I've seen so many posts referring to Wide Body and Narrow Body or differing Wing Widths that I thought I would try to ask a fairly structured series of questions to help me ( and I suspect others ) understand what's what.
My 4/4 is definitely narrow everything. I know because of the tighter cockpit space and the lack of room under the wings to fit much wider tyres but to try to understand the variants I have asked a series of questions which, if I can get definitive answers, should help me to understand. If I've missed a salient question, feel free to add it. I'm using WB and NB for Wide body / Narrow Body
For the sake of clarification, I'm only referring to what I would call serial production. I'm sure there were all sorts of specials built but for the sake of simplicity ignore those please. Also if the Roadster is different altogether, please ignore that for the moment and concentrate on the 4/4 and Plus 4 variants.
Also for the sake of sanity I'm thinking post series 5 models if indeed that does make a difference. I.e. if there were lots of changes in series 1-5 please ignore those for the time being and stick to the later cars.
1. When we refer WB or NB are we really referring to the cockpit width, not the overall width because Wing Widths would other wise have to be taken into account and there would be many more variations.
2. In reality, are we talking about the chassis width at the same time as WB / NB or daft as it might seem, could you have for example a WB on a narrow chassis. I.e are the Chassis Width and Body Width always interlinked.
3. How many Body Widths are there? Wide and Narrow, or more.
4. Assuming there are 2 Body Widths (Serial production remember), where do you take the measurement and what are the measurements?
5. Assuming there are 2 Chassis Widths, where do you take the measurement and what are the measurements?
6. How many cross head widths are there? As there are variants on wheel and tyre sizes across the ranges maybe we have more variants although for the benefit of my sanity, I'm hoping it's just 2.
7. How many common Wing Width (WW) variations are there. I've seen NB cars with wide tyres and WB cars with narrow tyres so there must be more WW variations but how many and what are they.
8. Relating to WW. I think there are 2 types of WW variation.
a. The actual wheel arch width. i.e. the width where the tyre runs.
b. The distance the wheel arch sits away from the bonnet. i.e the area around the headlight.
9. Stub axle lengths. Do they vary from model to model. I ask this because some cars seem to be able to run wider tyre where others (mine for example) have problems because the wider tyre would rub on the top crosshead mount. (I could fit wider tyres if I could get a slightly longer stub axle variant to move away from the cross head.)
10, I know there are different wheel widths and offsets (back depths) but how many variations are there and what are they?
If there is already a structured answer to this on an old post perhaps someone could point me in the right direction.
So, is there a Guru out there brave enough to tackle all these questions in one go or maybe it will be a compilation of a lot of answers, some of which will I'm sure conflict, before I can get a definitive picture.
Caveat? We are talking about Morgans here so is there such a thing as a definitive picture.
Having re-read this post I almost decided to delete it but here goes.
I'm half expecting Dave W to say buy my book and all will be revealed. If that is the case I'll be over the moon.
