My appraisal of the Mulfab front wishbone conversion is limited as I do not have experience of the standard Morgan sliding pilar arrangement, however what I can say is Monty has no issues with sleeping policemen/speed humps from the front end. Handling wise the front end seems very well set up and easily the equal of my TVR Chimaera, from a maintenance perspective the Mulfab arrangement seems almost fit and forget compared with all the fun and games I read about maintaining the Morgan sliding pillar arrangement, the Mulfab front wishbone conversion has what look like grease nipple equipped Jag XJ6 ball joints which are both long lasting and cheap to buy in my experience.
If I had one criticism of the Mulfab wishbone conversion it's the lack of steering self cantering, to me it needs to run more caster which may or may not be adjustable? I will be asking Techniques to investigate this, I suspect currently there's no caster on the set up at all as Monty is very controllable when reversing at speed when you would typically feel the caster as snatchy steering. Obviously, the negative result of running more caster is heavier steering which I want to avoid so I'll let Brian and his team grease up the ball joints and see if he can dial in some more caster without weighting up the steering too much.
I would say if we can get Monty's rear end working as well as his front end he'll be a proper little go-kart, but currently the rear suspension is really letting the car down, the rear springs have clearly gone very soft which is a surprise for such a low milage car and dampers are shot too. Monty has a near side N/S rear damper bush failure in his MoT history at just 9,892 miles and there was a spare in the glove box when I collecting him from the auction house which lead me to suspect it was never fitted despite the MoT pass a week or so after the failure was recorded and just 15 miles later. However, when I investigated it seems either the MoT tester didn’t know his N/S from his O/S, or the N/S bush had indeed already been replaced???
I say this and add the question marks because when I lifted Monty's floor the N/S bush looked new but the O/S rear damper bush was completely missing!!, it seems likely that Monty has destroyed both his N/S and O/S upper damper bushes in short order. I believe what’s happening here is the soft springs are working the dampers way harder than normal and the stroke of the AVO dampers are also too short, the casualties being both the internal damper seals and the top bushes as the setup literally pounds itself to destruction.
To solve the soft springs I've gone for a set of two seater anti-tramp springs from BCC that are struck from proper Sheffield steel and then correctly tempered up in Rotherham by Owen Springs, to solve the blown short stroke dampers I've got a set of Bilsteins with my name on them. I've had a lot of success with the Bilstein product in the past which in my experience work brilliantly and last way longer than Gaz, Spax, Koni ect; saying that just giving Monty new tougher rear leaf springs and any damper with a sufficient range of stroke should make a massive improvement.
To finish off his rear end refresh Monty will also get a Panhard rod which seems like a no-brainer addition to me, I'll also be talking to Techniques about relocating the axle so the rear wheels sit central in the wheel arches, finally if we can lower Monty another 20mm without losing too much valuable suspension travel we'll be doing this too. In summary, with the exception of needing some more caster the Mulfab setup works really well but it certainly wasn’t cheap, Monty's previous custodian had paid £6,500 for the front wishbone conversion which I was pleased to take benefit from as this wasn’t reflected in the final hammer price I paid for the car.
Ultimately I could have matched my Mulfab front wishbone conversion with the SSL rear coil sprung arrangement, but again it’s a costly option and my thoughts are that Monty would still be left with a beam axle set up anyway which is far more the weak element in the design rather than the type of srings used. I'm sure coil springs will give a better ride but I have my doubts the £4,500 investment is going to completely transform the car's dynamics over a set of new well tempered BCC anti-tramp springs controlled by Bilsteins and the axle's lateral movement taken care of for just £200 with a simple Panhard rod? I remain quietly confident a set of rear BCC anti-tramp springs, a pair of Bilstein dampers and a Panhard rod will be the best value way to release Monty's hidden go-cart.
The remaining ingredient to success being the knowledge and expertise of Techniques Morgan to get the whole arrangement front and rear set up to work together in harmony and to the best of its potential!
