Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) wishbone front suspension

See my response below.....

One last question if I may?

Simon explained to me the steering rack used is a Mk1/2 Ford Escort item, if this is correct do you know what ratio was used? Mine seems to be 2.7 turns lock to lock which is fine for road use, however, for more spirited driving and track use where I may need to quickly apply opposite lock, I feel a 2.4 turns LTL rack may be beneficial. Such a ratio swap would be relatively inexpensive, assuming it is indeed an Escort rack, brand new quality Escort steering racks are of course freely available in many ratios from suppliers such as Motorsport Tools etc,. Obviously Monty's steering then becomes heavier, so I suspect it may force an electric power steering conversion which does then start to make the project expensive.



As it stands the unassisted steering is close to perfect for road driving just as it is, the lower than normal self centering effect is slight and a complete non-issue as in my opinion it only serves to deliver a more connected driving experience, a bit more steering lock would be nice though, although I doubt Monty's turning circle is any worse than a standard Trad Morgan?



Overall I have to say the Mulfab front wishbone conversion would be an excellent upgrade for any Morgan owner looking to improve the ride quality and turn-in on their Trad, I do however wonder if the addition of a front anti-roll bar could make it even better? It's a shame the system is no longer in production, it seems to me if someone had £6k to spend on improving the ride and handling of their Trad, the wishbone conversion would be a better choice than spending the similar sum on the SSL five link rear suspension kit.



The wishbone conversion completely removes the antiquated Morgan sliding pillar arrangement and replaces it with the proven setup of coil over dampers with unequal length wishbones, in contrast and to my mind the SSL five link only really gives benefit by replacing the leaf springs with coils and £6k seemed like an awful lot of money for a the small ride quality benefit of coils spring over leaf springs. I also figured the remaining axle location improvements the SSL five link setup offers could be achieved on a leaf sprung car with the simple installation of an inexpensive Panhard rod and anti-tramp bars so his was my approach. However, I decided not to fit the anti-tramp bars because my hope was the BCC anti-tramp springs would mean I didn't need them? It does seem I made the right choice because even though I'm now pushing 200 plus horsepower I've experienced zero tramp on my setup, the quality Bilstein dampers I chose will certainly be helping here too.

Brilliant Peter, I will take your advice and refrain from fitting a front anti-roll bar

As a comparison, my TVR Chimaera that also had unequal length wishbones but with the addition of a front anti-roll bar, actually gave more roll than my wishbone equipped Morgan exhibits without a bar????

Monty also dives a whole lot less under braking than my TVR did.

The TVR Griffith and Chimaera used an adapted Ford Sierra originally designed for a McPherson strut, TVR simply filled the whole where the strut went with a large core plug. To my mind using a McPherson strut upright with wishbones is always going to introduce undesirable compromises in geometry. I believe TVR understood this themselves as by 1996 they had already moved to a bespoke fabricated upright of their own design for the Cerbera, this continued on all subsequent TVR models, the heavy cast iron and cheap to source Sierra upright was never used again.

The Mulfab front wishbone conversion by contrast feels like the designer gave at least some consideration to anti-dive geometry, perhaps the way it behaves is in part down to roll centre again, but of course with dive brake bias will play its part too. I haven't spent a huge amount of time driving Morgans with the traditional sliding pillar suspension but I did own my TVR Chimaera for 11 years so I knew it well, and as a comparison I would definitely say the Mulfab setup works better than the TVR’s front end even after I’d equipped it with Ben Lang’s excellent Mk2 Tuscan spec Bilsteins.