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

Great stuff Andrew!
Those new bonnets will keep the louvre counters busy for a while!!

Must soon be time for another trip east
Watching with interest, as always!

Nooooooo......I MUST resist! I may be lying on the sofa with my leg up disabled, but I am NOT going to yield to the temptation of counting the louvres!

Great stuff Andrew....it really does lend itself to going into a book!

I was looking at the front valance and thinking how Cain might have tackled it...pleased that you are going to involve him!

...well dear Jays and dear Graham...

may be i´ll add something for the louvre-counter-population here soon

Jays,
now you have time you could build a list of models and number of louvres per year of production!!

Interesting to see the scoop fitted on the side in its "raw" state. I have been thinking of fitting a scoop to my existing bonnet to give better clearance for the inlet. Having a new set of bonnets made seems a bit expensive and difficult given my location.

I did try fitting a pair of SS bonnets, courtesy of Numog and a Danish friend who transported them for me. We knew it was a 100 to 1 chance that they would fit but I thought it was worth a try. At first glance they seemed very close but when I got them properly in place they were too far out to be even modified for a good fit. I think I will ask Borghi if he can fit a scoop to my existing left bonnet.

John.......in the nicest possible way.....bog off!

Naughty boy......dropping these tempting hints!

Peter, I've a spare pair of bonnets from my 4/4 which I tried on Nero.....neros bonnets are a pretty crap fit...but they were well out. The bonnets certainly are bespoke.
On my 4/4 I looked at having the factory weld on an SS scoop to the existing bonnet but wanted the old style side louvres which the SS and Baby Doll have. Expensive as that meant a pair of bonnets at about £1400 painted and fitted!
They did accidentally make a scooped bonnet with the modern side louvres which I declined and that's now on the Williams race 4/4! It looks good...I should have gone for it and saved myself some money!

I have a spare set of new (un-fitted) 4/4 Sport Aluminium bonnets if someone wants them. The 4/4 sports are a more uniform fit than the older models so should fit any of the 4/4 sport models. They are in cream (no dings, damage or scuffs). £200 if anyone is interested (you'll have to collect).

Could be useful if someone wants to experiment without damaging their P&J ones..... for a couple of hundred quid - it's a lot cheaper than a full custom job.

Update 41 - Painting the Blue and White car

The Blue and White car was first to make it to the paint shop. Handily Dad's cousin runs a paint shop and was happy to paint the cars. When we were talking to him about quality we had options from a "puff over" ala grass track/mini stock racing through to full concourse.

After all the other work I was not about to go for a quick puff over. On the other hand this is not going to be some sort of concourse entry either. So we settled on a four fifths of a concourse job.

So it will be a full strip, fix, prep and paint - a full on bare metal re-spray.

Handily talking to the factory the paint record for my car was lost at some point - in the early 80's Jubilee Blue was a special "free" colour introduced for a short period yet unfortunately the official record of the colour is not in the book.

Handily some of the guys we know at the factory popped down to the paint shop to talk to the guy there who was painting cars in the 80's. In his personal notebook of cars he's painted "back in the day" he found his personal notes about the blue on my car - along with the paint code - what a result - you would not get that at any other place.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to take any snaps of the car in prep - suffice to say there was several paint jobs already on the car and one where the top coat was put on before the primer was dry causing the bobbling effect.

Under the dash pad when we removed it we found a clean area of the original blue - it looked great so we had high hopes for what we were about to get done.

David (Dad's cousin) stripped off all the old paint and did a complete check of all the metalwork. The tub was in pretty good condition overall and did not need much.

We were offered a couple of different finishes in paint and we decided to go with the slightly thicker paint mix which does not require a clear coat over the top. In theory there will be less fuss if we ever need to touch up the car due to a "rub".

As before we have decided to spray the body tub, bonnets and cowl and leave the wings white in gel coat.

Here's the bonnets in the spray booth.....







The Jubilee Blue is a flat colour but it has a lot of depth and a really nice finish to it.

You would not believe that the cowl in the pic below is the one that was totally squashed in the crash would you.



So here's the finished tub - looks great - literally flawless with no ripples in the metal or blemishes in the paint.... looks perfect to me.











It was at this point we sat back and reflected on the fact that the white leather looks pretty dirty, damaged and dreary against the nice clean finish of... well..... the entire rest of the car.

Oh well.... add another job to the list - we set about seeking options to get some re-trim work done. In the end, a mate happens to own a sofa manufacturing company and could source almost any leather we wanted and we happened to purchase the trimming sewing machine from F H Douglass when he shut up shop.

Looks like we were going to learn how to trim Morgans.