Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 How reliable is your M3W?

As a fairly new owner of an early (2012) MTW I have most of the common issues. One that I have not read about is the rear wheel alignment and the drive belt contacting the tire sidewall. It happens that if I adjust the rear wheel to achieve proper alignment that there is no clearance between the sidewall and the belt, resulting in the belt cutting into the tire with any side loading. Anyone else observe this?

rgp, you need to replace then old silver hub with the new black one. I had the same problem and the new hub solved. In-term solution is to adjust the belt about 3/8 inch OFF the sprocket to the near side.

The new style hub will certainly imrove the clearance as will machining the wheel mounting face of the old hub to move the wheel slightly to the right; some people have done this.
What I would question is what are you calling correct alignment? Don't rely on measuring or counting threads on the adjusters to make them equal; they're not equal to start with and the bearing bars in the adjusters tend to bend and become even less equal. My way of getting the adjustment rght is to spin the back wheel by hand backwards and forwards between tweaks to the alignment until the belt stays in the same place on the back sprocket, i.e. it doesn't wander from side to side, then adjust the tension by equal turns on the adjusters. The belt will be overhanging the outside edge of the sprocket by about 4mm or so when it is set correctly.

Hello again and thanks for the advice. I have adjusted the belt so that it over hangs to the outside and I have replaced my 175 tire with a 165 to provide an interim fix for the rubbing. However this doesn't cure the alignment issue in total and we are still somewhat crabbing down the road. I was hoping someone had come up with a wheel that had more back space as there seems to be ample space to move to the right. I am continuing to look into this as it would also allow for a wider tire.
Thanks again
Roger

As a prospective owner, this is all veeery scary....

Most of the problems are with cars built in 2012/2013. So not if you buy a 2015 car. If you buy an earlier car, either make sure it's had all the mods installed or its cheap enough for you get them completed.

Hah! I've heard this same line with every unreliable vehicle that I've owned. The truth is we won't know how reliable the 2015's are until they've been around as long as the 12's and 13's. Anything else is just wishful thinking.

It's good to know the reality of what you might be getting in to so at least if you make the decision you do so with full knowledge.

Some things to consider:

Do you live close to a dealer so when there are problems it is not a major trip to resolve them?
Do you have the tools, space, and knowledge to do some maintenance and repair works yourself?
Are you willing to accept the car being unavailable to drive for weeks or months at a time as it being repaired?
Are you willing to devote significant time to various problem solving issues about the car?

The M3W is definitely not a "gas and go" car!

Bear in mind a lot of this forum activity focuses on problems rather than (as I intended in this thread) the capability to be used regularly and to undertake long journeys without significant issues.

There's probably somewhere between 1,500 - 2,000 of these out in the wild and most of the major issues are now known and for the most part fixed

Once you get yours hopefully you'll worry less about the possible issues and really enjoy the experiences this car delivers.

Total time off the road due to breakdowns is 10 days but nothing for the last 18 months.

I think its now sorted.