Talk Morgan Forums Community General Photo Gallery A few hours tinkering in the garage

Spent a happy few hours last weekend building a footlocker for the passengers side and wiring up my flying helmet.

I made an aluminium footlocker to suit my Lotus Elise about 4 years ago and it proved fairly popular so I eventually made and sold around twenty for other Elise owners. Three weeks ago as my Elise was leaving to live with a new owner I decided to see if it would fit the 4/4, and it did.
The footwell in the Morgan is not quite identical, but so close it makes no difference, so I had another shell made up and spent a few hours making up a locker for the Morgan . It's lined with boat carpet to protect the contents and stop them rattling around and has a hinged and lockable alloy checker plate door and works as well in the Morgan as it did in the Lotus. I used to remake a shorter carpet for the Elise and use heavy duty Velcro to hold the locker down to the floor pan and I would rather do that again on the Morgan than drill the floor and bolt it down so a mate with contacts in that area (TasM3W) has offered to see if it can be sourced here in Australia, short of that I will have to contact Morgan I expect to see if I can get a small amount of it.

Also, around 6 weeks ago I purchased a WWII US Navy intermediate weight NAF 1092 flight helmet in mint unissued condition.
Using a child's size stereo headset with in line microphone, I removed the over the head portion of the headset and fitted the rest to the helmet, then encased the the thin white wires in expanding woven mesh to hide them and add make the addition look more authentic. So now my flying helmet will connect to my Phone and allow me to listen to music and receive calls. I am now working on an adaptor to suit a Uniden 2 way radio for when traveling in a group. Total cost for the helmet modification was $17.00.

A very satisfying weekend in the shed

Cheers John

Top work!

Excellent!
Have you ever thought of going into production with this for the TM community?

Very neat and practical.

Great work......I love that flying helmet!

The footlocker looks great. Do you have some drawings of the sizes? And some instructions how to build it yourself, for instance, does it involved any welding?

Regards,
André

Well done on both counts ...great work!

flying helmet looks great John

I did something similar with a motorcycle helmet ( without compromising the structural integrity ) but got annoyed tangling in the cable to my (then) iPhone.

A rare flash of inspiration resulted in one of the small (and now quite cheap) Bluetooth transmitters being attached to the hemet and picked up by my 'phone.

It works really well and is a neat solution (albeit you have to charge the transmitter battery every once in a while)

James

Love the flying helmet and presume jackplug links to radio or maybe intercom?

Hi guys thanks for the kind words

Hi Glenn - I have not yet thought about producing more as I am still to remove the carpet to check how good the fit is, being designed for the Elise there are slight variations in the footwell shape. My wife loves it though as the angle of the door was designed with her sitting in the car so her feet could sit comfortably flat. It's remarkable how close the footwell width, length and seat height are to an Elise. Time is the other factor at the moment as each takes around three hours of drilling and fettling. Will keep you posted though.

Hi Andrè - I don't have measurements to hand as the prototype was designed in cardboard, then I took the cardboard one to my local metal fabricators who made some suggestions to improve it and then put the design into CAD for their water jet cutter. It's actually not as simple as it looks and is a quite complex shape with I think only one right angle in it . They produce the basic shell in alloy on the cuter and fold and weld it up for me which I then take home, drill and fit everything up, then dismantle and take back for powder coating, then collect again for final assembly. The door is acid dipped alloy checker plate to reduce any glare if the sun hits it.

Hi James - I like the blue tooth idea

Hi Graham , yup it plugs into my iPhone, am currently trying make an adaptor lead so that the 4 wire iPhone pin out will work with a 3 pin Uniden walk is talkie which we all use when travelling in a group.

Cheers John