Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) How to get access to a 3.7l Roadster front UJs

The normal accesss to the front UJs is with the car on a lift to go in via the gap beiween the floor boards . This photo from Cooperman shows the box without the gear lever mechanism & the gearbox cover. The gap is behind the cross member . On my car the gap is less than 1/4 inch so of no use & I presumed that after 29k miles the UJs hadn't been greased..


I wondered if I could add inspection hole(s) in the gearbox cover to access the UJs.Going in from the drivers side would remove the risk of hitting the handbrake cable. Scaling up from Cooperman's photo was dangerous ( I remember this being drummed into us at tech drawing class at Uni.). Richard V6 offered to measure up on his later Roadster Morton the dimensions & I am glad he did as I would have gone in too far forward based upon the photo.

Richard told me:-



This plate viewed from underneath running across width of car supports rear of gearbox as seen and cross member visible from above sits above it, leaving plates rear edge to right in pic to provide supporting lip for floorboards. Using rear edge of cross member with covers removed as horizontal datum and top of floorboards as vertical datum. Sliding joint nipple is 21mm behind and front UJ nipple 13mm in front. Bottom of propshaft in vicinity of nipples 107mm above floorboards - so you would need to make access slot a half shaft diameter above that plus a bit more to allow for downward facing access. Suggest horizontal rectangular slot with half round ends. Gearbox filler plug centre is 235mm forwards of datum and 80mm above floorboards. Hope this helps but please double check as best you can before committing. .

I actually drilled holes at 52mm diameter at the following measurements.

Front UJ 13mm in front of the datum and 110mm from the top of the cross member. This proved to be bang on for the front & the nipple was even aligned when I removed the metal plug.

I didn't fancy cutting a slot as Richard suggested as the cover has a bend in it right between the two holes. & I was worried about affecting the rigidity of the cover.

For the rear UJ I cut at 21mm behind the datum but slightly higher than the front to give a view down onto the prop shaft. In the end the rear UJ sits in between the two holes but is easily accessed & was also aligned perfectly. So they were both greased.
I then made two covers from some old ali sheet & put on each a round plug of noise / heat insulation to replace that removed from the hole. These covers I fixed with self tappers.



The rear UJ after greasing.



A good vacuum up of the swarf followed together with refitting the cover

A quick test drive gave I think a smoother ride.
I elected to leave the greabox filler for now as the gap between the cover & the box is small .

My thanks to Jon & Richard for the help. I can now ensure the UJs are greased annually.

John, & Richard, thanks for the info, it's about time I sorted mine...

Good result John. As mentioned armed with your success will try out my measurements for gearbox filler/level plug access hole.

Will check results first but Cain added some slickshift or some such to a FolkMog members Roadster.

Interested to hear that Wolf have been able to fit Slickshift to a Morgan. It is a simple bit of kit but I thought it was only for Land Rovers. Do you know if it made the rather clunky (at least in the S2) shift smoother and faster?

I know Cain changed the oil but I can't remember to what.

Jon,
as you are going to do this I thought this might help.

The ali is basically 2mm thick, my tin snips weren't up to cutting it. A nibbler would allow you to drill one hole & cut that oblong box shape, I don't possess one so opted for the 2 hole solution plus I wasn't sure how cutting the box across the bend in the cover would impact it's strength.

Fleabay sell nibblers from under £20. It could be very usefull for the oil filler where the gap from the cover to the box is so small.

The ali of the cover is backed with insulation. I was worried the disc I was cutting out would fall into the cavity but the foam holds it if you are carefull, though I was also able to stop cutting and leave a small part of the disc connected to be safe.

One of the discs I cut out.

Before you go ahead with John's gearbox cover access suggest checking underneath car Jon. Given our cars were built just a few months apart you may have this access to greasing as I did. The floor panels supporting seats are still nominally around just 1/4 inch apart as John's, but on the drivers side alone the inward facing edge is cut away by nearly an inch over a length of several inches to front edge. You can see the gap this allows on John's second pic of my car. Looking at a slant forward and upward angle over cross member a grease gun can easily reach the sliding joint nipple after removing its plastic cap. The actual front UJ nipple, further forward still is a little trickier mainly because of its angle. In my case a greater angled grease gun stem was required (thanks John for donor which I bent to suit) but greasing is then achievable. If you can have access to a ramp it makes the whole process much easier.

Interestingly Richard my sliding joint nipple had no cap but it was obviously sprayed as paint covered it. You can see the remnants in the photo of the nipple after greasing. I presume / hope they grease the sliding parts before assembly.

Link to my post on drilling hole for Roadster 3.7 gearbox filler plug access here

Having checked the filler plug could actually be removed from the access hole I cut in the gearbox housing I made up this cover plate.



I lined the inside with a couple of strips of self amalgamating tape to provide a waterproof seal when tightened down.