Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Tuning zetec 4/4

I have a 1999 Zetec 4/4 and I'm in the process of upgrading the engine.

I've looked at all sorts of variations but you have to decide what sort of power output you are looking for and what your budget is.

One thing is for certain, you won't get a 40hp gain from just the exhaust and new ECU.

I did that with the Librands exhaust, Pipercross cone filter and stripped out the original ECU and replaced it with an OMEX 600 and now have just shy of 130bhp on a regularly calibrated Dyno.

What I don't know is what the original set up would have been on the same Dyno but should be between 110 and 115 so at best a 20hp gain.

However with the Silvertop you can't really tune the existing ECU to any great extent and if all you want to do is change the exhaust you would probably get away without changing the ECU.

My reason for changing the ECU is that I planned to do a lot more and you cannot do much tuning unless you can also adjust the Fuel and Ignition Maps to compensate for the changes you make.

There are a number of routes you could go down to unlock more power and it really depends what you want. I will assume you're not building a race car and that you want to retain good road manners and maybe the occasional fun track day.

Throttle bodies might be a way to go but I am sceptical as to whether they will fit on my car and still retain a decent inlet tract length. There is a lot of debate about differing body widths so if someone says they will fit check the width of the engine bay is the same as yours.

Another route would be to change the camshafts to either the Ford 130 / 2L cams or a pair of fast road Kent, Piper or Newman Cams.

If you do either of these as well as the ECU you you should be heading past 140 hp and if you do both with a good Dyno Tune you should be getting towards 155 ish assuming you have a decent engine to start with.

I know one person on here is currently putting in Kent cams and motorcycle throttle bodies together with a new ECU but I'm not sure where that's up to and what the final outcome is. (or will be)

In the end I've decided to go down a different route. I've bought a new 2 litre Blacktop engine which I will swap during the winter.

When that's done and I know what the standard engine is putting out I'll consider the next step towards my objective which is about 160 at < 6500 rpm thereby still giving a really good lowdown torque spread. ( by 4/4 standards not +8)

But as I said at the beginning, you need to decide what you want to achieve and what the budget is and plan accordingly.

What would be interesting would be to get your standard ish car on a reputable rolling road first to see what you're starting with.

I wish I'd done that.

Where are you based?