Talk Morgan Forums Community Welcome Forum Winterising the car

I can't bear the idea of immobilising my Morgan for the winter, I want it ready to hand if the chance comes for a winter drive. All I ever do with mine is leave it parked in the garage with the handbrake off so I can easily roll it backwards and forwards a few inches to avoid the tyres taking a set.

I keep an eye on the humidity and switch the dehumidifier on if it gets over around 75%, and If I've not used it for a few weeks, I'll pop the battery conditioner on for a day or two.

If the underside is well protected with Dynax S50 (wax) and ACF-50 (oil) I see no reason to stop using it through the winter, although I draw the line at ice and snow: they never grit our lane and those Cotswold stone walls are mighty unforgiving...

I must admit I am overly fussy and wouldn't deliberately go out in the worst of our weathers. That said as I get older I am beginning to realise that with normal use the car will probably outlast me. There really isn't any point in leaving a pristine car in the garage when there is a finite (if unknown!) number of crisp frosty mornings left in my life to enjoy.
So no blocks or axle stands for me.. run it out or run it up until nice and hot on a frequent basis, take it out whenever possible, they are well protected generally but by all means avoid salt and downright dangerous conditions. An old friend of mine reminded me life isn't a rehearsal..so just drive it!

Last winter, my first with a Morgan for many years, I couldn't bring myself to put the car on stands, there's plenty of dry, salt free days to go for a blast. Bliss

Here here. Just avoid wet winter days. There are plenty of crisp dry winter days to come and nothing beats an early morning run with umpteen layers of clothing, two hats and a pair of gloves.

Apart from the potential domino effect, another reason for not running your boat engine out of the water is a distinct lack of coolant, I would have thought.

Interesting that the Gomog advice is

"Remove your tops and tonneau and store them in a warm dry place. They will shrink on the car and can rip at the seams"

Presumably this also means the hood. The general consensus however seems to be to keep the hood up and the side studs on to avoid shrinkage.

One has to be bit circumspect regarding the advice on GoMog. One thing especially to note is that it is biased very heavily towards North American owners, and since they've not really had a new models for many years, most owners have Plus 4s and suchlike dating from the 1970s and earlier. Plus of course they have proper manly winters with months of sub-zero conditions.

As a result, their kit tends to be both much older than ours and subject to much greater stresses. A 30 year old vinyl hood is much more likely to become brittle and rip in a -30C Minnesota winter, whereas a 2 year old mohair hood in a -3C cold snap in Basingstoke is hardly likely to suffer any ill effects

Drive your car !!!!...otherwise all you are doing is keeping it for the next owner...winter drives are the best ...wrap up warm heater on roof off and drive.


Regards

+1

Got our first Morgan in 2003 when it was 18 years old and considerably less tolerant of salt than our current 2014 car. I keep a log of useage and consider that going more than 2 weeks between drives is a crime. Nottinghamshire salt the roads whenever the temperature is in single figures but, so far, there have always been days when the roads are dry and some rain has washed the worst of the salt off.

Lack of use causes more harm in our UK climate than anything else. When we still had a 7.5T Horsebox, most of the repair bills were directly related to lack of use. Including one occasion when the front brakes failed completely in Ashbourne on a hill with 2 horses on board - a good test of self control!

On the A515 from Buxton Paul??
Not a hill to suffer brake failure!