Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Little Things to Annoy Us

A few weeks back, my car was showing signs of overheating so I replaced the thermostat, which was a bit sticky. Then I figured I may as well go the whole hog so I replaced the water pump, flushed the system, filled with fresh coolant and fitted a new temperature sender for the dash gauge.

Yesterday, on a 130 mile drive across from Sussex the temperature gauge started creeping up, especially in the slow bits on the A34. Oh bugger, I think, there's nothing else that can have gone wrong, surely? The needle was going hotter and hotter, by the time I got onto the M5 it was up to around 120. Even though the car was running perfectly I was just starting to get properly worried, when I noticed that nearly 100 miles after the last fuel stop, the fuel gauge was reading absolutely full.

Phew. My fuel gauge never shows absolutely full. It must be the voltage stabiliser. Got home with no problems, checked the coolant temperature with the laser, it was 82C, absolutely spot on for my car. £20 or so for a new stabiliser from Caerbont, should arrive in a couple of days.

So that's 2 issues, I wonder what number 3 will be? They always come in 3s. Except when they don't, of course.

I've had two oil pressure scares. One was on the motorway, Midget 1500, suddenly behind was dense oil smoke, and I mean dense. Pulled over and there was a pinhole in the oil pipe, which was spraying oil onto the exhaust manifold above a couple of thousand revs. I can't remember how I got it home but I do remember Aralditing the hole.

Second was on an MG Metro, on the motorway, when the oil light suddenly lit. Pulled over and checked under the bonnet. Nothing obvious and engine running normally, so I gambled it was the switch and carried on. It was the switch.

I had an oil pressure gauge going odd in the Plus8. It was the sender unit to the gauge. The GEMS management used a sender from the oil circuit so no engine being cut off for protection. Simple replacement job.
The Plus8 rad fan tended to come on regularly in summer with slow traffic. A blown fuse meant it didn't cut in once. Replaced the fuse and no problems after that. The rad was a Morgan ali one fitted by a previous owner. In my view it was marginal on cool8ng capability so sensitive to reduced airflow. Car only overheated once due to that blown fuse. I put bonnet extenders on as it got HOT under there! I was playing with extra ducted airflow to the rad bottom asi it was shielded by the panel below the grill that held the numberplate. Next mod would have been an override switch as others have done. I even started to think about two smaller fans or even forced airflow through ducts.
These were on my list of jobs for keeping the car.....then the Plus Four came along!

I had an interesting one in my 2021 PlusFour 80Kms on the motorway and the screen puts up a yellow warning “Low oil volume” - panic- pulled over expecting disaster- but no increase in engine temp and no oil dripping -electronic oil reading 0/5!!!! Limped to a garage put a litre of oil in -still 0/5! But car running normally
Went to dealer - after disconnecting the oil sensor, as a precaution they drained the oil - usual amount came out! - and re filled it still reading0/5!! Disconnected battery - after half an hour, reconnected - still the same - left it sitting and had a cup of tea! Then - magically, it suddenly says 5/5
No one knows what or why ! The car always had the right amount of oil so it’s a mystery!!!
Panic over!
Anyone had similar or an explanation??????

Cheers!

There's a strong argument that a well-maintained car should have no sensors or instruments at all, especially not those which are not binary. If you have an oil pressure gauge, you wonder whether there's something wrong if the oil pressure drops to 87 when it's usually 90. If it's just a light that tells you if the pump is working, it's much less worrying.

It's a much bigger problem with modern cars that rely on dozens of sensors all round the car, nearly alway located in places where they are subjected to all sorts of environmental influences. I've no idea why your oil level sensor played up, I owned a Citroen Berlingo for a while that had an oil level sensor which appeared to have only a marginal idea of what the true reading actually was. A dip stick doesn't have any problem, it just tells you what the actual oil level is. Actually, come to think of it, my Berlingo might have been paying homage to its ancestors. During WW2 the Germans compelled Citroen to build trucks for them, so apparently Citroen simply manufactured them with the wrong length dipstick so they kept seizing through lack of oil.

The big risk as I see it is that all this kind of stuff lures us into a state of waiting to be alerted when something has gone wrong, rather than encouraging us to check and assure that everything is ok beforehand. In theory it's much better to spend 5 minutes checking oil levels etc on a weekly basis rather than waiting until you're blasting down the motorway.

But then who thinks "Hang on I'd better check the stabiliser is still giving out 10V" on their Saturday morning check?

I got my first car at 17. A rusty wreck, but that first year I stripped an Anglia on the front lawn using only basic tools. Then I did an engine transplant without a hoist. Just a couple of mates with a rope. Within the next three years I had done a rear suspension change on a Mini, Leaf springa and kingpins on a Midget. Head off on a Mini to grind in valves. None of that was unusual. By the time I was 20 I could adapt, improvise and bodge. When you had no spare cash, that was the way.

Compare that with now. The average 20 year old won't have moved far away from a computer screen. Available cars today don't encourage hands on. Far from it. So in the last 50 years, the various nanny state interventions have created a generation who really can't fix things, and really don't want to.

Our son in law, born 1982 is closer to my generation, although more into VW. But he does things to VWs I would not really enjoy. In the early days I showed him the ropes on spanner duty but he soon went solo. I lent a hand when his Phaeton needed a replacement rack, but I rarely get called. That's how it should be.

One of the reasons that the values of classics is in decline is the simple fact that young people have no interest because they were not there in period. There will always be a few, but whereas in my day, numbers of Yoofs got skinned knucles, now that's a tiny minority. I guess every generation has seen these changes. It's uncomfortable to watch, but also inevitable.

My local village garage, now retired and closed, could not find anyone willing to get dirty when they looked around a few years before. We are a dying breed of Mr Fixits.

same issue on a 2021 auto cx. Has occurred 3 times now, no fault recorded. Each time I did a quick check to see no oil leaks and carried on. It took 2 weeks for the signal to return after the last occasion, I was in France.
Last occasion was on the way to Morgan for a service and they could not see a fault.
Sender has been replaced, cleaned etc and still occurs .
Learnt to ignore it with care.
How hard is it to fit a dipstick!

The oil pressure indication is independent of oil level indication which is just as well

Dave, I think it is called evolution, and as such may be an entirely unavoidable natural process..? But if or when the electricity goes out, I fancy our generations ability to look for and find some way to keep on keeping on, than those who totally depend upon digitisation which along with seeking efficiency and employing risk management to extremes seems to have created single point failure opportunities too many to calculate...?

I think Tim has demonstrated in his thread just how simple it is to be caught out by something entirely basic, in a world when our minds have become used to having to deal with complexities never imagined previously relative to failures of even basic system operation..... Been there done that, and more than once... Sigh..!

Have never been able to get my head round engines that have no oil dipstick, relying solely on electronic gadgetry.

Any basic design assessment would flag little that can go wrong with a dipstick but plenty can go wrong with fancy gizmos.

My BMW has to be driven several miles before a reading can be taken in neutral, stationary on level ground with the engine at tickover. The process takes much longer than extracting a dipstick, wiping it and reinserting. This must be called progress.

Presumably the CX engines are similar?

Yes. My Plus Four has the engine up to temp on a level, press a button and wait procedure.
I think a dipstick at BMW designed it.