Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) hood tensioner

Hi,

I'm thinking of adding hood tensioners to my 1969 4/4 and would like your opinions if you have fitted these please.

Mandy

I found them very helpful

I fitted these to a 4/4 I had in ‘98. Never put the roof up much but when I did I was always in a rush. These made the job so much easier.

If you have a mohair hood you will find you don't need them as the fit is far more relaxed than the Everflex where the tensioners are very helpful particularly if the roof is cold and tight.

I used to take my Everflex (4/4 Sport) indoors to warm it up a bit before fitting it and it definitely makes the roof more pliable. The windscreen cracking is the concern as you probably know.

I put hood tensioners on a 95 4/4 with Everflex hood. It was one of the best mods I did to the car.
Bob.

Very useful as long as you don't have a bench seat in your 1969 4/4

Kind regards

Arwyn

They don't make them for the 4 seater, so I made some of my own, based on a Jon Taylor design.

Has made life much easier getting the hood up and down when it's cold.

Our 4seater came with them fitted (nicely machined forgings, origin unknown) and they work well.

That depends on your "mohair" (canvas) hood. It had shrunk on my '76 making hood fitting a painful experience - there are a few on here who know how blinking difficult it was. I was going to fit hood tensioners, but:-


Arwyn beat me to it they would have put too much side load on the mounting points. I sold them to Owen (bilibib) eventually.
It may be feasible to make your own Mandy, along the lines of some homemade ones I saw on Frank Orton's 4 seater but you'd have to be careful not to trap fingers when using them.

Yes Graham and they work very well on my mohair hood. But as mentioned previously overtime mohair hoods tend to stretch, whereas as Everflex can shrink