Jerry:
This is what is so cool about traveling and then describing the route.
It is truly a very small world!
First off, we have the individual bucket seats - but they came with the
car and are simply there with no intervention from us. I am not even
sure I can tell you which buckets because there is more than one choice.
Ours has the headrest. I doubt we either could survive the bench seat.
On our last day of travel, largely due to the fact that we ran thru rain
from Cleveland to the Indiana state line on I-80 the previous day, we
ended up driving 1,100 miles - leaving at 7:00 am and arriving home at
midnite. You simply can't do that with uncomfortable seats.
We have then, to make the issue of heat through the firewall more
bearable, jet-coated the exhaust headers. This has made quite a
difference in the lower reaches of the car.
We also, this past winter, added side wind deflectors. There is no
substitute for these devices in a 30's bodystyle car. All of our other
convertibles are different in that they have sloped windshields and then
some of those wrap around to a certain degree. While the wind
buffetting is not eliminated, it is certainly much less severe.
While this is really a personal issue having to do with "hand fatigue",
I also replaced the rather fat leather-wrapped steering wheel with a
wooden "moto-lita" version.
All in all, properly equipped, our '87 Morgan is a very good touring
car. I was actually coming to the end of the life of the original
Pirellis, so we did this on rather worn tires. I have now mounted a new
set of Cooper's "Gth"-rated tires and they have taken some of the little
bounces out of things.
I realize that your Morgan is twenty years older than ours and there
probably are some differences. I am not saying any Morgan is a "great"
touring car - but the trade-off in terms of driving something different
on the road and it's capacity as an "ice breaker" to get conversations
started between complete strangers truly adds to the trips and makes any
little discomforts more than worthwhile. We have really learned our
lessons pretty well in America about not trusting one another - so a guy
in a Gatsby cap sitting in a Morgan has got to be pretty harmless, not
helpless, but harmless. Seems to work!
Later,
Arlo Levisen
Revillo, South Dakota '87 Plus 8
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