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

Nice one Andrew!
Things really look to be coming together. Good to get a view of both cars a couple of months ago on a flying visit with a few pals.

The bonnets on B303 will keep the louvre counters occupied for a while!!!

Fantastic!!!

Update 38 - Intake assembly and fabbing up radiator brackets

We've been keeping working on the cars - I've just not had a lot of time to keep up with the blog posts. I've just gone through my backlog of photos and I'll be working through the 250 photo's and putting a story to them... here's the next batch of 25.

Intake assembly

So having transplanted the bare engine from the Blue and White car into Woodstock it needs to be dressed. One of the key things with engine mods on 4 cylinder Morgans is the general lack of space for the intake.. the engine bay is quite narrow at the front. You will have seen in past years we've looked at several different solutions to this problem including trimming the inner edge of the wing and the bonnet holes etc.

There is a also a key chassis difference between Woodstock (originally xflow and 4 speed ford box) and the Blue and White car (cvh with type-9). That is - to make space in the CVH chassis'd car for the taller CVH engine the cross member at the toe-board/bulkhead was modified by Morgan - essentially cutting the box section out from the bottom of the gearbox tunnel and welding on an inverted "u" section underneath to replace the integrity/strength. This allows the gearbox to sit about an inch lower thereby lowering the engine by about 2 inches....

so what does this have to do with the intake........well the slightly higher engine in Woodstock (we've mounted it as low as reasonable given we fabricated custom engine brackets) means that the intake trumpets can come over the wing - similar to the positioning of the intakes in the early racing +4's with the TR engines.

You can see in the photo's the intake manifold and twin 45's - the wings are the originals at when these photo's were taken but will be changed for new items.



The positioning is favourable for the intake installation.

Having anticipated it could be favourable I'd got my hands on several carbon fibre back plates for an ITG sausage filter... well that plan bummed out none were quite the right shape to fit nicely. I also had several back-plates from previous installs and whilst the bore centres of the Zetec are the same as the CVH the inlet ports are different so the old backplates I'd previously made were also no good.... dag-nam it!!

Handily a sheet of Aluminium later and some work with the tin snips, one new Aluminium blank - one way to spend half an hour!!



Next up is to get all the holes in the right place.... ideally you want to get the holes exactly lined up to the intake side of the twin 45's and the trumpets making the inlet as smooth as possible. No pressure then.

You will have seen in previous blog posts I've come up with jigs to help get the holes measured out correctly and I use circular metal stamps to cut the holes - they give the best accuracy and finish.



Good to see that it's paid off and the filter back-plate lines up nicely.



Also you can see the alignment of the engine means that the entire back-plate is inside the engine bay - result! good chance for a neat and tidy install.



Now with the trumpets on to check the intake smoothness.



Well they all look pretty good - nicely aligned - no lumps and bumps.



Next up - the filter fitment and how it relates to the wing.. the original wing has been boxed out, I hope to do a minimal trim to the new wings and get a close fit, within the bonnet line.

So a quick check of how the filter aligns....and some initial sketches of a pattern for when the new wings are mocked up.







ok so it took a little adjustment on the line and the initial template - that's not going to be the best template for the future so I transferred it to a fresh piece of template paper.





That sorted - it can be put to one side for some future weekend where the wings can be mocked up and trimmed from the blanks - for now these have been sourced and are in storage.

onto the next job - mounting the radiator......

Radiator install

This is where the radiator needs to go - there was one in here before....



You can also see in this photo the radiator top mount was "pi$$ed as a f4rt".... not acceptable - you'd spot this kind of misalignment in a finished car - especially with the cowl in such close proximity as a reference point for the eye.

We had another problem to sort out - the lower radiator brackets on this year of 4/4 are like spurs... small, short and not suitable for a larger radiator we plan to use.. looks like another fabrication job.

Having spent time to straighten the top mount, (drill new hole and weld up old hole, grind, sand and paint) we temporarily mounted the radiator to look at alignment.



We cut some lower mounting squares on rubber cotton reels.. as you can see we're a long way away from the cross-head.



For now - a stack of wood helps to make sure it's all in the right place.

A few measurements and cutting of 2inch steel bar gives us the main parts of the brackets - mimicking the later car set-up.





Having mounted these sections of the brackets to the radiator we cut some small anchor plates which will form the mounting plates which will bolt to the cross head - these will also helps us to mark the angle needed on the body of the bracket.



This test fit also tells us that the brackets need a bend in them to get them to align neatly. So over to the vice to get an angled bend into the bar... to get this as clean as possible we use a set of truck sized adjustable's with a bar through the handle - this has given great results when we have used this technique in the past.



this gives us all the parts we need for the final welding...



once they're all welded up the final fit/alignment looks pretty smart... ready to be sent off for powder coating along with a bunch of other parts.







That's looking a lot better - intake and radiator now all fitted - fantastic weekends work.

Fascinating - thanks as ever.

Good progress and I just love your exhaust manifold.

Thanks for sharing, it give me a lot of ideas, ok the 1 step s done with the motor and the radiator, The old Weber 32/36 DGAV works fine, but ...
Aim afraid to cut out the wings like you have made, not to forget the bonnet!
I like the 2x Weber 45 DCOE, but no space, you have done injection is it smaller?

The injection install is described here:
http://www.talkmorgan.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/78408/28

it is favourable - the ability to incline the intake allows it to come over the wing (so no cutting there) you will however need to have a SS style bonnet to accomodate the filter (if you choose the filter I have used) - you could keep a regular bonnet if you used the "tea strainer" or "sock" style filters one per trumpet - on short trumpets - I've used long trumpets on my install.

Thanks Andrew , short trumpet are ok?
tea strainer
and i switsh to OMEX 600