New replacement units for the MGF hydragas spheres.

Bryan Young has received permission from the manufacturer to allow us to post up this exciting information about NEW suspension parts to replace the dwindling supply of original hydragas spheres.

SUPLEX UK

Our SUPLEX SUSPENSION conversion to the MGF is pretty well as described by Roger Parker in the MGOC magazine.

My first involvement with the MGF was assisting in the set up of the Trophy cars with Wynn Mitchell. These cars still running Hydrogas of course were restricted to damper tuning work only. At that time I was Technical Director of Eibach and we had a high tech race damper programme. The MGF race series was the first series to use those dampers.

It wasn’t long before I became heavily involved in the development of the coil sprung MGTF with the development engineers from MG-Rover.
Later I was to be thrown down the challenge of developing this conversion. Having been told it was impossible. I set out to prove that wrong. Also by this time I had set up the business centre of SUPLEX GmbH the German specialist suspension companies UK operation as managing director. I was approached by Caterpillar’s MG-ROVER spares division who were desperately seeking Hydrogas units as the supply was completely at an end to develop an alternative.

This prompted the completion of the project which I’d had in embryo state for some time.

Where we are now is having two prototype car sets available.
One on our own development car and one which will be fitted as a feature article to come out shortly taking the reader through all the steps in performing the conversion.

Essentially this conversion is designed to salvage a car when the Hydrogas fails and no replacement can be found. Whilst the concept and construction lends it’s self to further tuning work, in its base form that is not the intention.

It is designed to replicate as nearly as possible the characteristics of a standard MGF.

It was also intended that the completed design would require no modification work at all and that the conversion could be fitted quickly with simple tools. This we have achieved.

In order to achieve realist costs we are having to produce the parts we need in very large quantities, minimum one thousand pieces at a time. Hence we need to gauge interest at this time.

We are now confident there is a demand and are putting our first volume pieces into production during August 2010. We anticipate having the kit available in November 2010.

Our target retail price for the complete conversion is £850.00 + VAT
Which will include two front and two rear conversion canisters plus two front and two rear dampers.

We expect to make these available at this price from recognised MG specialists.

Dan White
Managing Director - Suplex UK Ltd
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
01909 770660

From my point of view, this is great news. The supply of hydragas spheres is dwindling quickly and without this there would soon come a point where MGFs would be scrapped purely because of lack of availability of Hydragas units.
Thanks to Bryan for enabling us to have a first look at this news.:yesnod:

Good to know, I had heard there was a replacement on the cards. Presumably this does way with the varying ride height situation and the need for tracking adjustments when the height is reset:)

MGFmad;15175 wrote: Good to know, I had heard there was a replacement on the cards. Presumably this does way with the varying ride height situation and the need for tracking adjustments when the height is reset:)

The sphere is replaced by a canister with a variable rate spring inside. It is a direct replacement that bolts in place of the hydragas sphere. So the advantage is that it is easy to fit, and the ride height will be fixed. You can, presumably still use lowering pins with these units also.
The disadvantage is that you must replace all 4 at the same time.

News on the matter:

Quote from the "MGF Technical" BBS :

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Clive Berry, Tewkesbury, Glos

Gents, the SUPLEX replacement suspension is in production now and deliveries to distributors will commence shorty. We have a number of pre-production sets available direct. They vary only in minor detail from the production kits. Please contact me for more details.

[email protected]

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btw. I think I'll be the very last who changes to the spring coil kit. There oare other solutions to keep the hydragas suspension, even the rear units are rare. As long as I could find two new front units I'd modify them and put them to the rear.

That is good news - my concern is cost, there can't be many F owners that can justify fitting £850 worth of suspension to a car that is at least 10 years old and worth, in most cases, less than twice that.

Indeed, that's right for the domestic market.
Mind you, a lot of MGF are running abroad. Another load of RHD MGF get moved currently to mainland. Some convert them to LHD, some run them as they are.
Anyway, I hope the kit will fulfill the expectations.

I am over here in Australia, the MGF's are significantly more expensive to buy than in the UK. Replacement parts are very expensive and Hydragas speres are as scarce as rocking horse crap. I bit the bullet and purchased the Suplex kit in order to avoid future problems in this area. I am not sure what the comparrison in ride will be like, from what I have read it should be similar. However if there is a difference I am happy to trade off for peace of mind.
Will keep the forum updated on my installation etc.
Adrian

Ooh get someone to take lots of pictures, please. :yesnod:

Yes, please .... pictures :yesnod:
And measures ! Resulting ride height. And the type of the shockers.

Clive from SUPLEX here, just borrowed Rob's sign in.

I have added a few pics so you can see what we have. Production parts are all hard anodised black.

This kit is a direct replacement for the Hydragas system and includes four spring units and four especially callibrated dampers. We have our own test car and a kit has now been fitted to MGOC tech man Roger Parkers' car and the great and the good at the MGOC are full of praise for the ride, refinement and handling qualities of the conversion.

Please get in touch for more details. [email protected]

Interesting photos! :thumbsup:

can we buy them yet in the uk