Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 French recovery costs

Not yet. The parts were returned to it for inspection. The issue is complicated by the Morgan agent's lengthy parts request which did not square with a very low speed prang. There is some concern that further damage was sustained when the vehicle was recovered.

I have just heard from MMC. It has acknowledged the wishbone failure and will cover the associated cost as a warranty repair. It seems that the MMC agent in Brittany requested a number of expensive parts to replace some that turned out on inspection by the factory to be undamaged, so I can understand Morgan's concern at a bill that was higher than it should have been. In future, for incidents of this type, MMC told me that it would want the vehicle to be recovered to the factory for inspection rather than being repaired locally.

MMC was appreciative that Rog G had noticed a wishbone support crack on older models and that upgrades could be fitted before anyone had an accident. They have been very good about this.

That is the only sensible course of action Morgan could take. Dangerous ground here....

I am glad for you that your issues seem to being resolved, but did MMC have a view on the cause of failure of the wishbone ?

That type of failure could have had catastrophic consequences had it occurred at higher speed.

Our conversation was about warranty issues, so I have no detail on the cause of failure; but MMC reiterated that this was the only new-style wishbone problem of which it was aware. With both this and the original wishbone support issue reported by Rog G, the problem occurred close to welds (ie where heat had been applied) - maybe that had something to do with it.

As I have a 2013 car it does beg the question, whats the difference between the old style and newer wishbones ??

How would I recognise the difference - can anyone advise ?

If you look at the photos at the start of this thread

Chassis cracks

you will see that the new style wishbone mounting is superior to the original, which looks like a bit of a lash-up. Others may know whether/how the wishbone itself has been strengthened.

We are talking about two different issues here:

1) Wishbones
2) Wishbone mounts on the chassis

1) One of the early 2012 press cars bent its wishbone during an Autocar test. All subsequent cars had beefed up wishbones, so nothing to worry about in that respect.
2) Wishbone mount cracks on the chassis, check for cracks in the vertical chassis tube.

I am clear on the two separate issues between the mounting bracket and the wishbone.

My car is an early 2013 and the Autocar failure of the wishbone occurred at the end of 2012 and there is no public record of how quickly the updated wishbone was introduced into production. There is therefore the possibility that my car still has the original design level.

The change to the newer wishbones was not the subject of a campaign change so there was no formal mandating of the change. I have no record on the documents I have with the car showing that the change was made to my car. On contacting MMC to ask how to identify between the two design levels I have not received a reply.

Hence my question does anyone know how to distinguish between the early design and the later design of wishbone.

My car is also early 2013. I had always thought my car had the revised wishbones.

The strengthened and earlier wishbones look the same, I don't know for sure but I expect the change was an increase in the wall thickness of the tube.