Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) Monty Takes A Deep Breath

With Monty now safely in the care of M2R Motorsport and awaiting surgery, my thoughts once again turn to estimating what we'll achieve from this next phase of tuning work? While researching all this I stumbled on the following video that puts a Mountune MR200 ST150 up against a similarly tuned Duratec converted Mk2 Escort, the only real difference between the two Duratec powered cars is the Escort is on ITBs, while the ST150 is using Mountune's long runner single throttle inlet.



At this point I should explain Monty's long runner Fusion Fabrications inlet is essentially a copy of the rare, expensive, and hard to find Mountune MR200 inlet, so in theory it should give exactly the same results. Both this Escort and the Mountune MR200 ST150 will also have a set of camshafts with similar lift, duration and overlap to the the Newman Phase 3 cams being fitted to Monty next week.

The Montune MR200 recipe has long since been my benchmark for what I'm looking to achieve with Monty, it was so good Ford fully endorsed it, back in the day you could actually walk into your local Ford dealership and buy a brand new ST150 then specify the MR200 kit that had to be fitted by Mountune themselves and nobody else, in turn Ford would give you their full new car warrantee.

As the components I've chosen for Monty are directly modeled on the the Mountune MR200 kit, the ST150 in the video is an excellent reference point for what we could potentially achieve, here's the dyno graph showing the ITB equiped Escort against the Mountune ST150:



And here are the horsepower and torque numbers delivered by the Fiesta:



The Escort's Duratec on ITBs makes 207.6hp, while the ST150 with its Mountune inlet comes in lower at 202.3hp, so theres only 5.9hp in it at the top end. The single throttle inlet Fiesta (Monty's setup) makes 10hp less than the ITB equiped Escort in the 3,000rpm to 3,500rpm window, but above this it starts to close the gap. However, look how the Mountune inlet consistantly delivers more torque in the same window, and indeed largely everywhere. The Mountune tuned Fiesta ST150 goes on to make peak torque at 5,853rpm, at which point it gives 220 newton metres which is 162 lbs/ft in old money while the ITB Escort gives its best 150 lb/ft and peaking far higher up the rev range at 6,675rpm.

It's a straight trade off between ITB horsepower and the broader more usable torque delivery produced by the long runner single throttle MR200 inlet manifold. In an ideal world, you'd want the excellent ITB horsepower curve of the Escort, but with the fatter torque delivery of the Mountune (Monty style) single throttle inlet. Of course, what neither the ITB equiped Escort or the Mountune MR200 ST150 have that Monty does, is the A.L Developments hand ported big valve head with its exhaust ports further enlarged from 38mm to 40mm.

While for sure both the Escort and ST150 will have good exhaust syetems, stand alone engine management and a set of fast road cams, I'd put money on both of them still running a standard Duratec cylinder head. A.L Developments claim one of their ported cylinder heads should give a 10-15hp gain, but this becomes 20hp if 1mm larger inlet & exhaust valves are chosen as I did. This increase is also based on the standard sized 38mm exhaust ports that we are now bringing out to 40mm on Monty's head. So theoretically, I should make at least 20hp more than the MR200 ST150's 202hp, that means we've created a tuning package that 'in theory' has the potential to get Monty to 222hp!

However, I think my Fusion Fabrications single throttle long runner inlet will probably hold the engine back, afterall it has numerous bends in it which are less than ideal. That's why I've settled on a 213hp target with a nice flat torque curve at peaks at 173 lb/ft but holds over 80% of that from 1,800rpm all the way out to 7,300rpm, after which my soft rev limiter strategy will start to get involved.

What is also 100% proven is James from M2R Motorsport was able to squeeze 207hp out of an ST150 on the standard plastic Ford inlet, this using a good exhaust, a set of Newman Phase 3 cams and running it on a EMU Black ECU like Monty has, but with no head work at all! Basically that's James' own version of the MR200 kit, but without using a slightly more efficient MR200 or Fusion Fabrications long runner inlet, and critically without Monty's ported big valve head. This all points to 207hp + the 20hp from my fancy pants cylinder head, to give Monty 227hp, however, as I say there's a strong possibility Monty's Fusion Fabrications 'curly wurly' inlet will start to hold the engine back over 200hp, I'm pretty sure the reality will be that every horsepower I can secure over the 200 mark will be very hard won indeed!

In summary, my 213hp target and below dyno graph prediction still stands!



Not long now and we'll know for sure if I have achieved my goals?

Wish me luck chaps