Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 An odd experience

A week ago i met with another M3W owner and we had good ride out. Both our cars came to NZ in the same container.
We swapped cars and i led off. Soon noticed that Adrian was not following.
Turned back to find him stopped on side of road. Bugger!
Car had faltered then stopped dead.
Whilst fiddling with HT leads etc had cause to take of bonnet. Lo and behold one of the HT leads was hanging loose. Fully off.
So put back on and away we went. All working well
After saying goodbye, went home and pushed car into garage.
So week goes by and fancy a drive. Problem, absolutely no power. Guess who had left the ignition on!!!! Check volts. A magnificent 3.6 volts.
Out with the charger, voltage back up to a respectable 12.
Getting to the point now

Lovely day for a quick ride to check all is back to normal, but ....engine was faltering at just over 4000 rpm. Any gear and running perfect at all loads below 4000 rpm??

First thought, had knackered battery whilst charging?
Perhaps this was cause of the lead coming off issue??

So, checked plug leads, new spark plugs. No change
Mind drifting off to blocked fuel filter etc etc.

Tonight i hooked up the laptop to the ECU to see if any codes. No codes
In fact not much history of anything.
Noticed that the run time history was only 28 minutes??

The rev limiter page shows that I am now back to square one, with rev limitation active!!
Limit is, wait for it, 4250 rpm !!!

The drastic loss of voltage seems to have reset the ECU

Another day, another experience.

[img] http://www.tm-img.com/images/2017/12/18/image.jpg [img]

Would have thought the ECU memory would be non-volatile to allow for battery changes but this may only be short term. Otherwise dropping down to essentially a completely flat battery would most likely kill the memory.

It will unfortunately have taken a big chunk out of battery life as well.

So you have a "new" engine for Christmas, well according to the ECU you do . Good to know that can happen. At least you are familiar enough with Pro Tune II to understand what it is telling you, saved a lot of time and effort chasing the problem.

The ECU does not reset if disconnected.

I regularly disconnect my battery when leaving the car for more than a week or two.

For a high rev lack of power I'd check fuel flow and HT pack/leads.

A very rough way, if you quickly rev the engine without load and it runs over 4,000 for a short while then drops back suspect fuel, if it cuts at 4k revs then I'd check the HT system.

This happened to me once: at 4000 rpm the engine died back to 1400 for a minute or so and then was as normal until - 4000 was reached again. Go Mog advised looking at the alternator but I doubted it except in the end that is what it was. New altenator and problem fixed.

When the Cycle-Electric alternator dies, or gets flaky, the engine will not charge any more and there will be a steady drain until the electronics packs up and everything quits. Before that there will be a series of 'strange things' happening.

With the engine running check the voltage using the stalk. If it's over 14 volts then that is not the issue. If it's under then replace the alternator/rectifier with the H-D unit. All my biker friends consider the stock rectifier a p.o.s., or to be kind, delicate...

Regulator not alternator

if the engine to injection cuts to 4200trm it may be that the ECU goes into engine run-in mode, it happened to me after trying my ECU on another TW, I think it also handed me the hour meter to zero hours of engine running, everything returned normal after hours of engine break-in time.

I think the cause of my problem is that I did not disconnect the battery on both TW's to swap and test my ECU.

I am hopeful the issue is ECU going back to "new" but nothing is ever simple with our machines so will keep looking to other possibilities

To that end I have taken battery out and had it checked at battery shop. Clean bill of health on all accounts . So cross off battery, HT leads and sparkplugs.

At this time will look to get the hours up to get to "no rev limit threshold" on ECU.

Whilst doing that, will also look to source fuel filter. Fuel pump sounds strong at turn on of ignition .

In the mean time the weather is magnificent and very unusual at this time of year. Some starting to complain of the lack of rain!

If xmas dont get in the way, should be able to do the 2 hours needed to fool the ECU.