Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) Extra ground clearance on a Mazda boxed +4

What material did you use for the bell housing protector and how did you secure it? Looks good!
Kevin

4mm tread plate, 25mm angle with 2x 8mm holes. M8 nuts and bolts. Tread plate secured to angle with 6mm HD rivets. Angle cold bent by about 10 degrees.

Excellent Rog, thanks

As you know Monty is slammed, however, the recent bellhousing and crossmember surgery has worked a treat.

https://www.talkmorgan.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/800136/monty-gets-a-nip-n-tuck#Post800136

Monty now has a vey flat floor, except for those protruding gearbox mount nuts so their days are numbered

I'll order in some M8 x 25 allen screws

Another way to gain about 10 mm ground clearance is to change from 195/60R15 tyres to 195/65R15 or 205/60R15.

Harald

Great idea, but doesn't the increased diameter (and therefore circumference) corrupt the speedo reading ?

Hope you allow me a bit of a rant Montigue....I know well that you considered so much in great detail while modifying your Morgan, and Iadmit that I learned a bit to educate myself on more modern aspects of modifying machinery...THANKS.

Showing my age here I fear, though the term "slammed" just reeks of a modification that is perhaps less than ideal on a Morgan...and perhaps less so on our current road systems which are increasingly pot holed and inhabited by sleeping policemen..?

I well remember as a yoof on a very limited budget modifying my m/cycle, fitting 11:1 compression pistons, having to trim back the alloy in the crankcase halves to allow the lobes of the modified camshaft to rotate without hitting... and so much more.. At the time my uncle a motor cycle racer, suggested it might be better to buy a machine designed to be fast as opposed to trying to modify one more designed for more mundane tasks.... Of course I respected his opinion but where is the fun in that... (-: thus thought to carry on doing things my own way... Of course in time I did learn that he was entirely correct re the end result, however I suspect I also learned so much more about engineering principals through the mistakes I made while modifying much..... (-:

I recently watched a less than well put together vid that involved a trio of chaps seemingly wishing to highlight a possible flaw they apparently found in some modern Porsche 911 derivatives. The complaint was that they were concerned that the monocoque seemed subject to failure of the upper front suspension mounting point on the inner wing.... As the vid progressed, it turned out that their Porsches suspension had been lowered (slammed..?) and alternative wheel and tyres had been fitted, modified shockers too, also that the failure occurred hitting the equivalent of a pot hole off the Tarmac and on the entry to a corner at the side of a race track, as opposed to a rumble strip such as one might find on a F1 quality track layout... and that one of the chap`s hit the pot hole at circa 110MPH, I guess all things considered blaming Porsches original design perhaps lacked a degree of understanding relative to the extra pressures created upon the monocoque by the modifications they had made to their machines...?

Sorry to mention Porsche again, however as the owner of many Porsches Magnus Walker seems to apply another aspect of American car culture to some of his fleet, I think that term may be "outlaw" relative tovehicle modification..? When I think of America and the term outlaw, I tend to think of Jessie James or Bonny and Clyde...but then given emission and all sorts of other regs in the US since the publication of Unsafe At Any speed by Ralph Nader (?), I suspect the term outlaw relative to a vehicle perhaps relates to non-compliance with regulations..? Magnus a Porsche enthusiast from the 70`s was rather interesting to listen to the evolution in car culture, some of which I could tune into, though again he is younger than I and a decade or two difference in age can seem to alter that which one might prioritise...? I kinda smiled at the end of the vid of all the Porsches he owned he spoke fondly of a high mileage Porsche 991 turbo he bought with well over 100k miles on the clock and waxed lyrical about just how well it suited being his daily driver, declaring that he had covered an 800 mile trip in one day and got out the car with no sore head or stiffness, such was the quality of the original design...

On the other hand from a personal perspective and as i have typed in the past, t`was my good lady who suggested we head off to Europe in the Morgan to enjoy a driving holiday... which we did and enjoyed the adventure of it all, much would have been lost had we performed those same trips in a vehicle that would have provided FAR more personal comfort and practicality than our old +8..... (-:

Just thinking in type and as ever each to their own...(-:

Addendum..... BTW, my old Mog is not standard, as Kevin in it`s late 90`s restoration of what was then his +8, removed the lever arms and fitted tubular adjustable Koni shockers and stronger springs to the rear for touring purposes when carrying heavier luggage loads, front shockers were also adjustible Konis...(-:

LOW

I have changed the tyre size to 165 on my plus 4 and it gives greater ground clearance by 10mm all round, no change in normal and fast road driving except for greater comfort and I have checked the speedo against sat-nav and it reads absolutely spot on accurate as most speedo's are designed to read slightly under true speed.to accomodate worn out tyre circumference. Result, I'm totally happy with the change.

Good outcomes !

If you have the digital speedo you can re-calibrate them I understand.

Going from 60 to 65 profile makes a difference in circumference of just over 3%. So speedo at 30mph will only change by about 1mph and at 70 mph, by just over 2mph. So not a worry at all, as speedos are usually high reading anyway.
It's the way I am going to go when I change my tyres next year.