Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Aero 8, 2012< Plus 8, SuperSports, Coupe & Aeromax Aero progress.. and a new roof!

A bit of a long overdue update!
Covid-19 slowed down progress so I have only got the car into my local dealer over the past few weeks, rectified a few little issues first then onto the roof..

The bad news is that is doesn't fit, I would imagine as it came from a race team mould the the original was chopped and fettled (unless the racing hardtops where different from the road cars), so it is a few inches short around the window area.. this can be closed up once it is more tightly fitted to the body (it is sat about an inch higher than it should as its fouling on the windscreen frame) but it will still leave a fair gap as well as some other discrepancies..!

So the options currently are either to give up and scrap it (whilst sensible its not really my thing to give up!), or to plough on and see what happens with no guarentee it will ever fit.. which is what I have decided to do for now.

If it really is a road to nowhere then I might have to go down the coachbuilding route, as getting a mould from an original roof is never going to happen as I cannot see someone with a GTN lending out their roof! Ironically I can't see a coach-builder charging more than 4-5k for an aluminium roof, and I am likely to be in almost that deep with possibly nothing to show for it. Aaaaah Morgan's..

Well another update, slightly more positive this time - after a days fettling the roof is showing signs of wanting to fit.. but it still needs a LOT of work around the windows, and a fairly substantial amount in a few other places! In the meantime I probably should find out who made the GTN hardtops - could come in useful if my one ends up being a dead end.

I took a few pictures to show the progress, firstly the roof "plonked" in position (soft-top full removed to facilitate this)


Slight gap at the top - lip from the mould needed trimming to get this to fit


Hmmm this could be a tad breezy - even for a Mog!


A large amount of work later and some progress... the front lip has been trimmed to allow it to fit neatly to the screen area, and the rear is fitting flusher to the deck


The window gap is better, but that is better as in you won't fall out of it now


In this pic if you squint and stand back a little it still doesn't fit


Lets see what tomorrow brings!

I don’t think that’s an original factory hard top period

All of the GTN cars including the original green prototype, the RTCC and Ahlers cars ran the same hard top

I don’t believe either the factoryLM car ran anything different

The Dewalt car wasn’t factory built so it could be pull from a mould of that potentially or it could be something entirely new

Certainly our (RTCC) hardtop would have swapped across on to a normal S1 car, even after it took to the scenery at our first race at Donington in 2003 (the factory delivered it “race ready” to the track.....)



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Picking up my GTN from service and MoT tomorrow and when I get it home will be taking off the hard top and refitting the soft top. I have a complete set of the original soft top rubbers that I acquired from the factory a year or so ago so it’s time to put it all together and re-install

It will be nice to have a roof that goes up and down in seconds again rather than the minutes of the S5 :-)

Nick, looks like Shaun's workshop at AWSC ?

The easy-up S1 hood does seem like one of the better roof options on the Aero series, very fast and you can put it up and down at the traffic lights if it rains. Unlike my early roof..




You have a keen eye! It is indeed AWSC and Shaun is the man working the magic! (From what I have seen this week he is a magician in disguise..)

So I have done a bit more research on this (as you do) and I have found a couple of factory owned race cars at Malvern that have hardtops matching mine, so I do believe it is from a factory built car (assuming the cars in the factory were built by the factory!) .

In the Morgan lobby/museum area near Steve's office there are usually two GTN race cars - a red and blue one. Both these have the same roof, a few distinguishing features from the road going GTN being:
- Larger window apertures
- Lack of a guttering recess around window aperture
- No recess for the oval badge on the side
- Aerial mounted in the rear centre section of the roof
- Rivet mounted rear window

Having a look at mine today you can see the aerial mounting position is visible via tiny indentations left in the mould, as are the rear window rivets so that confirms that mine is from a racing background (plus the gentleman I bought it from confirmed it was from their race GTN of years previous).

As for the differences to the road car I can only speculate, I would imagine as the drivers sit much further back in the race cars they needed more side visibilty so made the apertures larger as they use plexi windows.

A few pictures:



Now onto another update!
Shaun has been working his magic on fabricating new window apertures, and they are looking rather splendid. Still a long way to go, but it is definately getting there and I see light at the end of the tunnel




Shaun is a bit busy over the next few days, so I am off to Krazy Horse to see how progress is coming along on my 3 Wheeler!

Interesting solution to the 'infill', will be nice to see the finished article

The blue one, in front of fellow tour guide Brian H is from 2004.
I'm not aware of the red one you mention, or when it was built. The green/gold 2009 GT3 car is out there somewhere, but I've not seen it since Chateau Impney hill climb 3? years ago.

Nick, it is indeed the same roof as the race cars one came up for sale a few years ago now but the race cars have the perspex infill. Full marks to you for taking this on it will look really nice once its sprayed up but its roof down for me every time.

Em