Good stuff HJP
Was talking to local dealer( who I have a great deal of respect for) this week about getting a fixed valuation for insurance
While there a salesperson commented that at 10,000 miles mine was a very high mileage example and that he could buy as many three wheelers as he liked for silly money (16 to 19k) with only 500 to 1000 miles on the clock. He seemed to think this was a normal state of affairs and that to put any reasonable mileage on a Morgan was somewhat irresponsible.
I have to say that although I think his figures were somewhat exaggerated or underestimated depending on your point of view, his view of what constitutes high mileage does apear to be shared by quite few few Morgan owners. How anyone who owns any kind of Morgan can do less than 4 or 5000 miles a year amazes me. I didn't buy my 3W as an investment, I bought it to use. The more I drive it the more I love it
Okay, right up front this has turned into a rambling of thoughts that I had not intended upon first replying to you guys, sorry.
Matty,
Back in around '88, I bought an '80 De SWMBO. I was not a low mileage car; it had 28k miles on it.
I bought it for $12.5k and drove it for about a year and put about 5k miles on it. It was not a very nice car. It had very poor visibility, lack of performance with the 2.7L Renault motor. It was geared very high for this type of car, but it did get fairly good mpg.
Basically with 30+k miles, it was just a driver car that would not rust out on you. I did get out from under it and only lost $500 for driving it a year, so not too bad.
Paul,
Feel free to use any of my ramblings as you like, not a problem.
I have a general handling question along with some rambling thoughts.
In a typical 4-wheel car, you have the corners holding up the weight of the car. The rear helps resist in body roll when the front hits a bump or pothole etc. In this case the suspension works well to maintain the body parallel with the road. Even a 4-wheel chassis without suspension, the rear or front help to support the other end on bumps.
In my mind with a 3-wheel car, such as the M2W, there are no rear corners to counteract the lifting or dropping of either front tire when following the road surface. If you take a 3-wheel chassis without suspension, the chassis would rock back and forth on it's axis kind of like a plane when one wing hits an air bump, the fuselage will rotate on it's axis.
So with that somewhat poor up front thought process, does a M3W tend to body roll on every bump more so than a 4-wheel car with 4-corner suspension?
The reason I'm asking is that I'm wondering just how important independent front suspension is versus say a solid front axle with a transverse leaf spring and shocks on both sides? Or remove the springs and add outboard coil overs? Of course a pan hard bar would be needed or at least triangulation of the radius rods etc to keep the front axle assembly from side shifting.
In my mind suspension is suspension is suspension in a basic setup, not a high performance best of the best handling situation etc.
My point is that when I built my '40 Willys coupe it had a 100" WB with solid rear axle and solid front axle. It had coil overs on all four corners. It was a rougher ride than say a family sedan, but exactly what you would expect from the look of the car. Yes, it had "some" bumpsteer, but I just held the steering wheel loosely and instead of the tires moving back and forth, the bumpsteer was transferred back up to the steering wheel. With just a light grip on the wheel it was not an issue and the car handled well at over 120 mph.
So as someone else said, with their M3W they DO NOT expect to have perfect handling and the oddities of the suspension as shipped from MMC is part of the experience that makes it what it is. I think they said they had the comfort kit installed, but that was the only upgrade to the suspension and I can see how the kit is a safety and handling necessity.
I can see on the Slingshot that state of the art electronic power assisted steering, traction control, ABS and probably properly engineered IRS up front, is all part of that package. The looks of the car would send that futuristic mental picture of a highly sophisticated car.
So why with the M3W did they try to make the car more than just a slightly more dependable and slightly better handling car than the original? Obviously MMC has many years of pillar suspension experience and a good set of tunable shocks with pillars would have been great looking and function would have still been quite good; considering what the car was reintroduced to represent.
Again guys, sorry for rambling.
