The clearance issue is present from the start, although usually, with the car standing still and leveled, the exhaust and the shock are still a couple of milimeters apart. I'll quote myself on the last "chapter" of my travelogue (original full post in page 13 of this thread)
Originally Posted By MarioCP
The second one is a more serious matter. It regards the compatibility of the so highly rated Suplex suspension with this car.
I’m still holding judgement, because I don’t know if there are adjustments I may do to the car (ride height? placement of the exhaust headers?) , but “as is”, the Suplex shocks don’t fit the M3W.
If the road is very smooth there’s no problem. If it isn’t I only need to press the clutch and have the engine in idle to be able to hear the “tink, tink, tink” of the exhausts rubbing or hitting the springs.
I wonder if a major bump (or hole in the road), hit under the wrong circumstances, won’t cause an immediate and fatal collapse of the exhaust headers.
And that, of course, cannot be. I wonder what kind of engineers approved the use of these shocks into this car, I wonder what kind of testers missed the simple fact that they hit the exhausts, I wonder many things that I simply cannot understand.
But I know this (as does Jay, because it was an logistical effort to do this and he was there). I specifically asked to bring with me the stock suspension of the car (paid for it anyway, why not?) and if I come to the conclusion that the Suplex shocks are just “too fat” to fit the car, then I’ll take them off and hand them back to Morgan.
To be honest, I think any prospective buyer of a M3W should stay away from this option, and indeed Morgan should stop selling it.
Here a couple of pictures that help understanding this “clearance” issue.
The issue was also very present at Williams. Check the picture of my car in their stand, after servicing (posted in the same page 13)
Before the car was serviced I asked them to have a look and do whatever possible to keep the headers from hitting the shocks, but when I picked the car Mike told me they checked and that nothing could be done without either changing the shape of the headers or by changing the headers themselves with new, different ones.
Now I know better and apparently MMC solved this not by changing the headers but by asking Suplex to build differently shaped shocks.
In short, what I understand they did was a "copy" of the shape of the Spax default shocks. Look at the "comparative" picture Calum took and shared
