Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing GAZ shock settings

We ordered the GAZ shocks for our car to be fitted at the factory before we took delivery. I believe they are the same as fitted to the Plus 4 SS.

After some trial and error I have setled on setting 3 clicks on the front and 4 on the rear. The ride is a compromise between comfort (2 clicks front, 3 rear) and too hard (4 all round).

At 2 clicks front and 3 rear it was comfortable but the front was still a little under damped and the rear occasionally bottomed out. Now at 3 clicks on the front and 4 on the rear the ride is a bit harder but the car feels much more planted on the road with a little more tendancy to oversteer (drift) on hard acceleration out of sharp bends

I am running 1.8 bar in the Yokohama C.drive 2 tyres fitted as standard.

I drive 4 clicks all around since 11.000km and I´m very happy. Nevertheless a good advise to try 3 clicks in the front as it may help to balance the car even more when coming out of sharp bends. I assume the weight (and weight distribution) of our cars is about the same.
As my garage did the settings, is it easy to reach the front GAZ switch without any lift etc.?

Very easy. Just lie down in front of the car (rug optional) and you can reach the adjustment knobs. Turn back 4 clicks. And make sure you have arrived at the stop, to check you are not going the wrong way, and then turn 3 clicks.

I went to 4 on the back because it was occasionally bottoming out on 3 but I found that though the ride was haarder it felt better on the road in cornering.

Hi Peter,

thanks for advise

I tried 3 clicks yesterday. BTW I have to tell that for any reason the clicks were not equal before (4 left and 5 right) which explains that cornering was not really so smooth as it could be. Now with a setting of three clicks in front equal left and right, the car even more delivers the benefits of her so good balanced weight distribution. She runs so smooth - with slightly more grip at the front and an easier and "rounder" turn in behave.

Of course I will double check the rear damper settings as well as a setting with four (equal) clicks at the front, but again the 3 clicks are great.

Did you make the same experience that the ways between the first three clicks is a bit shorter than between the third and forth? Or is this just my subjective delusion?

No I did not notice that but it seemed to me that the first click was a bit hard to feel on one shock.

You can access the rear shocks by removing the tool tray. First time I did that I found one of the front screws brocken and put it down to someone being a bit heavy handed at the factory but when I adjusted the shocks again I found another front screw broken. Either very poor quality screws or the diff hitting the underside of the tool tray when it bottoms out on a bump.

By the way my car seems to be getting lower all the time. When we got it home we had 9.5 cm ground clearance, when last measured it had little more than 8.5 cm, now we seem to be touching on even the slightest hump and I think it is even less.

It goes to the dealer in a couple of weeks to find out just what the problem is. He has already ordered new front lower springs because he thinks the ones fitted are too strong but I dont think that will completely resolve the problem.

Peter/Heinz,

I'm following your exchanges with interest.

I should firstly explain that I used to do clubman racing (Formula 750) in the UK in the 1980s & 90s. On my race car, I normally ran a front rear bias (say 6:4 clicks on a 0-11 range) as this promoted sharper turn in and maintained rear grip, though this may have been car specific.

My Plus 4 has AVOs which I "inherited" with 3 clicks front and 2 rear. It's my first Morgan and, compared with our 'day to day' cars, at first I thought that the shocks were a little too firm for road use. So, I set out to understand their range (15 clicks) and then decided to back them off to zero and work upwards.

IMHO - Zero all round was more comfortable, but the front of the car was too bouncy, and the rear too soft, bottoming too easily. For now, I've settled on 2 front and 1 rear, mainly for comfort reasons (and to keep SWMBO happy)... and the handling is ~OK for restrained road trips. It would be interesting to try a track day. The 2:1 setup would clearly be too soft, and I would probably be looking towards 4:3 and upwards.

You rear bias whilst limiting the rear bottoming may lead to the car being a little 'tail happy' in extremis, particularly in transition. Thoughts?

It does tend slide out at the tail. I expect to have to revise the whole thing when we finally get the springs sorted. For some reason or other we seem to have the dreaded sagging spring issue on all corners. The bottoming out at the rear may be more an issue of springs than shocks, and this car has never been tied down though we were carrying about 50 kilos of luggage on the return from the factory. That would make the all up load about 200 kilos which should be ok surely.

Peter,

IMHO - 'sagging springs' won't help with the bottoming or the handling, but I'd tend to think of the shocks as damping out the natural spring response in transient/transition. If the springs are 'weak' then you can 'dial out' the initial response on turn in or over bumps. But, if you go too hard on the shocks (too many clicks), because they don't have separate bump and rebound settings, you could go too far and end up with the the suspension 'jacking down' over a series of bumps. So, you need get the springs right first then play with the shocks.

Re the loading on the springs, I'm the 'new boy' here and don't know what the max loading should be, but surely someone on TM will have the knowledge. However, didn't Morgan change from 5 leaf to 4 leaf springs (for comfort?) circa 2005/6? Maybe if you prefer a firmer ride and need to keep the ground clearance up, you may be able to ask them for a change to the earlier spring setup?

It seems that there have been a few small changes in the suspension set up in recent years and I have heard that they have also had several changes of spring suppliers.

There were a series of post about spring problems from new owners in Australia but this was generally thought to be due to the car being badly tied down in shipping.

Our car seems to have been lower than it should have been even when it left the factory and it has never been tied down. As far as I can understand it seems to be getting lower all the time.

I agree that a series of bumps could cause it to jack down if the damper setting is too hard it should recover unless the damper setting is impossibly hard and I don't believe that is the case or ride would be completely rigid.

Agreed Peter, I wasn't really clear enough (attempting to be brief!)

The shocks would only 'jack down' over a series of bumps if in fact the rebound damping rate is too great, though this will be proportionate to the bump rate, and clicks, at whatever bump/rebound ratio the shocks are built to. Even if this were to happen, as soon as steady state (smooth surface or car stationary) the springs would return the car to the ride height they normally achieve.

Also thanks for the clarity re the spring issues, learning all the time...