Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 Deleted

Thank you Mod. It is good to at least be able to air our views on the product, and we respect that the forum owner has to make the ultimate decision as to what is acceptable.

I admit that I have been vocal, virtually from day one. Not to cause trouble, but to get the factory to do something about sorting out the problem with the car. It is a great little car, and it is frustrating that it is spoilt by something which is so easy to fix, and should not have even been allowed beyond the design stage. I get the feeling that as the factory can sell as many cars as they can make, they aren't too worried about 'the fix' yet. But they should be. If they never respond in public, even by way of a 'news bulletin' to reassure owners that they are working on it, then what else can owners think or do? I know that some at the factory read this forum, so are well aware of what disgruntled owners think, so come on the Morgan Motor Co. where are you going with this problem? Please do not sell the fix to us as an 'upgrade', we have put up with this deficiency all this time, the least we deserve is that it is corrected for free.

Now, as I see it, and already detailed on the forum, the main problems are that the steering rack is too wide and too high, and the 'trick' dampers merely mask the problem. The rack cannot go any lower due to the bellhousing/cush drive casing, and the rack cannot, at this stage, be any narrower, even if one is available, as chassis tubes get in the way. Further, and possibly less important, the king pin inclination does not bisect or even touch the inside of the front tyre which is an accepted practice in suspension design to reduce bump steer.

Additionally, I think we have all seen videos of the front outside tyre almost rolling off the rim under enthusiastic cornering, possibly caused by a lack of negative camber on full or partial bump.

I am of course willing to be corrected on all of this, as I am no suspension expert - but I know a man who is, and I will possibly have more information in a few weeks. It also seems that krivette knows someone who has already been there and fixed it, which could be to all our benefits too. Pooled knowledge and all that?

I thought i'd chime in with a few bits as I know quite intimately about this situation.

background, i came to know kevin as a fellow norcal trike owner back in march when i took delivery of my trike. during this time kevin introduced me to the world of morgan and has been a bit of a morgan cheerleader/historian/mentor to me. His passion and history with morgans and other british sports cars is quite long, seriously, you should see the guy's 4 seater that is approaching a quarter of a million miles.

kevin has always been very clear with me regarding his goals and intentions with the trike. That is to make it the most enjoyable, safest, reliable car it can be so he can enjoy it for decades to come, including his annual 5,000+ mile roadtrips that he takes every year in his 4 seater. that being the goal I have watched him pour tens of thousands of dollars of his own money in to the car to either fix what was broken/undersigned by the factory or to improve on something that wasn't broken but didn't necessarily meet the rigorous needs he had for making the trike a very high milage machine. I've watched this process first hand on a weekly basis over the last 6 months as kevin and i have become quite close. His intention was never to do this work with grand visions of payoffs and commercial ventures. Hell, he didn't even know about talk morgan until i introduced him to it months back as he never planned on sharing any of this as he just wanted to make his car the way we all dream it could be.

I digress...

the other important part of this story/my post is the fact that my car has the fix and has for over a month, and let me say this, it's brilliant, no bump steer what so ever, car rides like a dream. And despite the fact that Kevin hired his own engineers, and spent over 5 figures of engineering time with some very talented people and had every right to keep the fix to himself as he paid handsomely for it he allowed me direct access to the fix which only required for me to pay the engineers directly for the machine time for the new bits and install time (i repeat, i paid the motorsport engineers he commissioned directly, Kevin had no involvement or monetary connection to my transaction with the engineers).

Long story short, he paid a fortune to do the factory's work to make his car safe and because he felt passionately about how the car was unfit for the road and didn't want to see me hurt he offered up his work up on a platter to me with no monetary benefit at all, only the knowledge that his motoring friend would be safer on the road so we can all come back from our adventures in one piece to our families who are kind enough to still put up with our crazy motoring obsessions.

In closing I've known about this from day one and there has been nothing but good intentions behind it and has only been for the betterment of the morgan community and to be honest the future of morgan motor company as we all know how devastating an accident could be in one of these cars. it pains me to see morgan treating fixing this very serious problem as an upgrade and not a recall of something that has been clearly identified as a design flaw.

that being said i'm fortunate to be able to have kevin as a friend and someone who at the end of the day just wants to have the best, safest morgan on the road so that he can put hundreds of thousands of miles on it and keep coming back to his wife and two kids with that crazy morgan owning smile we all have after a good drive

I'm sorry to all involved that something wasn't presented in the appropriate manner and that it set off red flags or violations of the terms of service of the site as it's really a shame this info can't be made public.

Blake

I did read Kevin's post and think it's quite right that it has been withdrawn. He clearly has some genuine issues with his M3W, but the slightly menacing quasi legalistic tone made it inappropriate for the site; more of an issue for him to resolve with MMC.

Maybe Kevin should have presented this as a " Hey, I've developed a modification to the bump steer issue. This (I can't remember the name of the company) consultant has produced this solution; you can buy it from them & they will pay me a royalty as I financed the development cost" then those people (clearly not ALL M3W owners) who are concerned about this perceived problem could modify their cars (as with other suspension mods available for other models), and everyone would have just thought "What a clever and brilliant bloke" - which it sounds like he probably is.

Dress it how you like, it reads as it reads. Simon has never been anything other than ultra fair in all aspects of this forum. Your post comes across as disrespectful.

I agree with much if not all of this post.

Thanks for your post regarding your relationship with your friend. However IMHO please see Pandys post for my and obviously others' view on this.

Maybe you could convey it in a constructive manner?

Well, I apologize if that is the case, but please point out the "respect" in the following paragraph:


"I also find it frustrating that the people who jump into the debate, to condemn the deletion of this thread, are new/seldom use members. Whilst your opinion is welcome, perhaps it would be nice if you got involved in more positive threads on a regular basis, rather than fanning the flames on one that clearly goes against the terms of use of this site."

i think there's a lot of misunderstanding behind the history or the motivations of this as kevin for months actually took it up directly with morgan and was either ignored or had the issue at hand minimized and looked at as an opportunity to sell an upgrade vs fixing a known issue.

it was never his intention to have to bring it up in public like this as he was hoping morgan would do what was right by their customers and create a line of communication with them about the issue and a fix (not upgrade) that they were working on. it was only after several failed attempts at direct communication did he feel like the community deserved to know what was going on as i know we've all been frustrated by the lack of acknowledgment of the issue.

it's really unfortunate that the core message behind this is getting lost in the politics or wording of it all.

at the end of the day we've all got trikes we love but are frustrated by certain short comings, design flaws, and poor quality control and we're tired of the factory not taking us seriously as they continue to only focus on selling new trikes and not stand by those that have already been built.

Blake

Glad to. The post, and poster can be summed up thus:

A 6 year old forum, run with zero commercial contribution or gain and minimal member fiscal contribution.
An owner who manages and maintains this forum for the good of the Morgan community, no more no less.
Minimal moderation and intervention and a clear set of rules that are there simply to protect the individual and the forum.
Over 3000 members the majority of whom are regular contributors who can discuss, debate and even disagree on most subjects without contravening forum regulations.
A polite and clearly worded response asking some members to maybe get a better flavour of the site and understand how the collective work and provide some useful or informative contribution before offering sarcastic responses that appear simply to "fan the flames" or appear controversial.

Your initial post was not particularly informative. My opinion; hope it helps.

Not in the slightest. You did not answer the question.

Here is another: what was disrespectful in suggesting that nobody had condemned the deletion?

Please do not bother to respond to this, whoever you are. With the greatest respect, I am not even slightly interested in your opinion.

There is a far more important point at issue, the one that was raised by krivette. And I do agree that some parts of his post should not have appeared here. But the technical issue is of very great importance.