Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Changing Classes and Engine along with it!!!!

Progress is looking really good. More than ever I want a trip East!!

£3k for a gearbox!!! that's almost my budget for the whole rebuild (less the engine) on my 4/4

Impressive stuff. I look forward to each edition....

But some questions, please. I have a friend (heard tat one before) about to embark on the type 9 for 4 speed conversion and was asking about propshafts etc. But you suggested that the original prop is good although you swapped yokes? And, secondly, you moved the rear support bracket, but is is the same bracket? And how did you gauge how far to move it?

Last one, looking at starter motor location remind me what you're bolting to that bellhousing? Is it zetec or duratec?

cheers, Colin

Hey, thanks for looking in.. we all have a friend somewhere happy to share.

You are correct. We have swapped the front yoke to a Type 9 one, it was a new part we obtained via a prop specialist we use in the Wembley area. The 4 speed prop is a slightly narrower tube than the Type 9 one on the 85 car we have but it looks plenty man enough, we'll soon find out if it's up to the job once we've launched it a few times.

The rear axle is currently at JB Engineering having a Quaife LSD put into it, so we have used a spare back axle we have to check spacing. We are using the Mulfab rear axle centralising kit so this gives a bit more room for float on the front prop yoke as it has been reduced we think due to the slightly revised shape of the front yoke. It may be necessary to centralise the rear axle to make the space to use an un-shortened axle.

We did move the bracket, we have the original 4 speed and several 5 speed boxes around, right at the start we did an overall length comparison and they are the same length. In terms of the bracket it's only a case of using the front of the maincase as a reference and measure back to the mounting point and adjust accordingly. It was not much movement, couple of inches. We did use the original bracket. You can see the original holes just in front of the bracket in the pics on the previous page.

In terms of starter location, we are going for a Zetec E 2.0 unit, the same bolt pattern as the x-flow, pinto, cvh. but RHS starter exactly the same set-up as the CVH cars.

In terms of overall fit, we'll only validate this once all the drive-line is back together, but the individual checks we have done (front and back) indicate that it will work.

With any luck I might be able to stop in on Monday 14th.
Depends how the trip into Central London goes...

Update 25 - Doorbars, Dash start and Quick Release steering wheel

Right Christmas is behind us and the temporary halt in proceedings has given way to an all out push to get the cars sorted by May. We've managed to get to the position where we have most of the parts ready to rumble..

Just before Christmas we picked up the Front wings for Woordstock from Sid Watson and also the N/S wings for the blue and white sprint car.

Missprint had for Christmas what every woman wants.. a quick release steering boss along with a Sparco steering wheel.

Following new years we also collected the replacement chassis and cross head from GEE. All these items joined the engines etc. back at the workshop waiting to be fitted.

Doorbars
We ordered a door-bar kit from Techniques. Interested in the bracketry only Techniques provided the details of the bar specifications. We did this as we wanted flexiblity of fitting and also we wanted to powder coat them the same color as the rest of the interior.

The challenge with making the door bars was to be drilling out the large circular slots for the bracket barrels to be welded into... getting both in the same plane (or upright) at both ends..... You can see the challenge in this pic.





We successfully managed to get them sorted though and managed to fabricate and fit the door-bars yesterday. They are now packaged up ready to go to the powerder coater along with the black harness bar.





Next up Dash
Woodstock is going to have a similar dash to the blue and white car. The original instruments will be ditched in favour of the Race Technology Dash 2 with a DL1 GPS Data Logger in conjunction with a basic sensor package and Omex ECU feed.

We had already made a wooden dash blank template and yesterday this was converted into an aluminium blank which will be machined up to be a new dash. Black Carbon Finish vinyl will again be used. It's likely that the dash buttons this time will be completely changed for smarter aluminium units.



Steering wheel
Due to the seating position for Missprint we decided quite quickly not to use a MotaLita steering wheel in favour of a Sparco race unit with a quick-release boss. There-by providing a reasonable amount of room to get in and out. The quick release boss uses a sprung mounted boss on the steering wheel and flanged spigot which you have to weld on the steering collumn. We all know how close the steering wheel is as standard on a Morgan so we will be cutting down the steering collumn, shorting the spigot slightly and welding the two together. This allows the steering wheel to end-up slightly further back than stock.

In order to sensibly weld the spigot and do the necessary cutting we had removed and stripped the steering collumn so it can be mounted in a lathe.

That's it for now.. I must chase up the back axle as it's now holding up all other works!!

Great update, thanks.

P.S.

We have finalised the color we will be spraying the car. having tested several colors:

• Porsche Speed Yellow
• Ferrari Fly Yellow
• SEAT Yellow
• Mini Yellow
• Aston Martin Yellow
• Lambo Yellow

We've decided on Citroen DS3 Sport Yellow. Having tested it on a larger sheet of metal yesterday and getting all round comments we're set.

Thanks for the update. As interesting as ever.

Absolutely.
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get there yesterday.