Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Bonnet Stays

Emboldened by this thread, I decided to make my own as well. After various iterations I went for 6mm fittings with female thread spherical joints at the bottom and q/r spring loaded ball joints at the top, both obtained from Bearing Boys and connected with 6mm satin finish aluminium rod from Screwfix. This would minimise fabrication and just require male threads cutting on each end of rod.





Nearside as above, was relatively easy using factory drilled 6mm clearance hole in lower rear catch and carefully fabricated bracket from 2 x 15mm flat aluminium (also from Screwfix) onto top fixing of upper bonnet catch (half nut used to accomodate bracket with clearance for spring). Note that spring loaded ball joint socket not only allows direct attachment to male thread on stay but offers more natural up/down attach/release.

That was the easy bit though



As can be seen the 3.7 V6 Roadster is seemingly unique among the Classics in having a footwell side cavity to accomodate right hand side of foot for throttle operation, almost to full width of bulkhead. Presumably this because pedal box is offset to accomodate the bulky 6 speed Mustang gearbox. This leaves little space to mount lower rear bonnet catch, which as can be seen is attached to outside of cavity into rivnuts. This in turn precludes mounting of stay pivot to inside of catch as with other models. My solution was to fix lower joint to side of cavity in front of lower catch, using penny washers to spread load and dome head bolt from inside so no nasty edges for foot to catch on. Slight lack of symmetry with n/s but I had cut stays with longer threads and locknuts to allow a small amount of length adjustment.

Then another hurdle. Lack of clearance with cavity when bonnet was closed meant I couldn't use a bracket attached to upper bonnet catch fixing as with n/s. Bit more head scratching and research revealed that an alternative upper attachment could employ one of the two lower spring catch fittings. Not the more forward one since that would foul lower stay mount, but the rear fitting looked like an option. Plasticine revealed there was adequate clearance if I kept bracket small enough.



This was result. Had to trim fabricated bracket a tad to allow smooth action of spring loaded catch slider but eventually it all came together.



Finally stay clips to stow made from 3mm stock. Took the opportunity to replace all the wing mount screws with stainless (most M5 dome socket x 12mm into rivnuts) noting some were little more than finger tight!