The Visteon is indeed a fantastic ECU Rog, and built to Ford's exacting standards!
It was also made in the hundreds of thousands, any product made in those numbers tends to force baked in quality and durability, that's why a humble Honda Civic is infinitely better built and more reliable than a modern McLaren. The McLaren is 10 x the cost but it's built in such small numbers there's no way they can achieve Honda levels of production quality and durability, and this despite the Civic being a much cheaper car.
I’d speculate the same low volume scenario has a lot to do with why the Morgan dash switch module PCB is a bit shyte (technical term), in the world of electronics manufacture I'm certain the job would have been viewed by the serious players as such a low production run they would have seen it as being a completely impractical and un-attractive proposition. For these reasons Morgan would have been forced to outsource production to a small company, who I suspect neither had the design skills or production facility to build a board to the standards any large car manufacturer would insist upon.
TVR approached the same problem differently, they tried to make all their low volume electronics in-house, but this was an absolutely disastrous idea as they clearly couldn't recruit the right caliber of electronics engineer and the investment in production was probably no more than allocation of a separate bench for dash module builds and a soldering iron. If you think the Morgan PCB is a pain in the arsh, try getting the digital dash in your TVR T350 or MK2 Tuscan repaired..... and for sure at some point you will definitely need to get it repaired!!!
Back to the ECU subject raised by Rog, I did try really hard to retain my Visteon ECU, it's a quality thing and also came free with my Morgan so there was no cheaper ECU. However, as I increased the power output of my Duratec beyond 170hp, which seems to be the self correction limit of the Visteon, I was forced to find another solution. Very few people have the ability and software to alter the calibration within Visteon and you simply can't take a 145hp internal combustion engine to over 200hp without having the ability to make significant changes to the fueling and ignition timing as a minimum.
Of course this is exactly why aftermarket stand alone ECUs exist, what can put people off going down this path is cost and the idea there's some kind of magical knowledge needed to map an engine. But this is simply not true, if you have a basic understanding of the working principles of an internal combustion engine and like me come from a background of carburetor and distributor tuning, you honestly don't need the services of a so-called professional tuner. I've been playing with aftermarket ECUs for years now and with great success, select a quality engine management system with good support like the EMU Black I chose from ECU Master and quite simply you will never look back.
As soon as you take control over your own calibration work the sense of empowerment is huge, as are the savings, I’d also argue there's nothing more rewarding than building your own calibration and enjoying the immediate results. The plug and play Morgan Plus 4 EMU Black ECU takes things a step further by making installation comically simple, as the name suggests you literally just plug the thing into the Ford/Visteon ECU connector and you're good to go. I have now developed a series of Duratec Morgan Plus 4 calibrations to cover various levels of engine tune, while these calibrations are intellectual property that carry value I'm sure if a genuine Morgan enthusiast approached me for support I'd be happy to share.
Sure, the Morgan Plus 4 plug and play EMU Black is an initial investment of £1,200, but that's actually super cheap for an aftermarket stand alone ECU you can fit yourself in just 20 minutes. Most people typically pay around £3,000 for a quality stand alone ECU installation, they then go on to pay a further £600 minimum to get the car professionally mapped. A total spend of £4,000 to get the thing right is a realistic figure, so just £1,200 for a turn key solution is amazing value for money, especially given the EMU Black really is one of the best stand alone ECUs on the market today.
Last edited by Montegue; 28/12/23 03:17 PM.
