Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) GDI Throttle Bodies

With the new AR Plus 4 looking like its a Duratec, we will find out tomorrow hopefully, the likelihood of an aftermarket Cosworth throttle body kit for the GDI may no longer be on the horizon.
There does appear to be a Titan kit which makes sense as I believe they have helped develop the Zenos car engine, which also uses the GDI engine, although I haven't got any more details. http://www.titan.uk.net/products/details/ford-gdi
Once we know more about the AR car it may be worth while doing a little more research as the Zenos GDI engine claims to develop 200hp with good torque characteristics and that would be enough for me.

The original Zenos development car I saw seemed to have a single throttle body fitted. If that is the case I'm intrigued as how they have upped the power to 200bhp.
Where is Brian and Crunchie when you need them?

Jay

Don't know how they do it but the quote from the Zenos web site is 'Powered by a 200bhp 2.0-litre naturally aspirated Ford engine 'and Power Torque, not that I can find the link anymore, offered two naturally aspirated GDI engines one claiming 160hp the other 200hp with the difference being the throttle bodies and exhaust manifold.
Bit confusing in that if you can buy an off the shelf 200hp GDI engine why would a motorsport company then develop throttle bodies for it but then what do I know.

Andrew,
This is very interesting. I have just had a chat with a technical chap at Titan. Their application for the GDI is at "prototype" stage. Just as our bolt/port pattern is the same as the Duratec on the exhaust side it seems to be similar on the inlet side too so the design of the bodies/manifold is easy. The problem will be making it work with our throttle potentiometer/ECU. I have encouraged them in this endeavour saying there could be a good handful of new Plus 4 owners interested in a plug and play kit if they produce one. He has promised to e-mail me with developments. I would offer my car as a guinea pig but we at different ends of the country. Onwards and upwards. By the way I'm VERY pleased with the Possum's performance with my new manifold/cat setup.
cheers

I have had some discussions with one of the techs at Omex on the possibility of throttle bodies for the GDI engine. It seems that it is technically a very difficult problem as the injection is performed in several microbursts (my words as I don't remember the exact technical terms used). This is required in order to get a good fuel/air mix for efficient combustion, also it is phased so that no fuel is lost before the exhaust valve is closed. There would be few problems getting an engine to run on a test bed and to produce good power figures. To get it to work efficiently across the range, have good fuel economy, and comply with emission regulations is another story and would require a very sophisticated ECU and a complex calibration.

If you want a tuned engine with variable valve timing similar to the GDI it is much easier with external injection. The Ford 1.60, Mazda 2.0 (MZR), and the Ford 2.5 all have this feature.

In hind sight I think I would have changed my engine to a 2.5 VVT with throttle bodies rather than fit them to my existing 2.0 engine.

Apparently the GDI pulses fuel in at 2200-2800 PSI as apart from 600-700 on a standard engine.
This idea no doubt is to help emissions but would complicate the injection throttle body setup.
Not sure if they use the same system with the ecoboost but tuners are going to have their work cut out to get anywhere near the ecoboost figures.
I agree Peter, the older Duratec would offer a more straightforward tuning option, which is probably why Morgan looks as if it has gone for the Cosworth Duratec in the AR +4.

Peter
I have also been in contact with Titan this afternoon,Iain Holiday, and the throttle bodies do look like they will do a good job. The most problematic part, as Gambalunga points out, appears to be the ecu and making sure the driveability, emissions, cold starting etc, are not adversely affected and I like the idea of a properly engineered and tested plug and play kit rather than a one off which I don't have the ability or patience to tinker with. Omex have produced such a kit for the Duratec and Sigma engine and I believe Titan are keen to work with Omex on a GDI version, not sure the enthusiasm is reciprocated though, yet.
I am also very pleased with my not so new manifold/cat setup having now covered 4500 miles since it was fitted although not having any engineering skills unfortunately my setup cost a little more, well worth it though.