Radiators failing on a Morgan is a fact of life, regretable, but a fact of life, third party replacement aluminium radiators for Morgans have been available since the early 90's, so whilst it was a quite acute problem on the CX, it's also not uncommon on trads even before the introduction of plastic rads, obviously not as common as the CX issue but still a potential weakness, not surprising with Morgan firm suspension, flexing chassis and the state of our roads and sometimes underspecing requirements by Morgan. On two of my low mileage trads I had to replace the radiator, I even had to completely replace the exhaust system on my 4/4 at just over 3 years old, due to the baffles in the exhaust becoming detached and rattling around and it had only done 5000 miles. My kent engined 4/4 was always fracturing its manifold, in different places, oh the joys of Morgan ownership.
On the CX they now know its caused by thermal shock, and the primary impact of thermal shock on a CX radiator is structural cracking along welded seams and mounting points, resulting in sudden coolant leaks, Hopefully the software updates have reduced the impact of the thermal shock, I certainly noticed a dfference when the update was applied to my car, in the way the water temp, heating being available and radiator opening was controlled.
Many of these problems being created by ever increasing cleaner emission standards.requiring increasing more demanding and invariably more compilicated solutuions, not also helped when applied in a cost concious very finite resourced manufacturing environment. Emission standards that basically didn't exist for most of Europe before the adoption of unleaded fuel and Euro 1 in '92,all requiring increasingly more sophisticated eg warm up solutions. For example my 90's Mercedes automatics, held onto first gear to accelerate the warming of the engine, very noticeable in the winter, a frustrating solution for the first mile or so when starting from cold, all intended to reduce the level of polutants emitted on cold start up and with a cold engine........something not even considered in the 70's and 80's when designing engine cooling systems, except probably in California..
Last edited by JohnHarris; 05/08/26 07:38 AM.
