Hangar works #3 – The back cushion for AM

One of our major concerns about buying the 3-Wheeler was to make sure that AM can drive it too.

For anyone unaware of the characteristics of the 3-Wheeler, this concern may not make sense. So, let me explain a little bit of this peculiarity of the little rocket.

In all new 3-Wheelers, the also known as 5-speeders, the seats are fixed. You can’t move them, you can’t recline them, you can’t adjust them in any way. The only thing you can do, and playing a little bit the handyman, is rise the front of the seat introducing a chock under the front part. Of course, taking the appropriate precautions so that the seat, which is not fixed, but only fitted, in its rear part under the backrest and front with one of the chassis bars, does not slide forward when you brake hard.

The steering wheel is fixed too. Impossible to adjust it in any way. You can only add spacers between the quick release and the steering wheel to move it towards the pilot.

Then, how can you adjust the car to the driver? The only way to do it is moving the pedal box back or forth. But as you can imagine this is quite a limited way to make a proper adjustment. And on top of that, to move back and forth the pedal box requires to lift the car, unscrew four large bolts from underneath the car, lift and move the pedal set inside the narrow pilot’s footwell, and redo the screwing. Not an easy task. And certainly not intended to be done quickly in a greasy parking lot or on a roadside muddy meadow while traveling.

Just looking at the scheme and the picture, you can imagine how uncomfortable is to crawl under the car to unscrew the four bolts, and later dive in this narrow footwell. So, you (or better the dealer garage) will adjust the pedal box when you get your 3-Wheeler delivered; and moving the pedal box again, because other size pilot wants to drive it, is not an option.

Everything mentioned above is the perfect excuse to never let anyone drive your car. It’s adjusted for you, and only. “That’s my toy! Back-off!”.

But is really the 3-Wheeler a single-driver car, and only? That’s something I didn’t even considered as an option. The car is ours, not mine, and AM likes to drive it as much as me. If we didn’t find an easy fix for this driver’s fit problem, we wouldn’t have bought the car!

So, what is the solution? While we first went to Malvern and hired the 3-Wheeler for a test drive, Morgan Motor Company showed us an easy fit: a back cushion for the shortest driver.

It worked neat for AM with the pedal box adjusted to my 1,80 m and the standard steering wheel (no spacers). A back cushion of 10 cm thickness approached her to the steering wheel and pedals giving her a comfortable driving position. But we suspect that this easy fit may not work so good for other size people.

Within this next video you will see the back cushion that Morgan let us for her to drive, without doing a long pit-stop to readjust the pedal box for her.

And the cushion they let us, despite it was cut for half of the back rest, was made of a single piece. And this implied an uncomfortable problem: what shall we do with such a voluminous cushion when she is not driving? The obvious solution was to turn it 180º so she used it when she sat at the co-pilot seat too. But that’s not really the best solution. Good for a short drive as we did in Malvern, but not as a permanent fit.

The cushion solution was good for us. And making it better quite simple. As long as you have a good upholsterer on hand!

We asked our trustworthy upholsterer to make a cushion, but foldable! The front of the cushion is made of a single quilted leather piece. And two stitched backs with the appropriate size each, so the whole folds in two, resulting in a convenient shorter double cushion.

We found the exact same leather colour and quality than the original upholstery. Perfect match! So, it really fits perfect. You really need a close look to realize it’s an add-on!

Once folded and put inside a simple bag – a ski boots bag does the task – it magically fits at the end of the deep co-pilot’s footwell. And it even adds some comfort, as she can rest her feet on it!

Hope you like our solution as much as we do!