Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) Lightweight wheel conversion

Hi Richard
After the last race the center lock nuts at the rear wheels are very loose and it is for sure that i had lost the wheels without the additional "wire-locking".
So i am very happy that i had locked the nuts.
I had tighten the wheels with 400nm !

The difference in weight is between the original 7x15 Minilite with 205/60-15 and original brass/chrom locking nut (very heavy).

2021 i could win the MSCCD Lew Spencer Championship for the 3rd time after 2012 (Plus8, 73) and 2015 (Plus8, 84)

Safe riding for all and sorry for my bad english ;o]

Hi Andy

The original 7x15 Minilite alloys with the brass/chrom center nut are very, very heavy.
It had three problems with the Minilites.

1. Tooooo heavy
2. Good 15" tyres for Track days or fast road are difficult to find
3. At fast cornering it is possible that the inner wheel rim has contact with the camber plate ! I seen this at a few Plus4 SS.

The 5-Stud would also for me the better choice, but the convertion is too expensive

Richard do you know who makes them? Or are they the original MMC ones?

John, they are the original MMC one's - Henry Williams had a set for sale a while back though..

Hi Axel, thanks for the feedback and congratulations job well done.
Your English is just great

I would like to agree with Axel on every point. We weighed the rims of my Plus4 Supert Sport without tires back in 2013 at Morgan Flaving in Unna. It was frightening how heavy these minilites were. Approx. 11.5 kg if I remember correctly. A normal spoke wheel for a Plus 4 were 7.5 kg light. In addition, a center lock wheel hub weighs less than a bolt on wheel hub, we compared the weight at Flaving, I remember 1.3 Kg. or so in difference. Ok, this is not sooo relevant because there are no rotational masses outside on the wheel. That's why I wanted to upgrade to 5 hole wheel hubs. I had even discovered a company and a rim model which I found attractive. Funnily enough, it happened to be Image Wheels and exactly the rim that MMC later used for the ARP4. Only, all in all it was a very expensive conversion and I left it. Of the existing MMC wheels with central locking only the stainless steel spoke rim fit in terms of offsets, but that is just such a weight monster and it does not fit visually to the P4SS.

The weight problem of the Minilite was twofold. One is that the rim is very heavy. But the biggest weight problem is the adapter needed to go from 5 bolts to center lock. The other point Axel mentions is grinding the inside of the rim on the camber plate. This was the case with me, very dangerous! The rim had hardly any material strength and could have broken at any time. So my P4SS went back to the factory in England under warranty There, a kind of "workaround" was made with some rubber stoppers that prevented the deflection and I got new rims for the front. That was an ok solution but not a smart one.

All in all, I found that the (visually very nice) Minilite rims were a serious problem point on the P4SS and I can well understand that Axel finally has rims without this monstrous adapter. For the same reason (and perhaps for originality), Stefan from MSCCD opted for 5 bolt rims when developing his Baby Doll, which Morgan then rebuilt in a small series.

A new Minilite P4SS wheel



My wheel after just one year of just road use but I could not notice the dangerous grinding when driving.

Irrespective of where the extra mass is outside of the suspension, it all contributes to an increase in unsprung weight, in turn reducing suspension compliance.