26 replies to this topic

[TerryS]

An interesting article

https://vintageracec...ine-for-morgan/

[Gary C]

A slightly mis-leading thread title.

[Catalina Park]

End of a line, not end of the line.

For those that don't want to click the link Morgan had stopped production of cars with a steel chassis. This has come as a huge surprise to some because a lot of people think they have a wooden chassis.

[BRG]

This will solve the problem of rusting chassis on your Morgan.  Now it is just death watch beetle to worry about.

[Tom Glowacki]

A slightly mis-leading thread title.

 

That depends upon how you frame it.

[arttidesco]

 This has come as a huge surprise to some because a lot of people think they have a wooden chassis.

 

 

Yes it was only during a factory visit that the penny dropped that wood is not used in the construction of the chassis at all, ash is used for the frame around which the aluminium panels are wrapped, I guess the confusion arose because of the loose use of the words chassis and frame 

[BRG]

Ash frames were the norm in the era that Morgan harks back to.  It was the standard method of body construction for many marques.  I remember being surprised at a Beaulieu Autojumble to find how many brand new replacement ash frames were on the market, for a range of cars.  It used to be British ash wood, but i recall Jeremy Clarkson a year or so back bemoaning that Morgan had had to start using German ash wood due to the ash dieback problem.

[Lee Nicolle]

In the very distant past car bodies were wooden framed. I was looking at an Austin 7 last weekend full of rotten wood. The owner though works with wood so easier for him than most. How many Mogs have the same issues.

Morgans were a  wooden  structural member on a ladder frame.\Like many cars and commercials are with steel bodies

I have never really understood why. Metal is far easier and simpler to work with. The reason 99.9% of the cars on the road are metal.

The workmanship of Morgans is very good, but it is still WHY.

There is a video made recently that I saw on TV with a Morgan factories  tour and is now on You Tube. Very interesting and should not be too hard to find.

[Allan Lupton]

Programme about the Morgan +6 repeated on TV in the UK yesterday. That car has an aluminium structure but still with a timber and aluminium coach-built body. We were told aluminium was more corrosion-proof which is not my immediate thought in this country with its salted roads in winter.

However someone spoke of working on an old Morgan where the timber body frame was fine but the steel chassis had rotted away!

[Charlieman]

In the very distant past car bodies were wooden framed. I was looking at an Austin 7 last weekend full of rotten wood. The owner though works with wood so easier for him than most. How many Mogs have the same issues.

Morgans were a  wooden  structural member on a ladder frame.\Like many cars and commercials are with steel bodies

I have never really understood why. Metal is far easier and simpler to work with. The reason 99.9% of the cars on the road are metal.

Things were different in 1930, the end of the vintage era. Motor technicians and engineers knew a lot about working with wood frames, wood bodies, metal panels on a wooden frame, fabric bodies -- so steel bodies required a new understanding. Have you thought about how those ladder frames twisted and the otherwise incomprehensible design decisions? You couldn't just assemble the components of a vintage car in a much stiffer car.

 

The cost of metal bodies -- even without unitary construction -- was beyond many small car companies. Ignoring manufacture, it would have required several pattern makers and drawing office staff for a single car model. Thus from circa 1930, we have cars which are defined by the VSCC as post vintage (from small companies) and new series of metal bodied cars on conventional chassis. A few years later we have unitary body cars plus steel ones built on ladder, backbone or platform chassis. Manufacturers learned how to use steel very quickly.

[D-Type]

In the very distant past car bodies were wooden framed. I was looking at an Austin 7 last weekend full of rotten wood. The owner though works with wood so easier for him than most. How many Mogs have the same issues.

Morgans were a  wooden  structural member on a ladder frame.\Like many cars and commercials are with steel bodies

I have never really understood why. Metal is far easier and simpler to work with. The reason 99.9% of the cars on the road are metal.

The workmanship of Morgans is very good, but it is still WHY.

There is a video made recently that I saw on TV with a Morgan factories  tour and is now on You Tube. Very interesting and should not be too hard to find.

For a given stiffness, as opposed to strength, a wooden member is lighter than a metal one.

[sabrejet]

For a given stiffness, as opposed to strength, a wooden member is lighter than a metal one.

 

To be pedantic, it depends on which metal you are talking about and very much the wood type.

[Charlieman]

To be pedantic, it depends on which metal you are talking about and very much the wood type.

Or to be even more pedantic, direct loads or bending loads, directionally.

[MartLgn]

Programme about the Morgan +6 repeated on TV in the UK yesterday. That car has an aluminium structure but still with a timber and aluminium coach-built body. We were told aluminium was more corrosion-proof which is not my immediate thought in this country with its salted roads in winter.

However someone spoke of working on an old Morgan where the timber body frame was fine but the steel chassis had rotted away!

I was sceptical having seen the Bentley & RR editions but it was an interesting watch.The company historian fellow was ready to debunk the myth of the wooden frame being the chassis! 

 

What really drew my attention was the (£90k) car undergoing its final PDI having the out of tolerance front camber rectified with a 'shim correction system'  so much for the latest bonded chassis

[Charlieman]

What really drew my attention was the (£90k) car undergoing its final PDI having the out of tolerance front camber rectified with a 'shim correction system'  so much for the latest bonded chassis 

Million pound designs for F1 cars are created on plastic bucks to a fraction of a millimetre. From the bucks, moulds are created, mostly hand lay up. And from the moulds, chassis are layed up in carbon reinforced plastic with metal inserts when required. Fraction of a millimetre accuracy grows in the process to a bit more, so the finest engineered cars still have 'shim corrections'.

[10kDA]

I had thought the biggest reason some cars continued into the so-called modern era with wood framing for bodies was because that is what defines the traditional method of coachbuilding. But some of the posts here make me think about twisting, somewhat flexible metal ladder chassis frames and the relationship of wood framing for body panels, and the fact that wood has no fatigue life - as in Infinite. All metals certainly do, and aluminum is markedly worse than steel in this regard. Wood can be stressed to just less than yield and return for infinite cycles. So it would seem a flexible ladder frame with a body mounted over wood framing might be supple and pliable enough to last a long and trouble-free time.

[Allan Lupton]

 So it would seem a flexible ladder frame with a body mounted over wood framing might be supple and pliable enough to last a long and trouble-free time.

It's not quite that simple as although the timber frame can take the flexing the aluminium alloy cladding often cannot. When I got the car that you see in my avotar it was only 40-odd years old, but had cracks in the rear body starting from the corners of the dicky-seat cut-out. 20 or so years later we repaired those cracks and added some metal strengthening but the cracks reappeared within months. I console myself with the thought that it's an original feature. . .
 

[Lee Nicolle]

Million pound designs for F1 cars are created on plastic bucks to a fraction of a millimetre. From the bucks, moulds are created, mostly hand lay up. And from the moulds, chassis are layed up in carbon reinforced plastic with metal inserts when required. Fraction of a millimetre accuracy grows in the process to a bit more, so the finest engineered cars still have 'shim corrections'.

As someone who owned all the moulds for all my fibreglass racecar  parts, I am here to say it is not really repeatable. c/f moulded in an autoclave maybe but not parts hand laid. And my fibreglass bloke was quite good.

The moulds were taken from OEM panels, the flares taken from hand fabbed alloy components. Fitting was always an issue.

[john winfield]

End of the line not for Morgan but for actress Lynda Baron who has died aged 82. Only the other day we were discussing her Morgan adverts which featured in 1960s Motor Sport.  RIP Nurse Gladys Emmanuel.

[Doug Nye]

Indeed - good luck to Moggie but RIP to the entirely admirable Nurse Gladys...  What is all this tripe about men commonly dismissing women as weak and feeble?  

 

(Not in our 'ouse...    )

 

DCN

[Bloggsworth]

Indeed - good luck to Moggie but RIP to the entirely admirable Nurse Gladys...  What is all this tripe about men commonly dismissing women as weak and feeble?  

 

(Not in our 'ouse...    )

 

DCN

Who first came to my notice in That Was The Week That Was as a replacement for Millicent Martin.

[john winfield]

Who first came to my notice in That Was The Week That Was as a replacement for Millicent Martin.

 

Yes, 'Star of BBC 3' is the tag on Lynda's Morgan adverts, BBC 3 being, I think, the TWTWTW team minus David Frost.

[Catalina Park]

[BRG]

I wonder if she really did buy one?  Was advertising less economical with the truth back then, or was it worse?

 

I hope she got a good trade-in price when she swopped to the Morris Minor.

[john winfield]

I wonder if she really did buy one?  Was advertising less economical with the truth back then, or was it worse?

 

I hope she got a good trade-in price when she swopped to the Morris Minor.

 

I think she eventually traded in the Morgan and the Moggie for a Slingsby T67 Firefly, and part-exchanged Arkwright for the much better-behaved Pippin.

[Catalina Park]

She is survived by her two children Sarah and Morgan.

[JacnGille]

End of the line not for Morgan but for actress Lynda Baron who has died aged 82. Only the other day we were discussing her Morgan adverts which featured in 1960s Motor Sport.  RIP Nurse Gladys Emmanuel.

I guess she'll be ironing her panties for Arkwright once again.