Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) 2005 Roadster Axle issue

No Deejay, the list was not there from the start, I noticed it after the trek out, once the springs had been replaced, when I went into the garage during the week.
When you guys are stating accelerating do you mean giving it some real welly?

If normal or relatively brisk acceleration such as we all might do now and again on the public highway, was to damage the leaf springs, there would be a lot of unhappy Roadster and +8 customers out there. What we are looking at here is the sort of acceleration and shock loading you might experience when starting off in a hill climb or race. i.e. dumping the clutch at high revs, which you say you don’t do anyway. That’s why I have my doubts on the latest diagnosis. Happy to be proven wrong though.

No anti tramp bars on my previous Roadster and despite driving enthusiastically and dropping into some nasty potholes over the years the Mog never sagged apart from perhaps gradual natural 'relaxation' of 5 or 6mm in over ten years

Just a crazy thought but are those new u-bolt plates/saddle plates rubbing the inside of the vertical chassis on the off side? Can you slide a piece of card or something up to see if you have clearance? My u-bolt plates are within a whisker of the chassis on my offside. Loads of room on the other side.

And also if the u bolt ends are touching the chassis it will prevent full expansion of the spring. Another paper test at full rebound.

I'll check all that tomorrow (Saturday) I am pretty sanguine there was room between u bolt threads and the verts.

This gap….

If my two outer u-bolts had washers like the inner pair then mine would rub. There is also a protruding bobbly weld a at the top of the vertical chassis return that something could potentially make contact with.

My friend and were hard at it this last weekend, well saturday, wife stopped play Sunday. We reset the SSL to make sure it was set correctly, the way Peter Ballard told me how to do it. We took measurements, floor to chassis etc. all round, we believe the (assuming floor approx. level) that the chassis is 10 mm lower N/S. no apparent damage, twists, cracking evident. We then moved on to the shackles to make sure there was nothing amiss there, loosened them, they seem to move when bounced, that was easier to see when someone else was helping. My friend then looked at the U bolts to check I was correct and that they were not touching the chassis rail they were not. plenty of room. We then checked they were situated correctly i.e. they were sat in the centring hole in the axle by loosening the U bolts and checking, they are.
We ran out of time, so fully intend to remove them this coming weekend and swap them over. This will hopefully, tell us if we have a faulty spring. It could be that the body naturally leans that way however I believe as you do, that the axle resting on one bump stop is the issue that needs addressing.

That's good progress Abbo.

I feel your pain Abbo! Have you considered the possibility of lowering the o/s only with a single lowering block to gain the extension travel? Mulfab do a 20mm thick lowering block but from their picture you can’t tell if the locating hole and dowel are in line or staggered. If you were only fitting one then they would need to be inline otherwise the axle would end up further forward on one side. Maybe worth a call to check, or perhaps it’s an item Simon could help you with? It would also need longer u-bolts too.

Perhaps it’s something that could be experimented with first to check the results. Quickly sandwich in any old spacer between the axle and spring to see the effect, but obviously don’t drive it like that…..