TR3 & Morgan +4 Progress Report

 

TR3 & Morgan +4 chassis under assembly

TR3 & Morgan +4 chassis under assembly, click for enlargement

 

We’re moving along with the assembly of these two chassis, starting at the back and working toward the front.  A temporary shortage of TR3 lower wishbone bushings slowed us down a little bit, but that should be remediated tomorrow.  

We stock every last piece of post war TD-MGA/B/C  front suspension, but we’ve been more casual about Triumphs because we haven’t done the same volume of front end work that we’re doing with MG’s.  

John checks rear brake adjustment on the TR3

John check his rear brake adjustment

 

John can be seen here checking the action of the rear brake adjuster on the right side.  He plugged the breather and ran the rear axle thru the blast cabinet and  pulled the axle half shafts,  stripped off the brake assemblies & prepped them individually. Then he stripped the rear hubs and cleaned & repacked the rear wheel bearings, which  run in grease and not gear lube.  

Butch measures up to install rear shock mounting plates

Butch measures up the frame for the rear shock mounting plates

 

Butch, meanwhile,  has begun installing the +4 rear suspension.  It’s a classic pre-war arrangement underslung at the back with a good deal of chassis flex to improve comfort (??) and road holding.  It is said that if an experienced Morgan driver runs over a dime on the road, he can immediately tell if it’s heads or tails.  John also prepped this rear axle in similar fashion to the TR3.

  This Morgan, in addition to being in need of a new frame, was also in need of new kingpins.  The supply lines for these are somewhat limited.  You can’t get them at NAPA or even J.C. Whitney.  So we did the easy thing and asked the owner to make ’em for us, and some spares, too.  This is one of the benefits of having a Morgan-owning skilled machinist on the customer list.  

  We’re expecting to have these in rolling chassis form by the end of next week.  Hopefully, by that time we’ll have a recored radiator and resealed gas tank back for the Old English White MGB .  We stock new radiators for later MGB’s, but the replacement early car radiators are very disappointing and we seem to be replacing a couple of them every year after a very short time in service.

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