Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 #1 M3W Owned by Greg Dixon-Smith

I am sure many of you will have by now read the article in the June issue of "MOG" magazine regarding the fact that the Supply Chain Manager at MMC (Greg Dixon-Smith) has been the owner of M3W No. 1 since it was new and this car has been used as a test bed to show up any problems that may have been present in the original design of the car so that MMC could correct these in production as they occur.
The article also states that the car has been driven hard all it's life purposely to show up any faults.

If this is the case, I wonder how many of the following issues were experience by Greg, given that many of us have experienced some (if not most) of the following issues:-

1) Rain getting into boot. Subsequently corrected by fitting a reflector plate in the rear of the body.

2) Seat belts becoming dirty and transferring dirt onto clothes. This problem was resolved by fitting the deflector mentioned in 1 above.

3) Compensator failures. Eventaully overcome by fitting the "Centa" unit.

4) Screw vibrating out of air filter and being drawn into inatake damaging an inlet valve and embedding itself in the pistom. Resluted in a new engine being fitted.

5) Incorrect steering geometry causing dangerous bump steer. This was ultimately resolved by fitting the "Comfort Kit".

6)Premature wear of the rear sprocket. resloved by replacing the original sprocket with a steel one.

7) Excessive noise from bevel box. This should never have been present to the level some owners have experienced given that Quaife have a world renowned reputation for producing specialist differentials etc.

8) Incorrect and/or insufficient lubrication in some bevel boxes leading to excessive noise and premature wear, including at least one known to have locked up whilst being driven.

9) Failure of charging circuit due to poor earthing of rectifier.

10) Stress cracking of Aero screens (possibly due to the use of incorrect material.

11) Over heating when stuck in heavy traffic. This has been overcome by the "Cooling Pack" but I know some of us have fitted our own cooling arrangements.

12) Premature failure of timing belts. Attempts to extend belt life have included spacers for the timing cover and also now slotts in the cover. Only time will tell if this is an effective cure for the problem.

13) Crankshaft pulley retaining bolt punches it's way out through the timing cover. At one time S&S did not recommend the use of loctite at this point but I believe they now do along with changes to the washer etc.

14) Cracking of exhaust pipes (particularly Brooklands types) due to insufficient flexibility in mounting to accommodate enging vibration.

15) Melting (or at least heat distortion) of the front indicators due to the close proximity of the exhaust headers.

16) Exhausts headers running at red heat due to excessive restriction cause by internal baffles and contributing to 15 above.

17) Cracking of early chassis's. Supposedly resolved by the fitting of the modified bolt-in chassis brace. Only time will tell if this is an effective cure for the problem. I wonder how many of these were fitted to chassis's that had the start of cracking that at the time was not visible to the naked eye.

18) Poor quality paint finish on all black painted items. I know at one time the factory was offering the option od a black powder coated luggage rack. Why could they not have used this finish on all the black items?

19) Fuel gauge sender too short leaving far too much fuel in the tank when showing empty. Many of us have resolved this by fitting a 280mm long sender.

These are just faults that spring to mind and no doubt many of you will know of others.
I have experienced a large number of these in the 3+ years I have had my M3W and it begs the question as to whether 1 car was enough to highlight these problems and how much feed back the company took from car no. 1.

Having said all the above, there is nothing else on the road that will come close to the enjoyment the M3W gives the driver and it is this feeling alone that makes us stick with them despite the many frusrations.

That list pretty much covers all the points. I have fixed or had replaced everything except for the bevel box. With the addition of the Super Max sprocket and the lessening of the belt tension along with using Redline Oil it is still problem free.

I completely agree that there is nothing that comes close with this beastie.

Well said

What a tale of woe when you list it like that.

A few other things I experienced were a bent wishbone , broken valve springs , petrol leaking from incorrect hose clips causing windscreen to craze , rivets falling out of headlamps , leaking rocker cover gaskets ......
I haven't read the June MOG magazine but wonder how many miles he did and how many problems he experienced ?
Also if his car was being used to show up the faults why did MMC keep denying there were problems .

A sad and sorry list of issues. All quite correct.

I'm not sure if he's on TM but he has over 20,000 miles on the car and it's been used for testing pretty much every factory mod including amongst others, urban cooling, Centra compensator, NVH and the MMC single windscreen.

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

I notice that No.1 still has the rectifier mounted to the engine subframe so I guess Mr Dixon-Smith still has to regularly change his bobbins!

The facts there in the list speak volumes unlike some of the emotion which has quite understandably appeared at times.

It is very sobering as some of these are very serious issues involving personal safety.