Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Lower brace upgrade

Happy new year all.

Has anyone swapped out their original 1/2” lower front suspension braces for home-made 3/4” versions? Am talking about the trailing arms that connect the rear bolt of the lower cross frame lug to to chassis side rail, about 15” long 1/2” steel tube with both ends squeezed flat.

I believe both Fred Sisson and Gary Bell (aka Cuthbert Twillie) described doing this upgrade. One of them referred to a friend who did this and said he had a whole pile of old ones, called it Malvern spaghetti.

I was wondering if anyone had done it and what steel tubing they used? Am replacing my cross frame and is the ideal time to do it, if worth it. My lower braces do look a bit haggard. I can clean them up, repaint, but thicker stuff might make for a stronger front end. So maybe I can then take it off road, go 4-wheeling, hit crazy bumps and such. Just kidding, only thinking safety.

Cheers,

Nelson ‘66 plus 4.

Always kept the original ones on my cars.

If you must upgrade then something like CDS tube would be best (cold drawn seamless)

Arwyn

So last night I took my old braces, stripped the paint off and cleaned up for repaint.

The brace on my left side (which we really think was crashed at some point in the car’s life) has a funny bend in the flat end that bolts to the chassis. It also has a prominent weld. I’m a bit surprised someone tried to repair a 15” piece of 1/2” tubing rather than just replace.

But at this point that’s what I’m going to do. I believe the original tubing has a wall thickness of about 0.075”. At least when I measure the flat ends I get 0.14 to 0.15.

I’m going to try some OD 0.75”, 0.065” thick Docol and compare it to Chrome moly 0.083”. I need to be able to squeeze the ends, and that’ll be arm-hydraulics with a jig in a vise.

I’ll let you know how it goes.