Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Workshop Note - GDI Oil Breather

As a Duratec Plus 4 owner I'm keen not to appear to be gloating, but do honestly think a Plus 4 with Duratec engine is the four cylinder Trad Morgan sweet spot.

However, apparently the GDI does make 10hp more from new, but for how long?

This sort of thing has to be absolutely dreadful for efficient air flow over the back of the valves!



When I bought my Duratec Plus 4 a well respected Morgan specialist commented that it was a shame it wasn't a GDI as he could give me 180hp with the 'Club Sport' package.

I said......

"I'm not keen of direct injection as the valves get gummed up; and anyway, a GDI would have been up to £10k more to buy than my 2012 Duratec Plus 4".

The Morgan specialist responded by saying valve gumming isnt an issue on the GDI, well, clearly it is, I think what he meant to say was.......

"Morgans are typically occasional use hobby cars, so I haven't seen one with enough mileage to have presented the problem... YET!"

At the end of the day a post 2011 Duratec is the exact same car as the later GDI, but to my mind a GDI is trickier to tune, has a drive by wire (DBW) throttle that I don't overly care for over a cable, and comes with this valve gumming issue too. Anyway, unconvinced by the expensive 180hp 'Club Sport' offering, I simply set about giving my Duratec Plus 4 quite a bit more than 180hp, and for less than the cost of a GDI 'Club Sport' kit. And any Duratec Plus 4 owner could copy my tuning recipie, largely becuase I myself simply copied it from the Fiesta ST150 crowd, and Caterham of course

As my early career was spent in vintage and classic car restoration a lot of what I worked on used a slash cut draught tube to puke oily crankcase gasses directly onto the road, now, I'm not suggesting we should go back to those days, but 'Blow By' is nasty old stuff so be careful what you do with it. When we started to see manufacturers making their engines ingest these disgusting, caustic oily vapors the old mechanics I worked with would say....

"Making an engine eat its own poo is never going to end well"

And they were right of course, but we kind of got away with it as there was always some petrol present to wash the poo away, port fuel injection being especially good at this compared with a carb. But as soon as direct injection came along I couldn't help being reminded of that 'poo' comment from those old mechanics I worked with all those years ago.

I'm genuinely interested to see how effective a catch can will be on a GDI and I can see how it'll help, however, to me the fundamental problem still exists so I really can't see it being more than 50% effective. At the end of the day for a catch can to be even half effective, you still need to hold it under negative pressure, and the depression below atmosphere ultimately has to originate from the inlet manifold.

Given all this, I don't care how good the separation method is, invariably some gasses are still going in that engine

However, in support of all the GDI Plus 4 owners out there, I sincerely hope I'm wrong!