Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Aero 8, 2012< Plus 8, SuperSports, Coupe & Aeromax Suspension Upgrade 8 months on.

Back in 1979 my +8 had only single silencer each side, which some hooligan (that would be me, aided by Libra Motive who supplied the necessary drill bit) had drilled out the baffles. Wonderful noise and flames, I'm told, on overrun. But noises were improved further, when driven with only the headers on. Don't worry the wings and bonnet weren't on either, so no paint damaged in the making of that noise

I had the http://www.suspensionsupplies.co.uk/ setup fitted yesterday.

The car is immediately less nervous; the front end no longer crashes through its first moments of travel, over the smallest surface imperfection. I no longer need to scan the road surface ahead and try to find the smoothest path through. Drain covers and cats eyes don't jolt the steering wheel.

The front end absorbs the initial hit of sleeping policemen, instead of passing the shock through the car. There's a balance between front and rear - they now feel like they're intended for the same car, and behave consistently. There's some roll, which helps make journeys far more comfortable - especially from the passenger seat.

RonC kindly took time to provide a car for measurements - the fitting took 3 hours. They'll be a little faster next time, not least because they've now figured out how to get the huge & heavy rear anti roll bar out.

I'm very impressed - I had a 4 hour cross country journey home, and thoroughly enjoyed it... so did

Will

Thats good hear to hear Will, I had it fitted this week as well and looking forward to collecting the car in the next week or two, it's still needing a couple of items to be completed unrelated to the suspension upgrade.

Will,

that is great news!
Your description of the post modification ride matches my experience so it is clear that SSL has worked the same transformation on your S5 as they did on my S4 chassis Plus 8.
My respect for the people at SSL grows and as far as Aero Suspension is concerned, they seem to be the "Go To" specialists.
Now all you have to do is to enjoy your car!

How would you compare the ride and handling with your i8 BMW?

Peter

PeterG, ref your message, a clarification.
Will's Aero8 Series 5 was the first S5 we at SSL have fitted the suspension upgrade to. Ron's is next ASAP. SSL will then offer the S5 suspension as a package.
There are a few S2/S3/S4 cars now with the SSL suspension kit on (eg Peter Jenks' S4) or are now being fitted, these new coil-overs are available.
So two different Aero8 suspensions with different SSL products, don't confuse. Ride comfort target though same for both systems S2/S3/S4 and now S5.
Plus 6 is a whole other can of wiggle things! In progress - allegedly apparently!
Keep rolling - cheers ~ Peter. SSL engineer and director.

I should of explained further Peter, I had the S4 (Plus 8) fitted this week and very much looking forward to driving it.

A completely different kettle of fish Peter!

Quite hard to compare, as they're such different cars. With the SSL setup on the Aero 8 , they're now both credible long distance GTs - I'd take the I8 on serious mile-munching long motorway runs, and the Aero 8 for fun cross country A and B road blasts. The I8 for shopping trips (running silently on electricity), and the Aero for a dash out to the countryside, unless it's raining.

As for handling, the I8 has three modes -
In Eco mode, the i8 is a front wheel drive electric car with city suspension settings. Quiet, soft and comfortable.
In Comfort mode, it's a front wheel drive electric, supported a little by the mid engine driving the rear wheels, when needed. Push on in the bends and neutral handling turns to understeer.
In Sport, it's a mid engined, two to four wheel drive, with front wheel support when needed. Handling is a bit like the Shipping Forecast - "Neutral handling, becoming rear-push power oversteer maybe" when using the loud pedal - which you do, 'cos that's why you put it in sport mode in the first place.

In acceleration terms they're very similar - Road & Track clocked the original I8 to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds, though with four wheel drive available, and a the weight being low & central you'd always feel more comfortable carrying more speed through bends.
The Aero has more grunt than grip, and makes a better sound, so it's a lot more fun to drive. And more challenging, in a good way. Next time I fit rubber I must have a look at a stickier tyre than the current Yokohama.

Will

Just wondering what SSL have done that is different to my S5. From earlier comments it sounded like they left the front roll bar as is but changed the rear like mine. What spring rates did they go for?

SSL changed the coilovers and ARB & bushing to the same sort of recipie that Spax had on the development & pre-production cars, & RaceDyn's recommendations after analysis. All three - SSL, Spax and RaceDyn are in the same ballpark, apparently. It's also said to be pretty much the pre-production spring/damper/ARB setup, which Morgan inexplicably changed for production.

The SSL compliant drop links will be the main difference from your setup at the rear.

Previous poster 'The Customer' is pretty well there in his brief description. Spring rates? Well the ride frequencies are easy to calculate so RaceDyn, SPAX and SSL all did the same calcs and came, funnily enough to the same conclusions. Ride frequencies around 1.4Hz to 1.5Hz judged as being suitable for such a car and its expected use. So spring rates chosen to give those freqs. The use of compliant ARB drop links builds rate progression into the otherwise linear ARB to thus reduce harshness over broken road surfaces. We also work well with SPAX with tuning twin tube adjustable dampers that are cost effective, durable and capable of giving a good ride and are fade resistant. The same SPAX damper construction is used on many of the dampers we have supplied to over 30 race Morgans so far (including V8 and 3.7 V6), and no Morgan race driver to my knowledge has yet driven hard enough to fade or boil them, so quite happy to use them on a fast/performance road car. On a production car where quite a few sets are likely to be sold, we also mostly do not charge for the initial dynamic analysis instead prefer to learn from that and keep the wolves from our door with the eventual sales. We do charge of course for one off dynamic analyses on specials and race cars. Oh and we also love Morgans of all chassis types.
Hope this helps give a bit of background to this project - cheers Peter. SSL engineer and director.