Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) Monty Gets a New ECU

Following fitting my Fusion Fabrications Supper Sports exhaust system.




And my new long runner ERG/swirl flap delete inlet manifold, also from Fusion Fabrications.




Monty's engine is definitely shifting more air, with no AFR gauge this increase in air was proved the old school way.

* Audible crackles from the exhaust on the overrun
* A deep trombone like tone from the engine on tip-in
* A generally dull throttle response
* Some mild flat spots in closed loop below 3,000rpm

The concerning lean condition was further confirmed by the Visteon/Ford ECU showing a long term fuel trim of +16.4% on my OBD reader!



Monty's Visteon/Ford ECU was throwing in as much fuel it could to match all the additional air the engine was now shifting, but it had clearly reached the limits of what it could do. To solve the dangerously lean condition and release the additional power waiting to be enjoyed, I desperately needed a way of applying more fuel, this basically left me with two options:

1. Find someone who could genuinely map Monty's Visteon/Ford ECU

Firsty, I want to be clear that I have a great deal of respect for the old Visteon/Ford ECU, while it is rather outdated engine management technology from the early 2000s with narrow band lambda sensors, there's no question it is a well designed and thoroughly developed OEM ECU from Ford that proved itself on a gazillion Mondeos and Focus'. However, finding someone who could genuinely live map this ECU properly on a rolling road proved rather challenging, after lots of research the most convincing people I spoke to were Motor Sport Developments based a considerable 230 miles from me up in Blackpool.

https://www.motorsport-developments.co.uk/index.html

Motor Sport Developments estimated a live mappings session would be somewhere between £600 to £900 depending on the time needed, this on top of the time and cost of the near 500 mile round trip from home to Blackpool and back. I was also mindful that my further development plans of fitting a set of Newman Phase Two cams would demand another mapping session, perhaps just a couple of hours on the dyno this time but still more cost and another big trip to Blackpool to get it done, in the end I could see myself spending over £1000 on mapping and fuel and I still wouldn't have access to the ECU myself.

2. Take the aftermarket ECU route

On paper there are many benefits to taking this option, but I've gone down this road before and have had a mixed experiences ranging from a very positive result with a friends Lotus Elan Plus Two we converted to a Haltech system, to some enormous challenges using a Canems Dual Fuel ECU on my TVR Chimaera. In both cases these installations were what is typically referred to as a stand alone ECU conversion, that is the new aftermarket engine management system stands alone using its own sub wiring harness that does not fully integrate with the vehicles existing wiring.

In my experience most of the challenges that come with a stand alone ECU are with the sub loom that you need to build and install on the car, even if your stand alone loom is built well it still needs to be spliced into the vehicle and I just didn't fancy doing that to Monty who’s factory loom is really rather nicely made in my opinion. Furthemore, due to the adoption of Control Area Networked (CAN) wiring we see on all modern cars, a stand alone installation isn't really an option. These days so many systems, devices and typically all dash gauges are CAN, this means you're going to lose too many critical functions on the vehicle if you try to splice in a stand alone ECU.

To solve the CAN challenge all the better aftermarket ECU manufacturers now offer what are called Plug & Play systems (PnP), the brilliance of the PnP is it utilises the vehicle's existing wiring loom, so unlike the stand alone the PnP requires no potentially problematic separate loom to be built and laid into the car. However, where it gets tricky is these PnP systems need to be vehicle specific, a patch cable is created to connect the vehicle's factory ECU connector to the aftermarket ECU which is the simple bit, the vehicle's CAN system is then interrogated (sniffed) and the language it communicates in (the protocol) is identified before the aftermarket ECU is the programmed to talk to the car in that same language.

There's absolutely no doubt the PnP approach is the way forward for the aftermarket ECU industry and customers looking to gain tuning control over their more modern vehicle, the trouble for us Morganeers is nobody offers a true PnP for our cars. This pushed me back to the option of trying to work with the old Visteon/Ford ECU which was a bit disappointing to be honest.

Until that was that I discovered this on the Ecumaster Facebook page:


It sure looked like a PnP for my Morgan Plus 4 was actually available after all, so after chatting with the UK agent for Ecumaster I was convinced, I coughed up what amounted to just £250 more than I was likely to end up spending mapping the old Visteon ECU twice over and I had myself a Morgan Plus 4 PnP.

Or at least I thought I had a Morgan Plus 4 PnP!

As it turns out the German Morgan that was fitted with the one and only system shown on that Facebook post was on throttle bodies, what I discovered was that the so-called PnP was not CAN compliant at all. I suspect the car was a Super Sport, Morgan used an Omex ECU on this model so perhaps they directly wired the gauges ect and no CAN was used, or perhaps the German Morgan was a race car?

Whatever the reason the Ecumaster Morgan Plus 4 PnP was a long way off being plug and play because when I first tried it the car failed to start, and I also had no warning lights or gauges

Fortunately Ecumaster are an honest company so I was offered a full refund, or the option of them interrogating Monty's CAN system free of charge to try and get the ECU working with the car’s warning lights and gauges. Knowing a full refund would just force me back to the old Visteon I went with option two, I delivered the car to Ecumaster and their chief engineer Greg set about the task of 'sniffing' the CAN as the process is referred to in the industry. I was aware that Greg had completed this CAN sniffing process on much more modern vehicles with way more complex CAN systems than my Morgan, but while I'm experienced with aftermarket ECUs, CAN was somewhat of a mystery to me so all I could do was keep my fingers crossed.

When Greg called to say it was all sorted I have to say I was mighty impressed, he even kindly gave me an ST150 calibration to get me started as part of his free of charge service which really sweetened the deal. I now have a true PnP EMU Black ECU for my Morgan Plus 4 and I'm no longer locked out from tuning the car and tied to paying large sums of cash to a company miles from my home who can work with the venerable old Visteon/Ford ECU.





I’m pleased to confirm Monty now goes like a stabbed rat on the EMU Black, the ST150 calibration supplied FOC by the UK Ecumaster importer also turned out to work way better than expected, so in the end the whole project has proved to be a great success.

Finally, I must say I received outstanding service from Greg, he's clearly a very talented engine management engineer with good experience in sniffing CAN systems. I can't recommend his services and this PnP EMU Black istall enough to anyone else looking to tune their Duratec Plus 4, or even just those looking for an ECU update for their mid 2000's era Trad morgan