Nice to hear something positive about Morgan suspension. The problem with fitting a modern suspension is that suspension systems don’t work in isolation so lets consider other things; like the chassis. The received wisdom of sports car design says that you need an absolutely ridged platform in order for the suspension to do its job properly. Hence cars that have, or had chassis have monolithic ridged chassis. But a traditional Morgan doesn’t work like this. The chassis has the torsional rigidity of a banana and, Morgan would I think maintain that accepting chassis flexing solves the problem of how to make a light car in an economical and simple way. They believe, or used to believe, that their suspension and a bongy chassis somehow compliment each other and work to together. Which they sort of do but its not the way anyone else does it and that’s my point. So I’m not sure what happens when you put a suspension, which assumes a rock solid platform into a car that is anything but ridged. Or whether the same theoretical suspension dynamics even apply since the flimsy chassis is always going to be acting in torsion.
So if you change the suspension design do you then have to start bolting other bits onto the chassis to try to create a more ridged platform? The thing gets heavier, more complicated and where do stop? You loose the clarity and simplicity of the original idea and you end up with, well …just a different car.So if you want a traditional coach built body on a rudimentary chassis you are probably going to have to put up with things more or less the way they are. Which brings me back to my original point which was to question why sliding pillars don’t work as well as lever based systems because I am still not convinced that its purely a problem with the geometry.
