Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 Removing the black headed wire clip retainers

I am currently in the process of changing my Lambda Sensors. I have bought the Bosch universal ones, where fitting seems fairly straightforward after you have wired the weird connector block. The only problem I am having is removing the black headed ?rivets? holding the wire locating clips onto the chassis. I don't want to gorilla these and break them. Is there any way of removing these other than drilling them or levering them out. It would be very difficult to get a drill into the location of the clips for the Lambda sensor wires. Below is a photo of the type of clip I mean. This is one on a headlight cable but the clips on the lambda sensor wires are the same.

Wilson

I don't know of an easy way, I just drilled or filed the heads off and replaced them with self tappers to hold the P clips in place. I would rather the chassis tubes had not been drilled and cable ties had been used instead but that's not the Morgan way.

Interested to hear how the sensor change goes, not done one myself yet. Any difference in the reading from old and new?

I agree, zip ties would have been a much better and quicker way to install all the cabling and easier to replace in the future when someone needs to get into the system, again, and again and again.

When I changed the plug leads on mine the leads were help by similar plastic P clips which were pop riveted to cross tubes. I just drilled off the soft head and the remaining rivet dropped inside tube, sometimes they need a push though. The same P clips were then re-used to secure new leads with fresh pop rivets into same holes. I did add a stainless washer under each rivet head though to spread the load against the plastic.

They are pop rivets the only way is to drill them out or Dremel if the mandrel is making drilling difficult.

I used a long slim cold chisel and cut the heads off. I have positioned the connector blocks that Bosch supply with the universal Lambda Sensors, where the P clip was and held that to the chassis on either side with a cable tie. I have a pop rivet kit but the pop riveter I have in France is a big two handle double leverage one (looks like a big bolt cutter) for doing the 6mm stainless rivets on the bodywork, so I cannot get it in to where the P clip attached to the chassis. The connector block is so that you can move the original quick disconnect loom plug from the dead lambdas by cutting the old wire and connect it to the new lambdas. The wire leads were all the same colour on the new (2 white heater wires and grey and black sensor wires) as the original. From appearance, the old lambdas were also Bosch. Made life a lot easier than the Magneti Marelli ones with all white wires. The first one I did seemed a real fiddle but once I had worked out a better order to do things, the second one only took me about 30 minutes from start of removal to all connected and secured. Now the next job is to replace the coil pack and plug leads, then hopefully my misfire will be history.

The universal Bosch lambdas were €55.00 each rather than £158.20 each for OEM Morgan ones. Worthwhile saving for a few minutes fiddling about moving the original quick connect plugs over.

Wilson

For the plug wires I cut one side of the loop so I can slide the wires in and out. You can’t tell and they still function like original.

So it acts like a hook instead of a capture loop?

I can get my big pop rivet tool in to the P clips on the spark plug wires. I had a bit of luck in that I thought my pop rivets were metric and they are, all except the smallest which is 3.2mm/⅛", which is the correct size for the P clips Thought I was nearly finished, only the spark plug wires to do and then I came across a: "who the £&$% did that" moment. Some idiot has cable tied the park plug wires with multiple heavy duty cable ties during one of its various chassis replacements, when the body was off. The cable ties are now wholly hidden and inaccessible with the body hard on top of the cable ties. I have just cut the old wires and pulled them through. Because I only have standard cable ties not the loop type for securing wires held away from the mounting surface, I will put a couple of wraps of rubber self-amalgamating tape on the chassis tube, where I am going to cable tie the plug wires. Had to stop to have a cool down. It is 34º outside today in the shade but I am in the sun. "Scorchio" as the Sun would put it.

Wilson

Well it's running and it idles somewhat more evenly between both cylinders. Before I would have said it idled 70% on the left hand bank and only 30% on the right hand, from the noise differential from the exhausts. It blips more eagerly and cleanly than it was doing. I will road test it tomorrow morning to check if I really have cured the full throttle misfire at 4000 RPM or if I need to order a fuel pump replacement kit from Glencoe.

Wilson