Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Running Lights

I accept it's a teeny, minor, insignificant point - but I have only just noticed the Roadster has running lights - that is, the sidelights are on whenever the ignition is on.
Anybody any experience?
I'd like to deactivate this 'Volvo' feature, according to the dealer, it was only post 2013 Roadsters that had this, and he reckons he can try to deactivate it.
However, having owned Moto Guzzis in the past, I am aware how complex electrics can be and I don't want to cause any 'downstream' issues.

Otherwise, the car continues to make me smile out loud.
I went 30 miles for petrol yesterday, but couldn't be bothered to wait in the queue - which meant that today I had another 30 miles of sunny Bedfordshire country lanes to go and find the same garage again.

Perfectly feasible to do this Ben. In essence you wire all the sidelights to stalk lights switch. In practice since the sidelight switch feeds to the BCU and then out to a pair of fused circuits 19 and 20 (o/s and n/s respectively), you would need to break this feed and connect the common feed to fuses directly to sidelight switch whilst maintaining the BCU connection. This should ensure that dash dials continue to provide full illumination when lights are switched off and any sidelight triggered inhibits remain. If you are not going to do this work yourself I would be very wary of any auto electrician touching your car without possession and full understanding of the 3.7 Roadsters wiring schematic, Morgan dealer or not.

Personally I find the sidelight permanently on with ignition feature a great help in allowing other roads users to to see these very low cars particularly white van man. So much so I've added running lights in front indicator positions using switchback LED's.

Personally I'd keep them, Mogs are very low compared to modern SUV style stuff and extra visibility helps

A different version to Richard, I added extra running lights in the valance

If you still want to proceed Ben here is screenshot of the dedicated sidelights schematic for your Roadster, illustrating my comments above.

Thanks everyone, much food for thought there - @RichardV6, how do I access your 'linked image', it won't open for me?

Should just appear, maybe your browser is not set to open images automatically. Workaround may be copying image address and opening in new browser tab.

Better still though is downloading the early v 6.0 version of 2014 onwards Classic Mog parts manuals here. This contains, towards the end of the pdf, wiring loom schematics for all models plus Roadster ones dedicated to individual aspects of your cars electrics, including the one I posted above.

Hi Ben

I am probably talking complete nonsense, I certainly have no first hand experience with this sort of thing, but I would imagine that changing the wiring, such that the sidelights are not permanently on with ignition, constitutes a modification from the manufacturers standard. If that is the case then, as I understand it, it must be declared to your Motorcar Insurers. The question is whether this mod would be deemed to make the car less visible to other road users and therefore slightly less safe. If so would that result in an increase in your insurance premium or worst still nullify your cover. I think, if it was me, I would contact the Insurers and ask before I carried out the mod.

Regards Tony

Whizjet, why don't you go the whole way... and fit LED into the side lights that way you will be seen and respected by other road users. The Mog is small and easily missed and the ones who do see you can't wait to push out in front of you thinking they will get stuck behind the little old fashioned car. Same used to happen to me in a Defender, they'd pull out right in front of me but when I fitted DRL's that made them think long enough to see that you were moving faster than they thought!

I have fitted UK legal LED headlights that contain LED sidelights. I turn on the sidelights as it makes me more visible, safety first.

Zach, Sewin, Burgundymog - thank you all very much, some really good points there - maybe I'll just leave it as is.