Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Roadster S1 Sump....SiFab replacement

So, the next step.......I already spaced the engine mountings by around 6mm, but I want a bit more. and it seems sensible to lift the gearbox mounting, but not by quite so much so that the drive train lifts in a slight arc. I looked previously at my gearbox mount, and initially thought that the only option was to remove the two bolts which hold the mounting to the crossmember and insert a spacer there.

However there's a brass nut screwed into the gearbox case, and a centre bolt up through the mounting which fixes the gearbox to the upper part of the mounting. I made a 3.5mm aluminium C spacer, assuming it would just need to wrap around the bolt, but when I jacked the gearbox up to get access, it turns out that this brass fitting is mushroom shaped. This meant I needed a wider C spacer, which was also shaped to fit around the brass component.

As original:


Here with my spacer:


I lift the engine mounts from below (after removing the nut & washer), by loose fitting a long M10 nut, and adding an M10 bolt...................


So I whipped out the spacers, added 4mm, cut and trimmed, and put them back.




Before I lower the Roadster to the floor, so I can take a new clearance measurement, I will be doing a brake fluid change so you'll have to wait a bit longer to find out what the new clearance is.

As a taster, before I started, it was 830mm at the lowest point of the original sump. By comparison, the lowest point on my Plus 4 is the skid plate under the gearbox crossmember, and this is1001mm.

When lifting the engine & gearbox it's very important to examine all the potential touch points. 8 or 9mm isn't much at all, and yet I had to realign the nearside brake pipe at the inner wing, because the bottom hose was touching after raiising the initial 6mm. The water pump on the S1 Roadster is hard up against the vertical part of the bulkhead as standard, and after raising, is quite close to the upper part of the bulkhead, but with about 5mm clearance. The exhaust manifolds have ample clearance through the inner wing valances, and the top of the engine clears the bonnet hinge by about 5mm. So it all seems good.