It was a cold, dark winter day when my wife and I decided on how we want to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. For a long time, we had the crazy idea to do a Land Rover Experience tour. But it turns out that these trips are way more expensive than they used to be. And even though I still liked the idea – we agreed on a different trip as I already wrote this January.
The last couple weeks at work were intense and the BVAC 2023 trip feels like ages ago. Even though the Morgan performed alright – C6622 still had (has) a number of quirks that I wanted to sort out before our 4000km round trip to Italy. Strictly speaking some of those were not really required – but bothered me nonetheless.
First up was the leaking heater value. With a 99.999% certainty we will not need the heater anyway during our trip to Italy. In the UK we did. And when engaged – we lost coolant. The new valve I received from MogParts is a piece of plastic and quite different from the old one. What I always disliked is the fact that the old valve is just dangling around on top of the engine. So, I made a simple 90-degree bracket and attached the new value to the right side of the bulkhead.
Next up was a simple replacement of the steering bump stops. The Morgan has simple think alloy brackets mount to the chassis to avoid the tires rubber against the steel of the chassis. While the left tire barely touches this piece – when turning to the right it was quite noticeable. In theory I could live with this – but when the rest of my family occasionally is behind the wheel – they obviously don’t think about it. MogParts offers Steering chassis rollers and those solve the issue a bit better. You will still notice if the tire presses against them – but at least it will not cause any damage.
The by far worst task was to remove the dashboard, seats and gearbox tunnel another time. In hindsight – none of the changes I made there would have been absolutely necessary for the trip to Italy. Nevertheless, I wanted to get those sorted. I could not get a new water temperature gauge – but technically the Smith oil temperature gauge is identical – just the symbol on the dial is different.
Replacing the old Lucas rotary light switch with an inexpensive modern part took really the most time. figuring out how to mount it, creating a holder and the fact that it alloy-casting broke right away when screwing it to the bracket – made this task a pain in the rear.
A slight rattling noise from the prop shaft when cornering left was another annoyance. I knew I had to check the gearbox tunnel. I found out that I accidently did not position it correctly last time – now I have 2-centimeters additional clearance for the propshaft.
And while at it – I also wanted to move the position of the switches for the heated seats from underneath the seat to the dashboard. With the heat in Italy the least important change I assume. On the BVAC 2023 trip – we used the heated seats in the evenings and while it was raining – put the switch position I chose earlier was bad. Two additional Lucas 3-way switches in dashboard required drilling new holes and repainting the middle section for the instrument cluster.
In my car I decided to route all cable for the gearbox, seats and handbrake switch in the middle through the gearbox tunnel. The factory originally routes them beneath the leather on the right sill and infront of the right seat – I did not like this and my variant is much easier to maintain if changes need to be done.
Last step tonight was to install a relay for the starter motor. Sometimes the starter does not fireup the engine right away. To ensure it is having sufficient amps and to remove the ignition switch as potential problem – I added a relay. I am unsure why I didn’t do this right away when I had the loom out. It is a bit more time consuming and fiddley to do this in the car – but as I have some practices now – it just took an hour.
That’s it. I am done with Morgan prep for the trip. All besides two items my task list is completely marked off. What I did not manage to get done is a customer sun roof aka Bimini – which I had as an idea. A hat and sunscreen will need to do as protection again the summer sun in Italy. And the other item…. well, something I can still do during our vacation.
Fixing C6622 
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