Week 2 - Update
This week work has progressed intermittently on the car... we were hoping to get the roll-bar fitted/mocked up so we could measure tolerances for the seats.
Anyhow... we never made it that far... last wheek when re-fitting the Rear Near side wheel one of the bolts did not want to torque up correctly... anyhow.. whilst we were at Melvyn's we picked up some replacement wheel studs thinking the stud may be defective..
On further investigation it seems that previously at some point the wheel nut had been over tightened (probably by air-ratchet) and stripped the hub of thread.... anyhow. it turns out that instead of replacing or re-threading the stud hole in the hub the stud had been welded into place.... the weld which had now failed.
We've been to see an engineer who could put a new set of hole's and thread them into the hub 45Degrees off-set to the original hole’s but I think we'll hold that as a last choice and will be seeking a new rear near side hub to fit
All this shenanigans has distracted us from getting the roll-bar in place ready for measurements…
That’s pretty much all the “work” that’s been done this week with the only other event was a visit to GPR at Silverstone.
On Saturday we went up to GPR to collect the racing seats, mounting brackets, harnesses & eye-bolt fixings, roundels, number stickers, general safety stickers, emergency cut off switch and 2 complete sets of driver equipment (helmet, gloves, boots, suit etc.)…. The list was long and varied!!
Having taken measurements of the vehicle that morning, the main tribulation it seemed was to make sure the seats fit.. not just the car but both of our butt’s as well!!
Anyhow.. GPR has a good selection of SPARCO seats in the showroom for trial, each set-up with standard steel mounting brackets to a show stand. This meant that we could both try out the seats and also measure-up the critical distances.
Luckily it turns out that we both fit in the SPARCO Rev +, the seat that is recommended and also the smallest seat in the SPARCO range. None of the other seats would fit without some “adjustment” of the car… which we didn’t want to get into.
The next difficulty was the mounting brackets, the 4/4 is a narrow-body and we found that we only had 410mm between the sill and the transmission tunnel so what-ever the mounting method it would need to fit in that gap…
The standard seat brackets bulge out at the base and on measurement came to 440mm…. which is TOO BIG!!!!!!
Luckily they had a set of Ali brackets.. which, whilst needing to be thicker gauge material 6mm to comply with Blue Book standards don’t have a bulge.. in fact the opposite… taper slightly under the seat.
This meant that on top of the 380mm min mounting width of the seat… we had another 120mm of Ali bracket (for both) which in theory left just enough room for bolt heads on each side.
Unfortunately these brackets were 3 times the price of the standard units.. but at least they fit with no messing around.
GPR were fantastic and really helped out with their knowledge and experience…. The chap who looked after us for the whole session had previous experience with Morgans and knew of the limitations and special constraints we were dealing with.
He also directed us appropriately round the driver equipment, some salient advice which both saved us cash overall as well as ensured the money that was spent was invested in the right areas…. Fantastic guy.
We came away with another heap of stuff to either attach to the car or ourselves.
We hope to get more done this week.. now having the main components to start getting the car together.
Unfortunately just off the M4 on the way to Silverstone we saw a BRG Morgan which had just experienced an altercation with a wooden fence just after a roundabout… two chaps rather forlorn standing by waiting for a tow truck.
Another Morgan chap turned up at GPR whist we were there (thanks for letting us offer up the roundels to get the correct one’s) he informed us he was a Thames Valley chap…
In fact at the Thames Valley noggin today … he was the cap my father said I should have a chat to as he competed in the Speed Series last year as a novice… well as you can expect … he was not there… I hope you manage to get your car back on the road ready for this seasons racing.
There was however another guy who has a 70’s 4/4 with Minilite wheels who was able to provide some useful input to the wheel quandaries we are having……. Hhmmmmm
That’s all for now… we hope to have some more “action” photo’s available soon… as you can imagine.. the snaps we have at the moment show… TBH.. a pretty normal looking car…
I think that will change soon though.
P.S.
One last thing… we ordered this week 2 sets of Driver name and national flag decals (as you may have seen on rally cars)… except we have our Talk Morgan handles instead of our names… lol.
