Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Rough roads!!!

IMHO the Willys Jeep was a much better vehicle than the Series I Land Rover. The Jeep was lighter, accelerated much faster, handled well, and was reasonably comfortable. In short it was fun to drive. You could do wonderful controlled slides and drifts on an unsealed surface. The Land Rover Series I SWB was a slug by comparison, very uncomfortable, but I suppose the best you could say about it was that it got the job done, perhaps in tricky going it may have been better than the Jeep but since I never got stuck anywhere in either it would be difficult for me to judge.

Paul, I was hoping someone would pitch in with its technical name or rather the name for that configuration of components. Iv looked in a few vehicle dynamics textbooks that give detailed definitions of lots of suspension setups and the various relationships required to find the constants needed when analysing different setups. But non I have cover the arrangement used by Morgan.

Peter, I'd like to navagate around a discussion on the overriding merits of jeep vs Land Rover. Granted I kind of brought it up but only to highlight the possible mechanical sympathy induced by a stiffer chassis. Iv come to the conclusion anyone with enough experience of both vehicles drew there alliances to long ago to be swayed one way or another. If we want to set up another thread though for the discussion I'll sertanly join in :-) because you can hold a power (term used loosely) slide in a series one LandRover on a wet road. Hehehe

It's known as sliding pillar Leon, but technically it is more of a sliding collar, because the pillar (the king pin) is fixed and the collar with the stub axle attached does the sliding.

Mere seconds on Google..

Perfect, thank you

i enjoy the thrill the suspension offers, it’s an acquired taste, but there’s a definite sweet spot when the ground speed suits the road conditions. It’s a narrow window though and I do get caught out from time to time. Once, on a pretty smooth main road, I was charging along at great speed and passed over what would, in a normal car, be a comfortable dip a cross the road, in the Morgan, I actually bounced out my seat!

I had an MX5 a few years ago by the way, it was my first stupid car and it was absolutely fantastic.

very much at the other extreme, I recently drove a McLaren 570S spider which has the carbon fibre tub. Because the tub is so rigid and the tyres so low profile, all the suspension is in the suspension. Might sound funny to say that but when you go over a bump in a Morgan, part of the shock is taken by tyre deformation on high profile tyres and another part by chassis fles. So the suspension itself is fairly stiff and with limited movement. In the McLaren, the suspension was fairly soft and the ride was an absolute eye opener being defintely better than our family saloon and that in a supercar.

Low profile tyres on many cars produce the same result ie a very rough ride , nothing to do with suspension , I don't think sliding pillar is any more hard than low profile tyres !

The whole tyres sidewalks debate is another interesting topic. I believe that a lot of it is fuelled by the whole culture of oneupmanship in the consumer car market.

I can hear it said at the dinner table 'You went with the 18's! We just had to have the 19's on ours. It just corners so much better' said by the chap that has never and will never come close to the limits of grip his car has.

I know the f1 tyre debate is complex but they manadge well enough with huge sidwalls and they only go on very smooth tarmac.

As has been said though, the tyre plays a massive part in the whole suspension and dynamics setup of a car. The subsystems must be designated to all work well together. While it can get complex it's all mainly mathematics. I would love it if tyre manufactures gave better details of there tires, I know why they don't ofcorse.

On the topic of sidewalk flex alone. A few time I have changed from 'nangkino ditch-finders' to a sportty (ish) premium brand tire and lost a feeling of punching tyres of rims that the car had before with no profile Chang at all.

The ride in my Fiesta ST is harder than my Morgan.

Ps this is my 3,000th post.