Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Plus Four, Supersport & Plus Six (CX & CXV Generation Vehicles) New Plus Four manual transmission.

I’m sorry if this has been mentioned elsewhere but who makes the new Plus Four’s manual transmission. Has anybody driven the car with the ZF eight speed auto and with the 6 speed manual transmission? Which car did you like better?

It's a BMW gearbox but not sure which model it's borrowed from. Check out this thread specifically here onwards re comments on engine tune for manual version.

Interestingly the manual PlusFour is slower than the Auto, the Auto is also lighter, the MPG better and the CO/2 lower in the Auto.

I was surprised by this?

That is no reason that the Automatic has to be more fun. The better emission values are due to the fact that the engine works in the most favourable rev range for a longer time because there are more gears. Furthermore the modern automatic shifts faster than by hand. If you have a manual gearbox and accelerate to full load in any gear (even at medium rpm), it is more fun. The automatic would shift and not allow full load (at medium rpm) to get better emission values.

The differences are marginal. And if you want to change gears in an environmentally friendly but boring way, you can also do it with the manual gearbox, but nobody does that.

Yes have a look at the thread link above Mark. The interesting discovery I made was that the 190kW/255hp B48 engine variant is apparently not used in any other car with manual option. This may explain the significantly reduced torque characteristics on manual version to suit whatever manual engine/gearbox package BMW offered MMC.

Oh OK did not realise that, thought manual was offered more readily Richard...good spot.

Is the manual "under stress" with the torque, I wonder?

Thanks everyone.

That hold true for many cars now. The world has changed and the multygear auto boxes do better in eco and performance.
But on the other hand - for me it is boring.
OK for the company car and business travel - would not like a Morgan with an auto box.

Miklos

I suspect that the reduction in torque is aimed at ensuring a good long clutch life than anything else.

The improved CO2 and other elements seems to be down to the more efficient use of more gears when left to it's own programming. You can optimise the engine for a smaller rev band and let the gearbox do more work to keep it there. So if you select the other engine patterns (support race etc) all bets are off for WLTP type mpg figures.

It still niggles my mind that this can be done through programming of gearbox, turbo management and injection etc and so a test can be cheated to a degree. Will we get gearboxgate after dieselgate one day? The engine and gearbox are tuned to optimise the use of fuel and that feels like wiggle room for a smart engineer. With the serious pressure on manufacturers to hit the future CO2 rules and high penalties we are driving towards bad practices?

Certainly gearboxes have always been rated up to a maximum torque/power level. I had a beautiful pre-loved W216-CL600 which had to have an old five speed autobox when the W216-CL63 had the same bhp but had a more advanced 7 speed. It had a lot less torque so the 7sp could cope with it. The biturbo V12 had to much grunt for that gearbox. This can be seen in the current German power race by AMG/RS/M club all using the ZF8HP which runs up to the 600/600 mark with tiny chips above appearing (on short term boost in most cases).