Wrong!!

In pushing the backpack into the footwell I had disturbed the relay causing the disconction of one wire, which is very short. The relay in question is somewhat exposed under the glovebox and near the carpet on the side of the footwell.

At a certain point I turned on the heater and the fan. At that point there was no problem. However when I started the car with the fan on and the relay disconnected some redirection of current has zapped the circuit board. This presumably has something to do with the circuitry that normally disables the lights and most accessories while the starter is cranking. For some reason it is a part of the circuit not adequately protected by fuses.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky that the car did not catch fire but I can't help feeling mightily p!ssed off. If I recall correctly it was a good €250 or more to repair only about 4 months ago.

I can understand your annoyance, these cars can be a bit too frail at times. Brushing past the rear of my car in the garage I dislodged a tail light which required some expertise to recover at the garage. However, you have that beautiful setting of Como to watch over and calm you down and as you imply it could have been worse.

4 months old that repair is still under warranty?

A bit of a b****r about the circuit board.....but more importantly did your passenger enjoy her ride in the Morgan? !!!

Very much and so did I

Peter, what should I look for in my own car to prevent something similar? Or is this only a problem for cars with air conditioner (mine hasn't A/C) ?

I presume there will be pictures to follow?

Yes I was thinking to post some pictures. I think it may only be a problem for cars fitted with aircon but I will try to work out if that particular relay is used on all cars or not.

By the way one of the symptoms was that the speedo stopped working, as well as some of the warning lights.

There are actually two relays in this area but I think they may only be on 3.0 litre Roadsters and pre GDI Plus 4s fitted with factory aircon. Note: my car is LH drive, I don't know if they would be on the left or the right of RH drive cars.

Blimey.....those look very haphazard! I've nothing on my Roadster anything like that....perhaps LHD cars are wired differently?