Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) Lower Grille for Trads

Out of interest, What part of e bay do you find this stuff on Dave?

I think I searched on 'Undertray' and 'Morgan'. I'm not an e-bay guru........I just fumble around.

Folks,
Well, I ordered the Lower Grille kit from the factory through my dealer, Newtown Motors Cwmbran and it arrived last week. Not cheap -- the bits cost just over £200 in colonial money!! Usual Morgan level of fitting instructions -- None!! I contacted the Factory and the guys there were very nice but said nobody there could remember fitting such a kit and in any event they thought it was originally designed for the earlier design of number plate box! The advice was that it probably would need a little cutting to fix.

Understatement!! -- the kit comes in three parts 1) the cowl, made from some sort of strong plastic, 2) the grille in stainless steel and 3)a piece of mesh to fit.

Having sorted out how these went together I found some suitable bolts in my tool box which happened to fit and the kit got assembled - no rocket science here.

I then offered the kit to the car - no way would it fit as supplied. I worked out that the large "lip" on the front of the cowl should fit into the bottom of the numberplate box, but a) it was too big and b) the bottom of the box was square and the front of the grille kit was curved. so after a bit of deliberation I cut off almost the whole of the lip piece and cut a curve corresponding to the grille in the bottom of the numberplate box.The now smaller strip across the front of the lower cowl was bolted in three places to the top of the stainless grille piece to give it strength. I fashioned some brackets from 1.5 inch stainless strapping and -- hey presto I could make it fit. The brackets are bolted on to one of the bolts at the bottom of the frame for the front of the car.( Just visible in one of the attached photos) The lip of the cowl now fits inside the bottom of the numberplate box and is secured with two stainless self tapper screws.(Again just visible in the photos)

Once it was in place it forms two functions apart from looking pretty(IMHO) a) the bottom 6 inches of the radiator is protected from stones etc (The new rads poke out quite a bit below the numberplate box - my 6 month old rad had two small pebbles embedded in it!!)and b)the airflow is deflected into the rad which can only help cooling. The "Wings" on each side of the lower cowl form a semi air seal to the lower sides of the radiator.

I have posted some photos of the results at

http://www.pbase.com/rsyme/morgan_lower_grille


All in all I am very happy with the outcome - the fitting was fun - a good "Bodge" - and in the normal Morgan tradition of "Make it fit"

looks great Robbie, do you have the MMC codes for these ? I contacted the dealer and asked for the earlier mentioned codes on this forum, but these turned into "Aero" components.
Happy St Patrick's

Midas, These were the codes that my dealer used to get the parts from the factory, so I don't know what other ones there are. Tell him to phone Max Smith at the factory - he is the parts manager and he was the one who supplied mine!!

Cheers! Beannachtai feile La le Padraig!!

The finished job looks great, Robbie. and a good set of photos. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks everyone lots to ponder on. I think I Will have a play with some carboard and make a template I have a local bodyman who
is good at that sort of thing.

I am loving the icon