Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 Disconnecting Leaking Left Fuel Tank

I bet Mark Baldwin and others would be relieved if the M3W went out of production. it must be taking up a disproportional amount of there time sorting out its many issues, or not going by 3G's post.
Its a good job its nice to look at and great fun to drive because on the reliability front its right up there with the worst. wonder where it would be on the JD power awards!

With the chassis failures hopefully out of the way, of all the irksome faults remaining with these cars, some I actually enjoy fixing in a perverse way. However this is the one that scares me the most. I’ve spent a lot of my life working with fuel accidents in the marine and O&G sectors and gasoline is not to be messed with. A rear end shunt on a car with a cracked fuel tank at the mounting doesn’t need a rocket scientist to work out what could happen next! I seem to remember an American car called the Pinto that had a habit of bursting into flames and toasting the occupants after a rear end shunt, eventually that was the subject of a major industry ethics and reform movement that didn’t do Ford much good.

If a manufacturer would mold a tank to the given sizes out of plastic fuel canister material,
we could have a solution. I guess the demand would be too small for an economical production run.

No separate vent on the right tank ? I was wondering why they have such a strange systems of vent connectors running back and forth from the filters to the tanks. Is there a solution within these connectors to create a vent ?

The economics wouldn’t feature if MMC felt the weight of a coordinated proposition. Having said that a part of me doesn’t want to beat up MMC for not addressing their customer responsibilities, why is that? If it was a tumble dryer I wouldn’t hesitate to let them feel the pain.

With all the chassis changes MMC have done on early cars they must has seen plenty of cracked tanks, how hard would it have been to get the tank manufacture to improve the brackets.
Agree 100% with the tumble dryer analogy though!

I can imagine the chat in the fuel system design meeting -
“So whose going to design the fuel system?” “Why don’t we give it to the apprentice, it’ll be a good one for learning without any risks?” “Great idea! there’s no way he’ll get that wrong” “make sure you tell him not to put the filter in the return or pick an unreliable pump or use a sender that produces random numbers or god forbid; mount the tanks in a daft way so they crack and spill fuel everywhere” “sorted!
“Now whose going to do the cush drive?”

Later in the drawing office kitchen; “did he say do put the filter in the return or don’t put the filter in the return?” “ I can’t remember, probably do?”

The cracking fuel tanks and a solution to prevent further cracking was mentioned in March 2019 http://www.talkmorgan.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/565029/2 and in an article in the MTWC Bulletin magazine in May 2019. I can report that the preventative measures to stop further cracking of the support brackets propagating through the weld and into the tank, seem to be working well. If the fixing brackets are modified as detailed and the retaining straps checked for security periodically, the tanks shouldn't crack. Not many M3W owners are doing the mods as Morgan seem to be doing a good trade selling replacement tanks to M3W customers out of warranty but that will just result in another cracked tank eventually.

If the owner of a car with a cracked tank would like to take it up with DVSA they may be interested and issue a recall? There has only been one recall for the M3W and that was for early model brake pedal failure, none for the known chassis cracks, that DVSA are also aware of.

I can repair them....

That's a great repair Simon and how it should be from the factory.
I will be carrying out Planenuts solution as a preventative measure when i get my car back.
With the fuel filter on the return line I'm surprised there's not issues with blocked and worn injectors with the only filtration being the gauze in the tank.
The only way to filter the fuel before the injectors is to use a separate pressure regulator on the return line as per Lightspeeds setup.
The combined filter and pressure regulator used as standard is for a returnless type of injector set up i think, with supply from pump into the filter, return from filter back to the tank and 58psi supply to injectors on the third connection.
Guess MMC went for a return from injector set up to avoid heat soak causing vaporizing fuel problems.