Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Aero 8, 2012< Plus 8, SuperSports, Coupe & Aeromax Morgan Parts Question

Do Morgan supply all of the parts/servicing/consumables to the dealers? Or do the dealers use cheaper 'pattern' parts from local factors?

Just trying to ascertain whats acceptable in the Morgan world, as having previously worked in the motor trade for years I wouldn't touch a pattern part with a 50ft barge pole..

Thanks

I think most official Morgan dealers are contractually required to source their spare parts from MMC. This is fine as long as the part is available ex stock , which as we all know only too well, is not always the case.

However don't write off the secondary suppliers . Upgraded parts manufactured by MulFab for instance, are superior in every way to the original parts.

Librands is also another source of really high quality parts that many of us use in preference to the OEM equipment.

Around Malvern you will find workers who used to be at MMC and have now set up independently, and their parts whether metal or upholstery are crafted with the skills they learned at the factory.

You my want to upgrade some mild steel parts for stainless , and the secondary suppliers here have a superb range of parts match the originals in every respect (except for material of construction).

Just ask here what parts folk use for a particular purpose and how happy they are with their choice.

The answer to your question depends who is asking or who is listening. MMC would love to force dealers to source OE parts but dealers know the game. Like you I have worked in the trade all my life, at main dealers and for 2 manufacturers and whilst we used to try and claim the DFA (Dealer Franchise Agreement) tied them in to sourcing parts from us, even insisting in the case of Volvo that warranty would be void if they did not use OE parts we knew we were on unsure ground especially given where we sourced some of the parts for production and dealer stock at the distribution centre in Gothenburg. Sometimes the only thing Volvo was the box and even that is outsourced.

For example when Volvo fit a Renault engine what is the OE part? A Volvo branded oil filter, a Renault branded or a Fram branded who makes both anyway and the only difference is the casing print.

Your choice what you fit but when a lot of pattern parts are made with the exact same tooling at the exact same plant???? The days of making cheaper versions are almost all gone now it's just not cost effective, I am not talking of 'fakes' but you said pattern parts which are parts made to the same pattern not something pretending to be the same. We (Volvo) did a materials analysis exercise in recent years to try and justify the price differential of the top 100 dealer stock items, we never launched the programme to the network when we got the results as they were almost identical in over 90% of the items.

Apart from clear fakes when did any of us have a 'pattern' part fail? Anyone had an NGK spark plug fail faster than a FoMoCo one? Or a Fram filter issue?

It's also worth pointing out, only the bodywork, trim and chassis is unique to Morgans. Everything else is a 'normal' spare, and if you find out what the original was, get it from the manufacturer or their agent.

As long as the item comes from a good name there is nothing to worry about - except, never use eBay as more fakes are sold there than anywhere else.

And if you do know what you need, a surprising amount of stuff can be got from Halfords. I've really made a Halfords weekend chaps day by being able to source a bit for a 1930 one there. Although I didn't have the heart to tell him the item only fitted due to a modification I made.

I take your point about eBay in part but what about the number of dealers selling on eBay? Not just Morgan but main dealers from Ford, Jaguar and Land Rover. It's not so much where you buy as who you buy from, after all Halfords don't make car parts.

Perhaps I should be more specific, the term 'pattern' parts is open to interpretation as indeed some of them are the same, I have seen first hand Delphi produce brake discs for GM/Saab and boxing them for local motorfactors also.

However in my experience a lot of items are poorly made, electircal items espicially rarely match up to the quality of OE items, yes some of them are identical and come from the same factories - but most are not.

I worked for Ford for years and some of the examples for Ford vehicles include:

1. Cheaper pattern HT leads / Coil packs being fitted for used cars approx 6/7 years old or when the OE items occasionally failed, these would routinely fail without question after about a month - we had so many of these returned under used car warranties that in the end they coughed up for genuine Ford ones (at four times the price), which lasted years and we never had any back. I even had the same happen to myself, as I bought a pattern one which failed after 3 months, the Ford one lasted me 5 years before I sold the car..

2. Spark plugs causing misfires on MK1 Focus RS engines, this was using NGK plugs funnily enough who are rumoured to make the OE spec ones, but the OE ones never misfired - so perhaps they had spec differences..either way not acceptable.

3. Lower arms - these used to require replacing every other year if a pattern part due to the bushes collapsing - Genuine ones lasted 4 times as long usually. This was across Escorts, Focuses, Mondeos etc.

4. Alternators, we would resort to pattern parts if Ford had an item backordered, this always bit us in the arse - at least 50% failed after 6 months on the Mondeo V6's that were backordered at one point for a year. We had no choice but to keep on replacing them and losing out on labour until Ford restocked.

The list goes on really, whenever we used cheap electrical parts we had issues. Our techs would scrimp on anything to run their cars on the cheap, but very rarely did they fit pattern parts due to the issues - not saying all of them are rubbish, but in my experience most are not the same as OE spec, especially electrical items.

I also recall Honda having a display in their dealerships a few years ago which included OE vs Pattern parts cut in half to show the differences, it was quite suprising how poor the surface area was on the Fram oil filters.

Anywho back on track, on a temperamental car like the Morgan I want the best quality of parts possible, no cheaper alternative thats going to give me reliability woes, it often used to surprise me how so many people with "unreliable" cars mostly had issues with cheap parts, when they came to us and had the job done correctly - funnily enough it was solved for good.

Regards,
Nick

I have no problem using manufacturer OE parts when it comes to engine stuff, but as for the rest of it, in my experience there are usually much better quality alternatives available from the aftermarket.

This covers everything from switchgear to suspension parts, fasteners, brakes, upholstery, even bodywork. There is a whole army of guys out there: Cain Poulton, Steve Barnes, Peter Mulberry, Tim Ayers, Rob Wells, Shaun McGuire, John Worrall, the list goes on and on.

That's not to say the stuff from MMC is bad per se but don't discount the other suppliers.

And that really is the point. The problem with the bay of e is you're mail ordering stuff. If you know the seller is legit, then you are unlikely to have problems, but nothing beats the part in your hand before you pay for it.

Totally agree if you are looking at uprated or performance variants, Brembo brakes, Sachs suspension etc.

However I am mostly referring to a dealer ringing a local motorfactor and asking for a part such as an alternator, which is a quarter of the price, reconditioned by Mickey Mouse Motors.

Spot on Tim, when Ford owned Volvo we hit a spate of anti roll bar link failures. We were on a common platform (we knew it as P2x no idea what Ford called it for their models) the links came from the Ford plant in Mexico which makes a very large % of their parts. Repeated complaints to Ford fell on deaf ears, we found the links had started life on a Lincoln which had identical failures. On the quiet Volvo sourced 'replacements' from ROC, the genuine Ford boxed/Mexican units were struggling to last a year, the ROC sourced units were lasting 3 years and more, not a total fix but much better. Even though we were owned by Ford we still had an upstream charge and the landed cost per unit from Ford was 3 times the ones from China. There are hundreds of examples, remember Mercedes electrical issues, 'Made in Germany' on the box, Bosch on the label and ROC stamped on the unit.....who knows where most of this stuff comes from, what I do know having been to some of these production plants is that they certainly do not have budget and premium stocks of raw materials or production lines, yes they may batch test differently but the components used and manufacturing process is often the same. As for your specialist list, as you say nothing comes close to bespoke hand made in many cases parts that are 100% tested......I was working at Mulfab assembling brakes for the ARP4 as you know Tim and I can assure you each and every disc and bell was mounted on a test bed and run out checked before Peter would allow it to leave, same for his radiators, each one is pressure tested at twice working pressure!