Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) Ground clearance/underbody shields

Thanks Rog, that looks just what I need. Is the bellhousing plate a commercial one or a self made? And just how difficult is it to get the nuts on the countersunk bolts on the rear mount? Doesn't look as if there is room to get a finger in there!

I took a more surgical approach

Bellhousing before



Bellhousing after





Crossmember before



Crossmember during




Crossmember after




Job done

All very nice. I don't do metalwork and I don't have a hoist unfortunately. It'll be axle stands and on my back for a while!!

The gearbox mount is now very much Monty's low point.



I've slowly been using the road surface to machine down the two protruding 'sacrificial' nuts as arrowed above

The tyre idea is all well and good for most, however, my plan to go up from Monty's existing 185/65 tyres to 195/65s will actually only give me 2mm of additional ground clearance. Changing my already machined down gearbox mount nuts to countersunk alen bolts adds a further 8mm, so a total ground clearance improvement of 10mm.

While 10mm doesn't sound like much, as others have suggested it's actually a game changer; however, I also have a pair of these to fit.....



Let's call them 35mm lower damper eyelet extenders, but with a 90 degree twist

To keep it all swinging with the natural rearward axle movement, Monty's rear Bilstein top mounts it will also get these eye to pin converters.....



The new setup should completely resolve any residual ground clearance concerns, while at the same time removing the dreadful binding/twisting loads that cause this sort of thing.....

Of course as many of us have learnt to our cost, those horrible twisting forces Morgan built into their ill-conceived telescopic damper conversion have the power to deliver far greater levels destruction than merely some accelerated bush wear.











Morgan's solution was to just keep making components like the lower damper mount stronger and stronger, until it finally stopped braking, as we can see below .



My thinking is it would be a far better approach to remove the twisting forces in the first place, in this respect it strikes me the below 'Rutherford telescopic damper conversion' actually got it right first time

Interesting, I had thought that the shocks were acting as involuntary bump stops by reaching the end of their travel before the suspension did....?

Be careful if you've got AVO's, if they bottom out it will break the internals and they WILL leak

My front AVO's as supplied by Cain did have internal poly bump stops I found.

Yes, fair credit to Cain as I think it was one of his re-spec upgrades to the new versions

A good set of telescopic dampers like my Bilsteins should have a bump stop on the rod, but these are really there to protect the damper internals.



I've actually temporarily replaced my original Bilstein ones shown below.



With a shorter set from Protech, I did this for more damper compression stroke which worked really well..



The true bumpstops on a Morgan are simply hard rubber blocks and work on the rebound, in my opinion they are nasty things.



I replaced them with a set of Triumph TR3 axle mounted bump stops, these were originally made from rubber and you can still buy them in rubber.



However, I went for the upgraded polyurethane type.



They gave me a bit more rebound stroke, and work great as part of my package of other improvements