Talk Morgan Forums Community General Photo Gallery Knockhill trackday

Had a super day with the 7 at the Knockhill track day, literally drove the wheels off (again).
Touring car champion, Gordon Shedden and friends came to the rescue, he asked what happened, I said “ I tried jumping the kerbs like you do, but it didn’t work”. I was a bit star stuck when I first met him, but as you can see, he just gets stuck in, nice bloke, as were all the crew 10/10 for Knockhill.

Both the Senna and the 311 were driven to the max, incredible to see them flash past while I’m going as fast as I can

Don’t worry, precautions were taken to control any risk from any contagious virus.

Bit of a scary breakage Ewan, but at least you got the day out before it went and more importantly didn't hit anything either!
The joys of playing on circuits.
Have you got your order in for a Senna then?

Too true Calum, it doesn’t fill me with confidence, that said, it was more my fault than the car’s, riding those kerbs is great fun, but the shock load is obviously too much for that design of axle. It’s the lightest axle fitted to Caterhams, but not as strong as the Ford Escort one, I should probably look at an upgrade if I’m going to continue with track days, but maybe not to the extent of buying a Senna, that would be a little more expensive than just a fancy axle.


I certainly wasn’t the only one trying too hard, even the Senna had a tank slapper, he comes to Knockhill often and holds the track record for a production car, 51 seconds, most do well to get below 60. He said the tyres just wouldn’t get up to temperature, the in car telemetry shows him everything, it’s an incredible machine. He was driving in full race mode with all assists turned off and performance at maximum, same as me then!

There were several others too who went for a cool down in the gravel and one fully race prepared BMW had his bonnet flip up onthe straight at 130mph, smashed his screen and bashed all the roof!



Here’s a close up of the failure, it snapped the 1” drive shaft, it’s a bit of a weird combination of ideas, a taper, with a square keyway, then a nylock nut on a UNF thread.

No laughing here Ewan, while trying to be the last of the late brakers, I threw my 911 off into the tyres at the bottom of Duffus Dip, fortunately only re-arranged the rear quarter, no pics of the event but had it on video to remind me to make better use of braking.

I greatly enjoyed restoring my own cars for many a year but repairing self created damage was no fun for me..)-: Seems Caterham carried on with Lotus build quality then..? Bits were forever breaking and stress cracking on my 60`s Elan in the dim and very distant past.... But boy was I so very fond of that old tart of a car..(-:

Your mention of the Senna tank slapper, reminded me of cringing while watching a then new Testarossa perform a full 360 on exit from the hairpin, very fortunately without hitting anything, he got it together and crept into the pits, seem to remember he shredded a drive belts in the process..

Best Knockhill memory was passing a D Type Jag under braking having followed him for a few laps, seems we were evenly matched in power , but I had better brakes, though his car was a fair bit older tec than mine...There was an XKSS on track too.... think I have a poor pic of the Jags in the pits.

An upgrade of axle choice looks to be on the cards... ouch!!

You’re not wrong , my daughter has a friend with a stupid looking BMW like that, I’ve told him not to take it here. For one, it leaks oil on my drive and two, it’s like catnip for cops. I was young once too, but we wanted our cars to look like the racing models, not look like it’s carrying ten tons of cement, what they think it achieves is beyond me!

See if you can stick some pictures on here, it would be great to see.

'Fraid I lose concentration when seeing such monstrosities - too busy PMSL!

To be honest, that looks and sounds near enough identical to the Morgan set up. Slightly different grease seal cover but otherwise identical.

Bad luck Ewn. It's a real bugger to come undone while you're having fun. And good luck about the axle

Just a little tip about uploading images in the Talk Morgan galleries. The forum script does not like files with the .jpeg extension that some cameras use. Usually you can simply change the file extension manually to the more common .jpg and it will work just fine.

It is a bug in the forum script that one would think would be easy enough to fix by having the upload automatically change the extension but it has been like this for ever.

Thanks for the tip Peter, I’ll try to sort it next time, too late to edit the first post

Re. The failed shaft, the last time I broke it, it sheared the key and ripped the nylock nut threads out. It was all new parts again this time so who knows.

It’s not a difficult repair and it’s not a lot of money , £200 or so to rebuild the axle I’ve got, the slight body damage doesn’t matter, just another battle scar to add to the charm.

It’s the reason I’ve never taken the Morgan to the track, I know it would be good fun to test the limits, but I also know I’d get bored being sensible and overcook it before the day was out.

Ewan, when you typed "See if you can stick some pictures on here, it would be great to see."

If your comment was aimed at my time spent at Knockhill, given my lousy lungs and heart issues, I seem likely to be officially housebound for some indeterminate period, thus I will be more than happy to go through the shoe boxes and dig out old prints to scan them, though I suspect the quality will be severely lacking, compared with current expectations...?

I Also have quite a few digital pics I took some years later when attending a Thompson & Potter Morgan track evening at Knockhill, again more than happy to post a few in the Morgan galleries if I can..

Peter, sorry to be one who gets frustrated with trying to learn new methods to operate within programming, guess the grumpy old man syndrome helps not a jot. I have managed by "normal" means to post numerous pics converted to JPEG directly in the galleries from my device as opposed to jumping through the necessary hoops to post within message threads, a process which I have managed to achieve once and now forgotten, Duh ! ...(-: