Talk Morgan Forums Thread Like Summary - wishbone front suspension

Hi,

I'm toying with the idea of junking my sliding pillar front suspension (Morgan plus 4) and going for wishbones. Is it possible anyone can supply a full set of parts for the conversion? I have a feeling someone on here was involved with the (complex and time-consuming) fabrication and development of such a system but Librands are the only people I can find who seem to sell it. They only quote for fitting it themselves, are a long way from the end of Cornwall where I live, and appear to charge a small fortune for the job.

cheers

There has been a lot of talk about the double wishbone front suspension, so I would like to put a few facts straight.
I started at Libra Motive in the early seventies, as the second employee, Dave, the first was going back to the GPO as an engineer. I had a racing and fabrication background. Rob was looking after a few race cars and we built a matching pair of formula 750 cars, as well as Morgan work. We also looked after MMC 11
as it was racing in the production sports championship with Charles or Rob driving.
The first double wishbone incarnation dates to the late seventies with Rob Wells and the modsports Plus 8, built to the RAC blue book rules which stated the concept must be retained. Rob named the car MMC 3 in homage to the works. Morgan sliding pillar front is independant, the method of construction was not specified. We used a stock factory supplied Plus 8 chassis and fabricated a tubular front crosshead using Huron F2 wishbones, steering rack and uprights. Rules stated the gearbox output flange had to remain in the same location, that was to stop anybody moving the engine back. Keeping the Moss box it was not difficult to cut 15" from the bellhousing torque tube moving the engine back, keeping the gearbox in stock location. With Rob driving we won the Modsports championship outright in 1981. There is an article about the car on the Mulfab website, home page and click on the 'history' link. The rule book was rewritten end of the year to state sliding pillar must remain as constructed effectively banning the car. Having had too many offers of jobs I left to start on my own. Rob along with his staff, Terry Foxen and Brian Gateson had to cut apart the chassis front to install sliding pillar. Never as quick and harder work to drive. Renamed MMC 4. The car still exists in Switzerland and is raced occasionally.
We moved to Coventry in '94 working from John Eales premises. He was building a Plus 8 race project which I had the task of finishing. We met Klaus Nesbach
in the Morgan challenge with his Plus 8. He was commuting from North Germany towing a trailer. Always having problems. Offered to take his car back to the workshop, fix it and take it to the next race. All he had to do was turn up and drive. It worked and he won his first race. He did a deal with John Eales to buy his race car and for me to finish the project and run it for the next season. Morgan rules for Class A were a single sheet of paper so were rather ambiguous in the interpretation. Keeping the top crosshead king pin bracket, turned a spherical mounting, fabricated a lower wishbone and converted the sliding pillar to function as a McPherson strut using a coil over as spring damper. That was objected to so just bolted in a solid king pin instead. First race at Thruxton Klaus put it on pole in qualifying. All cars were weighed after practice and we were about 80 kg underweight. Unforeseen. Had to start from the back. Bolted in all the weight we could find. Heavy rain for the race with no wet tyres Klaus finished second. Did all the rounds that year and Klaus won the championship outright breaking most of the lap records. His Cadwell record was just beaten by Keith Ahlers about 10 years later. Then the rules were properly reworked making it impractical so Klaus sold the car. The front was put back to the McPherson front and it now has a new life in Germany as a track day fun car..
About a year later Rob Wells asked me for some help to finish a long drawn out project. He was building a new project Plus 8. Had commissioned Spyder, who make the replacement Lotus Elan chassis to do a similar chassis but to take a Plus 8 body. That came with their double wishbone front end and a fabricated de-dion rear. The only main visual difference was the wheels using 4 stud. And disc brake rear. Looked like Triumph GT6 wishbones and front uprights. Rob lent it to the factory for a week where it had very favorable comments, mainly as to why they could not build cars like that. Still owned by Nigel Sill the last I heard.
I had known Dave Rutherford for many years. We crossed paths at the Mog show at Gaydon in maybe 2005. He had one of his front double wishbone crosshead conversions and was keen to show me. Designed by Alan Staniforth, a name I knew well. He had built a sprint and hill climb car for Mike Sedgewick using the front and fully spaceframed. About a year later he rang me saying he was retiring and asked if I was interested in buying the front crosshead project. It was not of any personal interest so I declined. Couple of months later Rob Wells asked me if I could help him with a race meeting in Portugal as he had to take two cars and look after them. Driving down he was explaining he wanted to build another project Plus 8 with proper suspension. I mentioned about Dave giving up and the front suspension. Rob contacted Dave as soon as he got back and a week later turned up at the workshop with the sample crossmember in hand with the instructions
to 'make those'. With an A4 folder of drawings. Nothing on cad. Kept the geometry the same as I trust Alan. He was well into lightweight using 1.6mm so I went up to 2mm sheet for durability and revised the construction to make life easier. Used the stock stub axles modified to take upper and lower ball joints.
Biggest pain was there are three different widths of crosshead, so three widths of wishbones, jigs and steering racks. All the crossmembers had to be the same width otherwise made problems with steering rack lengths. Bump steer was down to zero deflection.
Made the jigs and Rob had the first to bolt into his chassis. Few months later he delivered the chassis to my workshop with instructions to not use the leaf springs
but design, make and fit 5 link axle location with rocker arm rear suspension and rising rate springing. It drove and rode very well. He kept it for many years.
About 2009 I heard of crashed Mk 1 V6 Roadster, hard frontal. Only had 16K on the clock. Broken the steering rack, bent crosshead. Insurance write off. Went to see it and it was straight from the bulkhead back. Ideal to convert. Got it delivered with the plan to rebuild with the front and rear suspension.
2010 Simon joined so it was an ideal project for him to be involved with. Several years later it was back on the road. I had all the drawings on paper, Simon worked with cad so if ever there was a modification required all the drawings were transferred onto his laptop. made life easier and quicker. In three years it was used for a few demonstrations, otherwise it just sat in the workshop. Would cruise at high speeds straight and true, and go over speed bumps without feeling anything.
Everybody who drove it loved it. Otherwise was rarely driven. Eventually was sold through Williams to Richard Adams near Bristol. He loves it but never really goes anywhere so is thinking of selling.
As to how many? Chas and Bob of Mogsport I believe fitted three in the workshop. A couple went to UK dealers, and we sent one to Belgium, one to Romania and one to America.
There is no way the new Mulfab could economically reproduce these, and I don't believe they would know how to.
About 40 hours labour to fit. All the front body has to be removed and bit of chassis cutting. The kit £2.5k so a bill of £6k adding vat about right.
Finally the original Mike Sedgewick race car was sold and went to Techniques for converting to Morgan challenge, so they had to refit a standard crosshead.
Peter Mulberry

The steering rack used on the Mulfab front wishbone conversion is a Mk1/2 Escort item so it's not expensive at all, it also readily available in a huge range of gearing options from 2.9, 2.7, 2.5, 2.4 to 2.2 turns LTL; for the record, the rack in my Mulfab wishbone conversion is 2.7 LTL.

Now, let's be honest with ourselves here, the Morgan sliding pillar suspension is very ‘vintage’ in its design, it's also extremely compromised in a number of ways and seems to be the source of much criticism on these pages with owners often complaining about crashy ride quality, bump steer, excessive maintenance requirements, high wear rates, and a short service life.

Being blunt, it's quite clear other car makers would have copied Morgan's sliding pillar front suspension if it was any good, they didn't, indeed from the 1950's on car makers tended to go in one of two directions.

1. McPherson strut - Ford lead the way here

2. Double unequal length wishbones with coil over damping - Triumph lead the way here, but in truth they took it from race cars of the period

If someone fitted a front wishbone setup to a Morgan and it didn't work very well, it wouldn't have been because front wishbones are a bad concept, it'll be because the setup was poorly designed. My Mulfab front wishbone setup works extremely well, tun-in is wonderful, ride quality and handling is impressive too. However, I think what any Trad Morgan owner would immediately notice is how well the Mulfab wishbone conversion soaks up rough surfaces and potholes compared with the sliding pillar setup, sadly the ability for a car to deal with potholes is becoming increasingly important given the current state of British roads!

There are however two issues with the Mulfab front wishbone conversion:

1. It was very expensive - I have a bill in Monty's file for over £6k

2. It's no longer available - I believe SiFab was looking at producing a second run, but I don't think there was enough interest/commitment for him to start the project before he sadly closed his doors.

As I understand it only six Morgans ever received the Mulfab front wishbone conversion, so finding a car with setup already fitted would be very challenging indeed, but if you can it's definitely a big improvement over Morgan's antiquated sliding pillar arrangement so should be viewed as a very desirable upgrade.

Of course Morgan themselves have been using twin unequal length wishbones for years, starting with the Aero 8 and continuing now with the new CX platform cars. The sliding pillar front suspension is almost as iconic as the wood frame construction, but when Morgan designed the CX platform cars they didn't fit the sliding pillar setup, and for good reason. They retained the ash frame because it’s so much part of the car’s unique identity, but for obvious reasons they went with the far superior wishbone arrangement both front and rear.

One of the kits that went out for home fitting was to Norway. One of the well respected engineers who I had known a very long time so he was trusted. If anybody has followed the saga of Froya the Morgan which is a 60's Plus 4 that did the Peking Paris that gives Trond Brathen credibility as an engineer. After we laid down the basic chassis he built that car which belongs to his customer Bjorn Schage, who has a lovely wife that owns an early Roadster 4 seater. That was the car Trond converted to double wishbones probably 10 years ago. He had the car in his workshop last year to give the front a good looking at after 60 thousand miles. A lot of wear was expected so he was prepared to take it apart. Apart from the rubber inner bushes on the wishbones, it was all perfect. He had bushes in stock, just cleaned it and gave it some more paint.
As in the notes from Dave Rutherford the inner wishbone bushes are Lotus parts as used on the 70's Plus 2 models. Lotus dealers know how to charge so I got them direct from the manufacturer, company called Robush. They may not deal with small numbers from the public. No use asking them for Lotus bushes, they will want sizes. Which I cannot remember apart from the centre bore is 12.7mm (1/2"). Probably less hassle to pay a bit more through Lotus if needed. Try Allon White.
Top and bottom ball joints are a different matter. These were a headache. When Rob turned up at the workshop with a pile of bits and the instructions to 'sort it', that took a while. Alan Staniforth built lightweight. Top balljoints were probably Triumph herald/GT6. The bottom joints were Jaguar XJ6 bolted onto a welded block under a cut down stock upright. Those Jag joints are bombproof. Except they were mounted upside down, so all the load was on the pressed dust cover. Could not turn them around so had to find an alternative. Went to our friendly ball joint manufacturer called Amsteer. Known them years. They only make ball joints. Explained and they came up with a heavy duty joint used by TVR, so I asked for those but machined to use the Jaguar ball and pin as I had already made a batch of tapers.
Top joint is also Jaguar XJ6 based, but turned 90 degrees. Looks the same as standard Jag, but is not. Top has grease nipple so should never wear out. There were some top and bottom joints in stock which went with the spares to the new owners along with all the jigs.

(When I spoke about the system with Simon Hall of SiFab just before he closed his doors, he told me he was responsible for fabricating all of the six Mulfab front wishbone conversions sold.)

Sadly Simon kept commenting how he was responsible for designing and making virtually everything. Even though the first was done before he arrived. He did not make them all during his employment, and there were few more in the years after he left.

I was surprised to see one of our invoices for the kit. Apart from my Roadster we never actually installed one ourselves. Rob Wells fitted his own and brought the car up for checking. We shared the workshop with Chas Windridge who was Mogsport and they did all the installations. We paid them £3527.27p on 10th April 13. Knowing Chas, they did not want to invoice direct so they could not be responsible if anything went wrong.

I don't have any contact names at Amsteer, so whoever answers the phone, although it seems the balljoints are not an issue. They are so overengineered for the application. The top has a grease nipple, so should never wear out. There was no room to fit a nipple to the bottom joint. The only comment I would make when tightening the long wishbone bolts, probably with the wheels off for access, is to have axle stands under the hubs so any tightening is with the wishbones at ride height so the bushes are not preloaded.
Peter