Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 Suplex fitting and first impressions

In the second photo in the first post of this thread there is a side by side of the standard Spax and the Suplex front shocks. The difference is more to do with the Suplex springs being located further down the shock than the Spax. i.e. the Spax have a relatively long section of small diameter shock absorber body between the lower spring seat and the mounting bush when compared to the Suplex.

Calum
Have you made any headway on the rears? Any useful information from Suplex yet?

No headway as such and I am out on an oil platform so real life has had to come to a stop for a little while...
On Thursday Dan White reckoned that on Friday he would be getting his hands on some of the rear shocks to test/investigate them. We shall see.

My car was all back together at the factory earlier this week , including the Suplex . When I rang on friday it still wasn't ready to be sent back so I'm wondering if they too are having problems .

Still no posts from PJB .....

Paul, that's a clever way to stop the rack and pinion stroke.

But with most engineered steering systems, the steering stop is mounted on the "A" arm so the spindle hits it at full lock on an inside turn. On some aftermarket suspensions this stop is adjustable to set the turning angle full stop. The steering box will only go so far until the spindle hits the solid stop; no need for an internal steering mechanism stop.

I believe the reasoning is that when the inside wheel is turned that far, the steering arm on the spindle and the steering rod link comes closer to a straight line. In this position the wheel and tire has tons of leverage and can sometimes over power the steering linkage and over travel the wheel angle.

While viewing all the pictures I've downloaded, I've seen some of you guys have complained about the shocks hitting the pipes. But there's a LOT of stuff going on in that area and space is at a premium. I'm sure that a few extra bends can make the pipe fit through there and give more room for the fender and the shocks.

I remember one of my first questions to you about the seemingly large turning radius. You said that the reason for the larger radius was to keep the wheel/fender from hitting the header pipes. You would think drivability and convenience would pull rank over the esthetics of the pipes and something a little different would have been engineered instead.

I think the new upper kits and shocks are getting you guys to a better place as you tweak them for each installation.

Paul - I fitted the SPAX adjustables to my car without Empire (still is I'm afraid - life is too busy...) and had exactly the same problem. The springs on the SPAX adjustables are also longer and therefore when I adjusted ride height to get horizontal track arms, both headers were in solid contact with the shocks. So I simply wound the ride height back to where it started (when the car was on the OEM SPAX units) and all seems OK. I suspect that there are variations in each build that means the shock-to-header gap varies all the time. Spoke to Technical at the Factory and they broadly said as much.

Partial fix is to release the two nuts on the header-to-cylinder-head mount and 'ease' it up a little. Then retighten and it certainly helps. Empire fitting very very soon I hope!

I must have been lucky as there has been no clearance problems with my Spax dampers which are adjusted to give a flat/parallel track rod. They are close but have never touched.

I had an interesting morning yesterday , it was obvious that the way the factory had set my Suplex was wrong . The rear particularly was very harsh . Dan White from Suplex put me in contact with John Stubbs at Black Art Design near Braintree who make the dampers .

John kindly agreed to have a look at my setup . With very little knowledge of engineering/ suspension I apologise in advance if I don't explain things well !

Looking at the rear first . It was clear that the springs were compressed too much . The top four coils were touching . John said that the springs needed to be wound down so that there was 5mm between the lock nut and the bottom thread . When this was done there was a very small gap between the upper coils , which in turn allowed the inner damper to work as it should . This gave a massive improvement , we then then tried few alterations to the damping . I had already fiddled with this , as from the factory it was really hard .

As an aside ,adjusting the rears is not easy due to lack of space , annoyingly we found that whoever had refitted my trailer mudguard at the factory had over tightened the allen bolts holding it to the swinging arm so that the captive nuts were no longer captive ....they must have known they had done it , but decided to leave it , ho hum .

Anyway , with the much improved rear we moved on to the fronts , again the springs were compressed too much so were adjusted to the same 5mm spacing as the rears . I have the 2014 chassis and new uprights and with the springs in this position the track rod ends are now angled up slightly , again the damping was slackened off and on testing everything felt good . It was clear however that the springs were close to the headers . On my 50 mile drive home there was some contact so I'm planning to try winding them back up a couple of turns as suggested by John .

I am really grateful to John for his help and knowledgable advice and Trevor who did most of the very awkward adjusting , hope the burns aren't too painful !

I'm hoping to do some more experimenting today , now with a bit more understanding .

Oh , I forgot to say . A customer of BAD who designs and races grasstrack vehicles called in while I was there . When the saw the front suspension he burst out laughing ! .......

So, forgive me for being shocked by HJP's latest posts, but what is anyone reading these posts (including me) supposed to understand, even if in my case I don't know exactly what is the "lock nut" and the "bottom thread".

It's either:

A) The Suplex kit is not a correct solution for the 3 wheeler, because you either set it wrong or you'll have it banging on other car parts;

B) The factory doesn't know how to properly install a Suplex suspension kit to a 3 wheeler;


What's your pick? A)? B)? Both?

What a mess ...