Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Lightened Flywheel

Definitely now erring on the side of 'leave well alone'.

My local garage are no longer doing 'old school' work, but managed to find a Heritage specialist locally who's going to whip the engine out (he's recently been working on a Lotus Elan, and a Westfield 7, so has experience of the engine/gearbox, and is a fast ford specialist). Going to cost me about £400, but that's not too bad. Will get him to do a visual on the clutch to see if that needs replacing while the engine is out. Downside is he's really busy, so may be a fortnight before he can get on to it. Always consider that a good sign though!

Although a lot different to the Ford 1600, I had a lightened flywheel in my C Type and the tick over was really lumpy and driving through traffic wasn't very pleasant. Personally I wouldn't do it again.

The 1600 in my 4/4 is a 1650(ish),1300 GT pistons, chamber off the head, fast road cam, big valves huge ports twin 40's and a very light flywheel. Idles very smoothly at 900-1000rpm and is a joy to drive , even in traffic.

I built this engine back in the early 80's and have forgotten all the fine details, but we took a LOT of material off the flywheel. Nowadays I occasionally take her up to 6000 but tend to
treat her aging parts with a little respect. Still goes like he**

Cheers,
Dave.

Thank you.

I've not heard anything back from Burton Power (I can't use my phone during the day, but have access to emails/internet). The bloke who's going to be working on my engine has built a whole ton of fast fords, so I'm going to ask him what he thinks as well.

Instead of having him lighten the flywheel have him balance the flywheel and pressure plate assembly for you.

I had the full works performed on my Xflow by Burton in the '90's.

The weight oif the flywheel was considerably reduced.

The tickover is slightly higher, that may also be due to the BFC2 fast road camshaft.

The engine revs freely and has transformed the car.

As a consequence of the lighter flywheel, the car is more responsive on the throttle, when you take your foot off of the accelerator, it slows down quicker. In slow to moderate traffic, the car will lose speed without using the brakes. I sometimes touch the brakes so following drivers can see the brake lights.

I spoke to the fast ford bloke yesterday, and without doing major mods to my engine, there's not much point in the lighter flywheel so I'll save my cash. I have lots of other goodies I want to buy

I think you have made the right decision. Lightening and balancing the flywheel and clutch assembly on a tuned engine will undoubtedly help the drivability, but then again if you have such an engine you will be driving more in the upper reaches of the rev. range and using the gears a lot more to stay in the power band. I had an engine in a similar state of tune to Dave Collis in Canada, a few posts above, fitted to a Caterham Seven and had the flywheel machined at a local machine shop. They took off as much as they could, for a not unreasonable £25 or so (this was over 20 years ago) and it made a huge difference. It revved easier, gear change blips were better and it slowed the car quicker too, all as per previous posts, but I think it would be a retrograde step on a standard engine, especially in a heavier car like a 4/4.