Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Plus Four, Supersport & Plus Six (CX & CXV Generation Vehicles) Plus Fours suspension

did they change the geometry as well?

Late to the party, I know!

I had Nitron’s fitted to my P4 at Williams over a year ago. Set up exactly to my preferences they transformed the ride quality of the car to the extent that even my wife noticed how much better the ride quality was. Testament indeed.

After picking my car up from service in early June the mechanic asked me if I had experienced a squeaking noise from the rear suspension as this had been reported by other owners after Nitron retrofit. I replied negative. However, since then and noticeable since we have been in France (currently still here) a very audible squeaking noise has developed from the rear of the car. Maybe the suspension or could be coincidence, but certainly irritating. So along with the perennial clonking driveshafts and water entry under the bulkhead all is going well! 🙄

Andy, my 2025 P4 has Nitrons and after about 600 miles from new, developed the squeak at front and rear, plus the clonking driveshaft / wire wheels issue, most evident at slow speeds.

I reported these (along with quite a few more issues) at the 1000 mile inspection / service (at Revolutions, Perth). Clonking was solved by wheels removed, splines greased and spinners harder tightened. I forgot to ask how they eliminated the suspension squeak though.

Have since done a further 2500 miles and no squeaks at all, but the clonking has returned !

Spoke to Malvern on the issue of clonking the other day, and basically it's down to the sometimes slight mismatch in engineering tolerances between the splines and wheels.

I also wonder as mine is an auto whether the greater torque compared to the manual and the constant auto up and down shifting adds to the problems......but it seems regular heavy or graphite grease being applied to the rear of the wheels, so it covers the splines as they are put on, maybe part of the maintence schedule. When I enquired as to whether this may lead to wear on the splines/adaptors, it was felt highly unlikely unless the greasing is ignored and or or the spinners overtightened.

I've been thinking about having nitrons fitted, I think I'll wait a while and see how the squeaks issues unravel.

That doesn't sound right or good to me. To quote gomog "if there is ANY looseness, the splines on both the wheels and the hubs wear VERY quickly as they can work against each other."

http://www.gomog.com/allmorgan22.html#New%20Wire

Yes, with conflicting information (MWS, MMC etc) hard to know whether to tighten a lot more or not too much ! Currently favour the former.

I'm more worried that MMC think poor tolerances leading to slop can be fixed packing the gap with grease

I can't or wont at this time change the parts fitted to my car, but this is a well known problem at Malvern and it still occurs with the latest build cars, where I would have thought by now better machined tolerances would have been put in place to correct this issue. I wonder how many cars are supplied with wires as opposed to alloys and whether they consider it material enough to change component specifications the grand scheme of things.

The packing with graphite grease offers a very short window before the clonking returns. I took my rear wheels off a week ago last Thursday and repacked both. Both substantially retightened. I drove approximately 300 miles before the clonking returned.

One comment I would make is that the return of the dreaded clonk is noticeably accelerated by hot weather. In other words, the grease is thinning due to temperature. If. Graphite based grease is used, per MMC customer services then it needs to be one capable of operating under high temperature. Having just returned from France and driven circa 700 miles since the last grease application I am faced yet gain with having to repeat regreasing, which is frankly utterly ridiculous. In the past when I challenged MMC CS about this they told me, and I quote, ‘It’s a feature of wire wheels’! No, it’s a feature of a poorly engineered and manufactured splining system.

Quite honestly, I now think the only solution is to convert to bolted wheels, with the substantial expense that involves. A terrible indictment of yet another poor andlow quality offering from MMC.

Andy,
I would agree grease is not the solution for poor tolerances. I drove car with wires for what 26 years or so and never had to do what you are doing. That included 3 morgans, a triumph & an MG.