Door pockets are small storage areas in or on the doors of Classic Morgan Roadsters. They are VERY useful. They are also far more aesthetically pleasing than closed unadorned panels. But for many years there were none. The door, consisting of a solid wood frame, thinly  "skinned" with painted metal on the outside and a covered piece of thin plywood on the inside with a top bolster and latch, had no access to its interior. Most car door interiors enclosed the mechanism for the door window and acted as a storage place for the window when down. Morgans had no need of that with their removable windscreens. But the interior panels looked the same as most other cars of the era.

Some time in the 1960s, someone at the Factory realized that the interior spaces of the doors were....er... empty. It struck them that storage space could be created by simply making a hole in the plywood panel and painting and later upholstering the interior. They offered this as an 10£ option, calling them "Map Pockets". The hole-in-the-panel was not particularly attractive. Aesthetically, it was rather spartan, even ugly. And without an elasticized edge it, items are always falling out of it, and most often when the door is opened so they fall to the ground and are often lost. BUT it is much better than nothing.

Of course, a thin piece of plywood coupled with thin aluminum door skin was not going to make an impression to the authorities as impact protection. It was insufficient to satisfy even the minimalist safety rules in North America and Downunder that were enacted in the 1970s and after. Agents in these countries, used steel bars inside the doors and anchored them to underscuttle rollbars to provide cabin protection from rear, frontal and even side impacts. This writer had his life saved by such a door. But the bar(s) filled the internal door space and the flat interior panel became standard again for non-European Morgans. So from this point we have two types of cars, those with safety doors and those without.

NON-SAFETY DOORS POCKETS IMPROVEMENTS OR CREATION
by Lorne Goldman

Happily, Morgan owners used to be very inventive and there are many privately made upgrades to the Factory design which resolve both the aesthetic and functional problems. Here are two examples from the French forum. Old Morgan Addicts. These ideas can help you either create or improve your door pockets. The cost is minimal.

MAKING SAFETY DOOR POCKETS
by Lorne Goldman

Safety door pockets are no more difficult. I simply traced a pattern dictated by the door's shape and cut two plaques to match in 1/4" plywood. I then took them to a nearby upholsterer and had them padded/upholstered and fit with matching leather pockets with an elasticized top edge. This was in the 1990s and cost me $75 (35£) for the pair.
 

In 1998, the Factory began offering door pockets for SAFETY door cars. The price is now 300£.
 

DOOR HINGES (Loose?) revisited February 2020
by Lorne Goldman & Tim Waller

After a time, your doors will begin the wobble. There are three causes for this. One is grave. The wooden frame at the front may be rotting. See HERE.

HOWEVER, there is the second, (third is at the end) a more common cause, far less serious and easily remedied perfectly. It is that hinges are worn, the channel the holding post goes through has widened and the hinge posts are loose in their channel. This will happen much faster if the occupants lean on the door to enter and exit the car and is more common on the driver's side as it been used more often. 

Sadly, Morgan went through a number of hinge variations and finding the right ones, new, is not an easy task and anything but inexpensive. (If you do go this route, purchase stainless. They are more wear-resistant).

But your old hinges can be refurbished. John Worrall once of Heart of England Morgans came up with the very clever idea of over-boring the old hinges and using mildly over-size posts (7mm) which he provided. Regretfully for the rest of us, John is retired now. I shall be back in a day..or today..with a source if there is one. Please be patient, do NOT take a sledge hammer to your old hinges to tighten them just yet. (shiver)

BACK, a reader/contributor to GoMoG, found some!!! Check out Restoration Supply Company in California. The come reommended by a respected Morgan friend. They come in a choice of diameters and sizes, Page 47 of their catalogue. Just cut to size.

The other solution is to have them made. One buys an over sized hinge pins, rather than the 1/4 inch/7mm original. Then, whether you made pins or bought them above, on a small lathe, you drill the hinge itself to 17/64ths with a hand reamer and a steady hand. All this sounds silly, but Morgan hinges come in MANY variations, and there is no certainty you will get the right one. Their MMC cost is astronomical. Rather than being sensible priced at what you would expect, (10£) they cost 70-90£ and much more outside the UK. per hinge, not per set.

I will ask a reliable Morgan supplier to come up with the pins again but any machine shop can help you..in area where machine shops are still permitted. I would NOT tell the shop in the more paranoid nations what the hinge is for. Once they are told it is for car, they might run in the opposite direction!

For other non-overseas cars, the screws merely screw into a wooden post, though with the change to "long doors" in the mid-1990s The factory had to spread the hinge weight with a little metal plate (unsecured to a roll bar or the chassis) and a similiar addition to the door lock area. In my opinion, these new items will not add to side-impact protection, as neither the front nor the back brackets are anchored. They will also not steady the front end as the underscuttle roll bar definitely does. However, they WILL better support the weight and tendency to sag of the longer doors. The non-overseas doors all do not have any interior bracing designed to resist side door impacts.