Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) ECU map file

Roger, I don't think it's a piggyback, it's a whole new replacement ECU completely programmable, it appears from ther write up they have lots of mappings for different engines and can supply plug and play fitting harness adapters or bespoke. Effectively throw the problem out and get a solution that is much more flexible. They even cater for changes such as throttle bodies which you could add later on.

Thanks for the tip re the thread. It was Mark that helped me but he was unable to say what exactly was done when I asked. He just passed my ECU over to their tuners.

If I manage to get the base file I’m not too worried about the pinking returning. Hopefully it can be addressed with further mapping if necessary. I don’t think there is anything psychically different on my engine. I suspect the car was a victim of an early Duratec tune not being quite optimised. As said the car drives nicer since the fix and I can detect the knock sensor intervening. Any pre-ignition is now knocked on the head almost instantaneously, as it should.




Thanks Adrian for pointing that out. I had missed that it was a standalone ECU with a plug & play adapter. That would be an elegant solution and certainly another avenue to explore.

Another product that is much cheaper is "Mega Squirt". Many Kit Cars are using it as well as the Land Rovers in the UK. I doubt it has the features that "Emerald" or "OMEX" has. I purchased a "Mega Squirt" to use on a 4L Rover with Gems FI. Slowly getting enough information to make this work. With some of the later engines with VVT and Variable Intake Tubes I am not sure that Mega Squirt can handle. I am quite certain it would work on the ZETEC I have and am now using with Weber DCOE's.

Living in Western U.S. I have the problem of often being over 500 miles from anybody that could fix this rig. So I have stuck with Carbs so far. But these ECU seem to be reliable. It would be fun to try one out.

Button
Seattle

All true but a leap into the unknown. Getting a calibration right is no easy task and it must not be forgotten that the Morgan ECU also controls dash functions. Fitting and paying for time on a rolling road to get the calibration correct would be an expensive project and, in my opinion, not justifiable on a standard car.

A much easier solution is that of getting a replacement ECU of the same type as used on the Morgan and having it programmed with the correct calibration.

Have you asked Morgan what the cost of a replacement ECU would be? In the end it may actually cost less to go down that route.

I would normally agree Peter but in this case I believe they deal with canbus as well in the solution and take maps from originals and build off them.

Peter - I am only really looking for a copy of a standard bin file for my project/experiment as I cannot access mine.

As I am in the learning mode. I hope You will report on how this problem is resolved.

Button
Seattle

Absolutely and me too! I may well fail miserably but as a compulsive tinkerer I can’t stop myself at least giving it ago. I will report back if I can get over the first hurdle. It may be useful to others in the future now that these modules are starting to age.

A little late reporting back but an update as requested.

My plan has come together. My long standing ECU woes are over. My car is now running perfectly with a re-cycled Ford unit flashed with a superb map courtesy of the factory (thank you very much indeed for your help). No pinking issues, full diagnostics and even my old rev hang niggle seems to have gone away. Also now that I have access to the map file I've managed to spawn some useful working spares as I believe this ECU is no longer manufactured.

Fortunately the Ford Visteon EEC-V donor units that Morgan fitted into these cars can be tracked down with a little detective work. However beware there are many similar units that look externally identical but have a different. From what I have deduced Ford used this unit over a decade ago for about a 2 year window only. It appears Morgan used the same unit a little longer. At least from 2005 to 2009 on the 4/4 Duratecs for the duration of their production to the best of my knowledge. As the original Ford donor vehicles are now coming to the end of their lives these ECU's can be picked up in good condition for only a few pounds, at least at the moment.

Obviously the Ford units needs to be re-flashed with the correct Morgan map. My dilemma was how to get the map in. The easy way would be to just connect the ECU to the car and flash it over the OBD. This may well be feasible but I was not prepared to risk attaching the donor unit to my car even to power it up until it had been successfully re-flashed. The risk that the unit perhaps had a subtle difference in build standard with so many similar variants was too high. Even with the correct unit there appears to be variation in map functionality across the Ford model range with respect to how the controls are allocated, so was not worth the risk. A little research indicated that the power and comms pinouts appear common across the ECU family but the mixture or passive and powered control lines appear not to be. The cowards option was to cobble it together so that it could be booted and flashed safely on the kitchen table.

Happy days

Sorry about the mess below.....

Well done Roger, very enterprising, I suspect you may have a little cottage industry in bloom. Please you found a relatively cheap solution.