Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 Spanish M3W - 2013 unit - with db problem

Hello everyone!

I'm back from the dealer's garage and was surprised to see three 3-Wheelers there!

Very unusual, as there are no more than 10-11 in total in the whole of Spain.

One was a Superdry Edition, looking brand new, and in fact it was with only 100km on the clock.

The other one is the one I show you in the pictures, and they have an issue with it. It's a 2013 unit, clearly purchased by someone here in Spain a couple of years ago as second hand (because of the plates). And while this happy owner was enjoying a driving day, he was stopped by our Guardia Civil (in charge of traffic when you're out of a city / village). He got a nice expensive ticket because the car was "too loud": 105 db to be precise instead of the 98 db that the MOT card says.

This new second owner was shocked and took the car to the garage trying to see why this is happening. And the garage is also a Little lost as the car seems standard.

But when I look at the car and see the pictures, to me the exhaust is NOT the original one. First because it's curved to the end following the shape of the boot, and second because it looks quite thin and the plate with the "Morgan ID" seems to be welded so I suspect it was taken off the original pipe and welded on that one.

However, I'm obviously not a specialist on 2013 units, but some here please give me your opinion looking at the pictures. Is this the original standard exhaust or a different one that may be causing the high db level?

The silencer looks to be original, but the tail pipe is not, it should be welded on to the silencer, from the picture it is fixed with an exhaust clamp. This may be because it was cut off to facilitate bending, but baffles may also have been removed.

That's my bet: the previous owner removed some bafles from inside the pipe. If not, there should be no reason for the car to be much louder tan the specs.

That is a great way to go though with changeable end pipes and baffles

Mine is 105db without baffles at 4500rpm as measured at a Croft Circuit track day.

Agree with the others, almost certainly had some or all the baffles removed as well as the tail pipes altered. Is there actually a baffle box under the heat shield, it looks a bit narrow under there? I do like the curved tail pipes, some of the Swiss M3W's have them as well.

I have (this is a personal thought) a little concern about this matter…

What if this 2013 M3W had the baffles removed because the previous owner made a stage 1 or even a stage 2 power upgrade?

And here comes my concern: if the Morgan dealer here tells this guy that he needs to come back to standard pipes and baffles to reduce the noise, and they do so, but being unaware that there is a stage 1 or 2 ECU controlling the engine, can’t the engine be damaged because they now put a much more restricted flow pipes downstream?

They might solve the noise issue but create a major engine problem!

What do you think?

The type of cams are fitted can be checked by removing the cam belt cover and then you can read the number on the ends of the cams, where the retaining nuts for the drive sprockets are. It will say 569 on the ends of Stage 2 cams and 548 (inlet) and 545 (exhaust) for standard ones. The ECU can be accessed with Protune 2 to see if it is the original locked item or not. I doubt that returning to standard restrictive pipes will damage the engine any more than they would a standard car, just the performance and running will suffer. The owner could always get some quieter Stage 1 pipes and weld the little E tag onto them