Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Aero 8, 2012< Plus 8, SuperSports, Coupe & Aeromax Aero 8 Tuning

What engine upgrades are possible for this engine? (4.4v8 in an S1) I have a feeling my car has already been mapped so im looking beyond that. Also has a free flow exhaust system to. Maybe get a full decat? straight through pipes haha noise would be crazy! Will need to get it on a dyno soon and see what its putting out so that i can see how much power i can get.

ask Boshly: his car is tweeked
I found out the hard way


note: BMW has made a bespoke engine-management for their engines produced for Morgan,
so tweeking (as for 3.0 Roadster mkII) is no easy job!!!!

hartge had (not listed on their site anymore)a kit to bring it to some 410bhp
bored out to 5.1 I think

haman motorsport:
HAMANN OPTIMIZED CURVE MAPS
Electronic power advancement through
reprogramming of ECU

For BMW 645Ci
Electronic power advancement including
deactivation of 250 km/h speed limit
V/max approx. 280 km/h (series 250 km/h)
Approx. 25 hp / 18 kW power increase,
approx. 45 Nm torque increase

Yeah i've used the Hamann stuff before (had a full tweaked and bodystyled Z4.

Yeah i read they had a tweaked management system from the outset. But how do you only get 289 bhp from a 4.4 v8?! Audi get 414bhp in the RS4 and its a 4.2!

Well you can - via the Hamman kits. However it's not cheap - full kit for the top power is something like £20k. They you have to get it fitted.

DMS will remap BMW engines - and they do a good job by all accounts. I know of an S1 putting out 320bhp via a remap and a sports exhaust.

RS4 is turbocharged. No room in Aero engine bay for super / turbocharger though. (Though an old school style US supercharger poking out the bonnet hotrod styleee on a Series 1 would look cool. Just won't be able to see where you are going though...

I spent agest looking at tuning the S1, in the end the cheaper option for more performance is to buy a series II,III,IV - as as well as more power you get a whole host of other goodies for free..

First things first... the M62 engine is not commonly tuned in the UK. Neither in Germany or the USA however there are some bits that are available.

Intake - Get Air in - The Morgan implementation has quite a convoluted Air intake route over the Off-Side wheelarch. A Stage 1 enhancement would be to replace the standard air-box with an ITG cone filter. Alternatively Stage 2 (involves surgery) results in air bieng taken in via the front cowel (cutting a hole and using a cone air-filter directly onto the main throttle body). Stage 3 (involves major surgery) uses an S62 injector and throttle body set-up to draw air directly into the cylinderheads via holes in the top of the bonnet ala Tuscan Racer.

Exhaust - The current exhaust headers are a bit of a shocker... some after market manifolds and exhausts with side exits would sort that side of things out.

Cylinderheads - These can be flowed and there are gains to be had. You need an intake system though that can out-flow the proposed flow targets.

Enlarged Valves and solid lifters are also available from VAC Motorsports which would increase air flow and also max rpm... which is currently restricted by the use of hydraulic lifters.

Cams are readily available from VAC motorsports and these can be fitted with no other modifications... quite expensive for a few HP though.

http://www.vacmotorsports.com/

Pistons, rods and crank are good for more power and should be balanced if you are going for a lot of revs... ie. much over stock.

VAC motorsports or TTV racing can make up a lightened flywheel which judging from my driving seems very heavy.

To make all this work you'll need an off board ECU probably from MBE or someone like that..

To hold all this back you'll need to upgrade the front brakes.. 6 pots are available from Mulfab or Richard Thorne.

Alternatively you can go for a stroker kit which is available from Noelle Motors in germany.. which punts you up to 5.2

http://www.noellemotors.de/5_2l_engine_basis_BMW_M62_B44.305+M554ce6bb0fb.0.html

If you were that way inclined personally I'd try to fit an S62.. which has most of the above and is available from Car Breakers from M5 V8's which is the same engine format see wikipedia M62, N62 S62 engine variants.

To do realistically any of the above.. budget about £20k...

So beyond Air Intake, Post Cat exhausts and re-map.. you're pretty much tuned up.

Much more elegantly put Cerial!

So basically, either spend a few hundred quid on an ITG air filter and perhaps up to a grand on an exhaust, and 500+ on a remap and you're done, unless you want to spend around 20k for a serious power jump.

IIRC Eric Sturdza has an S1 with around 400bhp... Bet that is a bit of a handful...

The RS4 is a very special engine and only lots of development work by quattro GMbH achieved the figures quoted.

The RS4 4.2 V8 engine is in fact normally aspirated.

Yeah was away to say the RS4 is NA not turbo'd. there is a limited edition black series that is turbo'd think its a B16 or something. Super cool!

As far as i know, i have a remap and the car already has exaust system done and a K & N upgrade, but was going to change that for an ITG foam filter.

Stroker Kit was my initial plan. So may still go ahead with it now i know i can get one

I think you have to remember where the M62 sits in the range of BMW V8's.

It was not originally designed to be a high performance engine.. more like a lumbering lump to power exec barges.

Originally launched in 1996 in 3.5 guise for the larger saloon/limo market. None were in the "M" variants which BMW tended and till reciently kept to S6 engines.

This was the staple diet of the M series V8 until it's upgrade with Vanos N variant.

At this juncture it was developed for use in the Z8 giving a 5.0 400hp unit with much similar and simple techniques as the Audi engine... maybe a good comparison.. roughly the same era.

Interestingly a very high performance veriant of this engine lives on today in Ascari A10. @ 625bhp... probably a continuation of the S62 development.

So in the grand scheme of things.. BMW did have a high performance version.. it just was not sold in huge numbers and ultimately was fitted into generally un-sporty barges and 4x4's. With the tuning complication of Vanos most of the post M62 engines were not touched by tuners or racers as they were esentially electronically complicated and expensive to enhance....

Hence the situation we have today... M/N series performance parts are few and far between the the modifications above are not all possible with the later VANOS engines... seeminly major cylinder head work/modification is requried to remove/sort it out.

Unfortunately this leaves the Morgan market too small to generate the parts requried and the BMW market is already shrinking with the M5 V8's and the X5's bieng slowly replaced with newer series engines and Diesel S6 turbo units.

So Aero tuning is a deep pockets game with simple modifications such as cams costing well into the thousands to obtain.. TBH.. Tiger racing in the USA had the cheap solution.. going Chevy LS1 for their race cars.. 700bhp available at a pretty low cost per hp.