Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 XF14 AEF !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for all the advice guys but my dealer made it his personal task to get me a couple of inner tubes so I'll leave that to him. I do plan to buy Blockley tyres as soon as the Avon currently fitted wear out, and will probably order them directly, with inner tubes too.

@PaulJ, about this:



I have to say that I have been very silent since September because things weren't well and I didn't want to be a "whiney" guy online saying "MMC deals with us like ****" while at the same time I was trying diplomacy behind the curtains. Because I have been diplomatic and corteous throughout, I decided to (mostly) shut up in here. I knew about the dealers meeting, I have a very good personal relationship with the dealer here in Portugal, and I was counting on him to sort out whatever was left to sort.

I have to say that so far, and even if there are odd moments of silence (the one about the front suspension was the worst, and the longest), MMC has tried to solve the issues. However, it is in fact baffling that so these issues occur and need solving. I think something is definitely being done wrong up there in Malvern Link, but I can't even tell you what that is.

My dealer didn't tell me much, I guess he can't anyway and I'm not the kind of guy to ask impertinent questions, but from all he said and by the way he said it I got two snippets of info: 1 - Many , MANY complaints were heard by the management; 2 - He came down feeling the management were honestly trying to hear those complaints, take the necessary notes, and adopt whatever appropriate measures to sort out what has been wrong lately.

In the end, this is all - as a lover of the brand - I wanted to hear. Here's to hoping they diagnosed what was wrong and cure MMC of it all.

To be honest Mario, I think it's an attitude problem.
I have run a small team for over twenty years. We have delivered an ever expanding service providing water quality monitoring equipment for a public sector body. We now service and maintain hundreds of pieces of kit a month. We also design and build remote real time systems accross the uk.
The success of the service has depended on one or two people in a team of 12 to 15 really going the extra mile. That's really me and my team leader. My phone is on 24/7. I have told our senior managers that the service doesn't really work and if I ran it as the rest of our organisation is run it would be fail within days. I try really hard to enthuse our staff but very few have any real interest in engineering and it falls to a minority, all over 50 to do,the real technical work. The younger members of the team are all graduates of what were good polytechnics but are now third rate money factory's called universities. They cannot take any form of constructive criticism and will only concede that when wrong they are in fact just slightly less right than you. Our schools,bullying parents and governors have created a nightmare for managers in the real world.
There is an overwhelming reliance by managers on policy and procedure rather than knowledge. We train no one properly in the UK and real apprenticeships have long gone.
I wonder how long an apprenticeship at Morgan is now. I did three years at CEGB training schools before being allowed on the shop floor for the final year. The old boys did seven years in total. Someone recently posted the how's it made video and some comments were posted about the skills displayed. I didn't see any true hand skills displayed in any stage of construction and that is clearly demonstrated any time you look at the build of the 3W. I did a short two week welding course in 1979 and I can weld better than the chassis manufacturer.
I would imagine that Morgan are not immune to these problems and I wonder if they are struggling with staff retention. Low salaries in engineering are still a problem. This is going to be controversial but much of the work Morgan does would be classed as repetitive and semi skilled by any time served craftsman. When I design and build a electro mechanical installation it is over engineered to some degree and it is an intuitive process. Look at some of the wiring from sensors on the 3W or indeed any car. Yes it might be of the correct size to carry the tiny current required but is it sound mechanically. No, a slip of the hand when performing a task adjacent and a broken wire is the result. There is too much lean production in evidence and a 'well that's good enough' approach.
I am sure that the meeting was full of managers taking notes. Has anyone else noticed that there seems to be a competition to see who has the biggest notebook in meetings nowadays. What's wrong with the back of a fag packet!!!
Sorry for the rant. We should however not forget that Morgan did have the balls to make the dam thing and it's still brilliant with all its faults. Let's look on the bright side it can only get better.

Outstanding rant Matty, but undoubtedly spot on in many respects. Pretty much everything these days is bloody lean and goals to have 50% of the population University 'educated' these days says it all. When I left school, only about 7% of kids were smart enough to take a degree at a full-on University - but I wasn't one of them so had to work it out myself.....

But your point about Morgan having the balls to make the M3W in the first place needs to be celebrated, as without it we'd not be chuntering on about how it needs improving, on here!

Top stuff all round

Thanks
Here's a classic
We asked recently asked newish member of the team to use a blackberry so she could communicate better with our customers and colleagues out in the field. She would also get free home use and calls because of the good corperate deal we get.
Had a review meeting with her recently and she was a bit down. I asked her what was wrong and she said she was very disappointed that she had not received a pay rise for undertaking the extra responsibility of having to answer the phone.
All true

OMG! I was going to say amazing ...but guess it's not!

my sons GF manages to stagger thru half of what she should do ... If she is in the mood!,

She is highly thought of and we'll paid.

She works for the NHS

M3W Thread Drift Alert!





PS - Same everywhere I guess, and Portugal is no exception. There's no craftsmanship taught in Universities, I think nowadays people think any kind of work not done sitting in front of a computer is beneath them.

Also, the youngsters that don't get to enter Uni will find it hard to be humble and to spend more than one month learning something from older folks. They tend to look at us and think "I bet he doesn't even have a facebook, twitter or instagram account, poor old git". And as we all know, you are nobody if you don't have at least one of those ...

It was better before.....
Said my parents
Have said my grand parents
And so on...

Ok, my comments: I proudly announce that I can afford NOT to use facebbok, twitter and I have no instagram account.
I had accss to all that stuff but decided that my time is too valuable to waste it there. And I have some technical background: one of my best technical achievements was downstripping western technology to a stage that the projects were able to operate in third world countries with the local stuff.
Sooner or later I will adapt my M3W to work under local conditions here in Austria, while I still hope it's not a thirld world area.

Back on topic, got my M3W back. Front springs have been changed, 3rd set of exhausts has been fitted.


Pictures speak louder than words so here goes:


LEFT FRONT





RIGHT FRONT






BACK OF SILENCER WELDING





FRONT OF SILENCER WELDING





What to tell ... well for a start I took the long way home and covered a few Lisbon streets with really bad (bordering on rough) surface. Didn't notice any instance of the annoying "tink, tink" that was signaling the suspension/exhaust banging against each other.

The exhausts are clearly different, all the welding around the front and back of the silencer is now left unpolished. It may be aesthetically less pleasant but I don't think it makes a real difference. And now, finally, I hope these Mk III Brooklands exhausts do hold in one piece. We shall see.

Those shocks still look very close to the exhaust to me! Especially the front right. No marks on the springs after your test? Fingers crossed for you

I notice that the electrical connectors (front right picture) are still left exposed too... I thought they might have rectified that by now!