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

I can recommend Michelin Pilot Sport 4s....Quieter ride than the Avon ZZ3s the car came with and a lot more grip. I suspect shorter life....
And not the cheapest road tyre in the market... but pleasure comes at a cost...

Peter

Usually Michelin have some of the best tyre life ratings on the market, so you might be pleasantly suprised.

I agree the wear on the Michelins I have had has normally been at odds with the better grip they also offer. Still expensive but it does offset this a bit.

Peter when the suspension characteristics of the kit were set for the body weights on the +8 were the tyres characteristics taken into account as a matter of interest. I ask because the Rays/AeroMax alloys result in thin rubberband sidewalls and so the tyres impact this. I have had quite different bump characteristics from the Avon's to the MicCup2 on the back of the Coupe.

Alistair,

that is a question for Peter Ballard, I have no idea. I suspect the Avons were partly masking the inherent issues with the spring/damper setup, the MiCup2 probably revealed more of the inherent issues.
I suggest you pop peter a mail, l've e-mailed you his e-mail.

Thank you

Tyres and effect on ride comfort, I'll give the very short obvious answer. As the difference in stiffness between the vertical stiffness of the tyre and the vertical bump stiffness of the suspension gets bigger then the influence of the tyre stiffness on ride comfort gets less - sorry but that was really obvious. One (of many) rule of thumb is that as the ratio of stiffness between two compliant structures (in this case tyre and suspension) gets around 7:1 or more then the influence of the stiffer item tends to get far less important, 5:1 is OK. So as the wheel rate (stiffness of spring plus ARB) comes down from the original very high std stiffness to what is suitable for a Aero8/Plus8 as a touring true GT car then that ratio gets larger and so the effect of tyre stiffness on ride comfort gets less.
Tyre stiffness is very progressive, gets increasingly stiffer as tyre is loaded as it is only a gas spring, the piston is the contact patch and the cylinder is the volume of air inside. The rate of progression (how quickly it gets stiffer) is related to the volume of air in the tyre (try compressing a bicycle pump to feel the progression in rate). A low profile tyre on a big dia wheel will tend to hold less air than a high profile tyre on a smaller dia wheel so stiffness of the low profile tyre will increase quickly when loaded; this is not really related to sidewall stiffness until the side wall is nipped by the rim, ouch! The sidewall has some effect but its stiffness is so small compared with the stiffness from the air pressure it can mostly be neglected.
Measure your contact patch area by coating a section of tyre with black boot polish then lower the car onto the ground so the contact patch sits on a A4 white paper, worth a look if bored. That is your piston size, measure the area. If you know the air pressure you can get close to the corner weight by the simple calc of course. Then if you know the tyre and rim cross section you can calc that cross sectional area and thus the air volume and thus the tyre stiffness rate progression. Hours of fun and finger bashing on a calculator, but not sure how far this gets you as the tyre choice is as much to do with grip and personal preference - stop waffling! Cheers Peter.

I have recently put Michelin Pilot Sport 4's on the Vanquish as the OEM Yokohama rear was a special tyre for the car that you can't get any more. (bit like the GTN tyres!) So far they seem pretty good and a great price from Bracknell Tyre and Battery plus £100 cash back from Michelin. What's not to like?

Need to look at a good tyre for the GTN again soon

The Pilot Cup 2 are good.

A few months on from having the SSL suspension setup fitted, I've been over to William to meet Peter Ballard and make minor changes. A whisker stiffer at the front, and an extra 10mm ride height - in both cases not so much of a change that it alters the car's feel, but enough to make the car more usable.

I found that the factory standard ride height was often the limiting factor in using the car - from sleeping policemen to fast, undulating B roads, the standard Aero is set too low to fully exploit its performance, With the SSL setup the front and rear work together, which makes it easier to exploit more of the car's performance.

My best measure of how much more useable the Aero is with SSL's suspension is that I can now drive longer without breaks. For example (with the hardtop on) yesterday I happily did the 3 hour cross-country route from Bath to Hove non-stop.

The next upgrade will be to properly soundproof the roof, which gets noisy above 60mph - the Aero is well on its way to being a proper GT.

Will many thanks to yourself and Ron for your commentary on the aftermarket SSL suspension system upgrade developed for the Aero series 5. I recently suffered a fractured coil spring and following a couple of conversations with Dan and Peter at SSL I’ve decided to go with their system which will also allow me to play with the height adjustment when my new Wolf sump ‘rub plate’ is also fitted.
Regards Will