Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing What a morning!

Back in the summer I bought a genuine Morgan luggage rack from a guy on EBay. Comes complete with fittings etc and is as new, was fitted briefly to the guys Plus 4.

With one thing and another I finally got round this morning to fitting the rack, in theory a 5 minute job but knowing how things can be, I have a clear day so no time pressure.

First mini frustration was removing the over riders from the fixings. Having established the right sized socket, I then found there wasn’t enough room for my ratchet lever to fit, so back to the tool box and used a suitable open ended spanner.

However they are still fixed at the bottom by a cross head screw. After much faffing around I found the right sized screwdriver head and then found the screwdriver handle was not working, a ratchet style handle that now seems to only want to screw things in and will just spin in the “lock” or “undo” position. More ferreting around found a suitable substitute handle and the over riders came off.

Should now be plain sailing I think.....how naive!

The Morgan luggage rack is a detachable rack which fits on two prong style brackets that attach to the bumper mounting, and is also held on by the spare wheel spindle. So you can unscrew the spare wheel spindle, lift the rack off the prongs and put the spindle back for the occasions where you don’t want the rack fitted.

I loosely assembled the two brackets on the bumper fixings, but try as I might, the central wheel spindle just won’t line up. In effect the lower brackets were holding the rack about 1 to 1.5 inches too high.

Tried swapping brackets round but to no avail.

Conclusion drawn is that:

Morgan have changed the bumper fixing bracket fitted to the car and the rack I bought was fitted to an older car (mine was a November 2018 build)

The car it was fitted to was not fitted with over riders despite me being told by the seller it was, so the brackets are wrong

I’m not putting the rack together right.

I’m attaching a picture of the lower bracket and the masking tape shows where the hole would need to be to make the prongs the right height..but if I get a workshop to make a new hole where indicated, the angle of the prong will be wrong (ends up pointing too vertically to get the rack to fit)




So I put the car back together and decided to grease the kingpins. A job I’ve not done before as I’ve only covered about 1700 miles and the car was serviced by Oakmere at 1000 miles so I just thought it was time to do it.

I don’t have a jack or axle stands so thought I’d use the “full lock” method.

Ok, can see the top nipple easily enough but not the bottom one. Back into house to get headtorch and no, still can’t see it. So a bit of groping around, I find the lower nipple behind the shock absorber. How the hell am I going to get a grease gun on that - I can barely get my fingers in the gap. Plus I can’t really see as without my reading glasses on it’s all out of focus and with them on it’s still out of focus.

By now I’d had more than enough, been out there 2 and a half hours..

So I’ve cleaned up and come back in the house.

I’ll get my local garage to do the kingpins, I know the guy well and he’ll probably let me use his ramp and my own gear - or only want a tenner to do it for me.

But the brackets have left me baffled, so if anyone has any thoughts please let me know! I can see myself having to get a local fabrication shop either adjust the existing brackets or have some new ones made up.

I grease my kingpins every 500 miles. Takes about 15 minutes. When I got the Morgan I bought a low-line hydraulic jack from SKS Engineering and a pair of axle stands. Makes it a doddle to grease the kingpins and I usually take the wheels off at the same time and give them a good clean. As for the rack, can you get along to a dealer who has a Plus 4 with overriders and a rack so that you can see how it's all supposed to be?

Those brackets look very similar to mine as fitted to my 2011 +4. I am not aware of any changes to later models and don’t think I have seen new racks being marketed for newer models either.
If I plonk my rack onto the pegs, there is a good half inch gap between its central point and the boss on the spare wheel, but it with light hand pressure, the gap easily closes up. Looking at the bracket “platform” on which the pegs are fixed, when installed, it looks almost level but a closer look shows it very slightly downhill at the front.
Could your issue be this...when you remove the T bar, it is very easy for the wheel to slip downwards un-noticed. This has caught me a few times. Just make sure that the wheel is pushed up tight against the serpent’s head brake light and everything should drop into place but you may need to spring it a bit (not so much as to bend it though!)

As far as greasing is concerned, yes on full lock you will invariably restrict access to the lower nipples. Simply turn it back a part turn and it’ll be easy.(effective greasing does not call for a totally full lock position; its just that turning the wheel makes it easier than in the straight ahead position)
Hope this helps.

Luggage racks always need fettling to fit. There are two or three versions of the over-rider brackets.

I had to file a chunk of metal off the car brackets on my Plus 4 to get anywhere near a decent fit.

Between the rack and the spare wheel, you have a spacer, but different offset spacers are available for the various wheel sizes.

Remote greasing kit is extremely helpful:

https://www.wolfperformance.co.uk/remote-greasing.html

Greasing the kingpins is an easy job even when lying on the floor with the car on the ground just turn the wheel to expose the nipples. I would however invest in a jack and stands, not that expensive and will make a huge difference to your routine maintenance requirements.

+1 for the remote greasing kit, but you still need to get under the car once in a while. To acsess the nipples better you can loosen the lower nut of the shock and pull it partially off it's bracket. Of course this is a hassle doing it each time you grease, so while you are there, change the original nipples for 45 degrees angled ones. Or you could mount the remote kit, but that is a little project...

Slip a folded up cloth or towel beneath the spare wheel so that it doesn't slip down and the holes should line up with a little gentle persuasion. The cloth or towel can be removed once the T bar has "caught" on the threads of the mounting. A flexible rather than rigid pipe from the grease gun body to the nipple makes things a lot easier. Normally it is just a case of turning the road wheel to expose the nipple - much easier if the car is on a jack and axle stands with the key in the ignition to stop the steering lock operating.

Thanks for all the pointers.

@Dave W has confirmed my fears - that there are multiple types of fittings for the rack, so might have to resort to finding a local fabricator to make some brackets for me based on a soft metal template that I’ll make.

But will also check out whether the spare wheel has dropped, guess that is entirely possible and well worth looking into before going to new bracket territory.

I’ve managed to sort (hopefully) the greasing problem in so far as my local garage (about 100 yards from where I live) are going to let me use their ramp on Saturday first thing and I can work on the car myself free of charge (but will give the guy a beer token or two). However longer term I will have to invest in a trolley jack and axle stands.

Will take a quick look in the morning at whether the wheel dropped, and if it hasn’t, will put rack fitment off until I’ve stopped sulking.

Ah! The joys of a hand built car. Nothing lines up with anything and every car is different. Unfortunately this makes the simple supply of replacement body parts a nightmare. Hopefully new construction techniques with the CX platform will achieve a certain amount of standarisation.