Here’s your sign…

Posted on May 16, 2012 by

Well, someone just saved me a lot of headache.

Along with those windshield wiper gears I got off of Ebay a week ago, I also found and bought a reproduction “Morgan Sales & Repair Centre” sign from another seller. As with all Ebay purchases, as soon as I won it I immediately paid for it, no need to delay something you’ve waited for… or so I thought. I expected a day or so delay getting it shipped, but by the end of the week I still hadn’t seen it marked as “shipped” or any tracking info, just a generic “you can expect your product within a week” comment that seemed to be put up by Ebay and not the seller. I messaged the seller on Friday… no response the whole weekend.

So I messaged them again on Monday, and again no response. The end of the “expected delivery” period was tomorrow, so I was willing to give them one more day. Well, luckily for the seller and myself the sign showed up today, which is good. I really didn’t want to have to deal with Ebay customer service over this.

The odd thing is, the whole time I was waiting, the seller was getting positive feedback saying “great product, quickly shipped, great communication”, which struck me as odd.

Oh well… anyways, the sign’s here, looks awesome, can’t wait to get it up in the garage.

Oh, yeah, by the way, the sign’s 4′ wide by 1′ tall… no reason to go small!

Posted in 1966 Morgan +4, General | 1 Comment

Hey big spender~

Posted on May 13, 2012 by

Got back from Mexico about a week ago, just been busy getting caught up so I haven’t been able to update this. A lot of replacement / upgrade parts have arrived over the past few weeks, so time to show off what I’ve been buying.

First off, we’ve got intake and exhaust manifold gaskets for the Ecotec, as well as a replacement valves cover gasket. That’ll be used when I go about cleaning up / powdercoating the valves cover. Also, I got the airflow sensor, which I’ll have to fabricate a custom housing for based off the designs on Bowtie6′s intake. All that’s courtesy of GM Parts House.

Next up we’ve got a box of switches, mostly 2 position with a few 3 positions, for the new instrument cluster. That was bought from a random internet vendor.

After that, the big pile of lighting parts from Morgan Spares, We’ve got full headlamp assemblies with new chrome rings. Also we’ve got the new front and rear indicator / brake light housings. I’m still looking into my options for doing halogen headlamps, and I need to start sorting out what I’m going to do as far as LED lighting upgrades.

Following that, a pair of brand new windshield wiper bases that I found on Ebay. Since I pretty much destroyed one of the originals in order to get it apart, this was a needed replacement for sure.

Finally, we’ve got the absolutely superb rebuild / restoration done on the windshield wiper motor done by E. Lawrie Rhoads of British Car Part Restoration. He was good enough to also send along wiring instructions so that I don’t have to worry about this rebuilt wiper motor blowing itself up a second time.

In other news, I stopped by Club Auto Sport / Borelli Motorsports today for their regular “Cars and Coffee” event. Myself and a number of other local Corvette owners from NorCal Vettes pretty much took over the showing area, though there were a number of other really nice cars, including a Ultima GTR and a Noble. I talked with the owner of the place, and he introduced me to his fabricator / race car technician Chris. Seeing as I would like professional and experienced input on designing the custom chassis for the MogRod, having someone like Chris giving me input will be invaluable towards saving me headaches down the road.

Posted in 1966 Morgan +4, Restoration, Solstice Parts Car, Upgrades | Leave a comment

Parts arrive…

Posted on April 19, 2012 by

… as we leave.

Our UPS guy showed up as we were loading up the Avalanche this morning, delivering some medical supplies and a nice big box from Morgan Spares. When I get back from our trip I’ll dig in and post up.

Posted in 1966 Morgan +4, Restoration | Leave a comment

1956 Morgan +4 one-off sports racer

Posted on April 11, 2012 by

Came across this article about a one-off ’56 Morgan +4… gotta say I really dig the body styling.

http://www.forgottenfiberglass.com/?p=17651

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Dazzled by the lights…

Posted on April 5, 2012 by

Just shelled out almost $600 on all-new lighting fixtures for the MogRod. I ordered new front signal, rear signal, brake light, and headlight assemblies for the car from Morgan Spares.

I have some of the original lighting fixtures, but they’re all in a state of disrepair. Getting new fixtures will not only improve the overall appearance of the car, but also allow me to modify the signal and brake fixtures for LED lighting without damaging original parts.

I decided to return the halogen headlights I ordered since I’m not satisfied with the build quality or appearance, and because I can just use the forward signals instead.  I’m still sticking with not putting the fender-mounted  bullet-style signals on for the time being. I need to find a quality set of 7″ round, glass or quart curved-lens, H4 halogen headlamps to use with the car, so the hunt for the best looking, working, and priced set begins!

Posted in 1966 Morgan +4, Upgrades | Leave a comment

Nice set of headlights..

Posted on April 3, 2012 by

The halogen headlights with integrated signals showed up today, did a quick test fit and they look like they’ll work. I’ll be honest, not totally in love with the build quality, or the fact the LED circuit board is visible, but they’ll work for now. At the very least, they’ll work as good placeholders for putting the car back together.

The photos show the original headlight on the left and the new one on the right.

In other news, met with my friend Steve at breakfast this morning, ended up talking with him at length regarding the chassis, got sent some really good info (in the form of a rather long PDF file).. got some reading to do!

Posted in 1966 Morgan +4, Upgrades | 2 Comments

Shelving the frame

Posted on April 2, 2012 by

Bit more clean-up around the place today. I rolled the Morgan’s wood frame out from under the shelving and took it off its cart and then proceeded to disassemble the cart. After picking up a piece of lumber, I added another shelf to the top of the parts storage, this time running the two 2x8x8′s sideways so my father and I could place the wood frame up out of the way. Nothing fancy, but it got the area cleared out.

I rolled the Solstice out to the driveway and put it back under the shelving, using the steering shaft and a screwdriver to turn the non-powered steering unit. The car rolls pretty effortlessly, which was a relief considering how kludged together some of the suspension currently is on it.

Posted in 1966 Morgan +4 | Leave a comment

Mystic blue smoke

Posted on April 1, 2012 by

So today was spent digging around online finding potential new switches for the central dash panel, may have found a good source that I’ll be following up on.

In other news, I decided to look into the windshield wiper motor, since that’s going to be one of the ‘original style’ things I’ll be retaining on the MogRod. I pulled the original wiper motor out of the storage bin, cobbled together some wiring to the points, and with my mom’s help, went over to the Bronco’s battery to test it. Well, things went as you would expect with a 50 year old piece of Lucas electrical equipment… It worked for about a split second, sparked, and let loose a large amount of the “mystic blue smoke.” Looks like I’m going to need one of these…

Luckily, I’ve already found a company here in the US that handles rebuilding these things, so I’ll be contacting them to see about pricing.

Also of note, since the cost to replace / repair the small fender mounted “bullet” shaped indicators is a bit high, I decided to get a set of halogen headlights with integrated signals in them. I’m also looking into some Painless Wiring harness sub-assemblies for things like the signals and headlights so I don’t have to worry about sorting out those things.

Posted in 1966 Morgan +4, Restoration | 1 Comment

Hot Rods & Custom Classics

Posted on March 26, 2012 by

Lucked out big time today. The weather’s been sunny most of the past week, and then the skies opened up and it deluged all weekend. However, for a few hours today the sun came out, so I decided “screw it!” and scooted on over to Pleasanton for the Good Guys car show. Gotta say, very glad I went.

I managed to meet up with a few parts vendors and get hands-on with stuff for the MogRod, so now I know which style of gauges I’m going to be getting. Also found some local sources for chroming and other goodies.

Seeing as the weather has thoroughly soaked the grass and scared away a lot of the attendees, there weren’t that many cars on display. The real lookers were, as usual, indoors, so I snapped a few photos of them to share.

The real gem of the day, though, was found when I walked through the parts corral. Chevrolet Performance had a display booth / truck set up with a few vehicles and motors on display. A green ‘hot rod’ caught my eye, and I noticed that the motor seemed pretty small compared to all the LS blocks littered about. I read the plaque and was surprised to find that the ‘repro rod’ was running a turbo’d 2.0L Ecotec block… so of course I snapped up a bunch of reference photos of the intake and such.

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Some simple cleanup

Posted on March 18, 2012 by

Just some more pulling and prodding on the Morgan this time. Tackled the floorboards and the driveshaft, and vacuumed up the piles of debris and rat crap that had accumulated around the that area as well. Nothing too major, just moving along on the original frame.

Looking over the original frame, my father and I determined there wasn’t quite as much damage to it as we supsected, so the idea of someday restoring the actual original Morgan setup was seriously discussed, but that’s for another time. At some point, hopefully soon, we will be taking the front and rear assemblies off the original frame and getting it media blasted and rust inhibiting coating put on to protect it from any further ravages of ‘car cancer’.

The other photos you’ll see are from taking a look at the Solstice up on my two post lift. That was actually done a few days prior, but I only just got the photos off my phone. Of particular interest are the two photos of the left and right side rear frames – take note of just how angled over the left side is where the car was hit.

Posted in 1966 Morgan +4, Solstice Parts Car | Leave a comment