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Tricky Dicky
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I'm glad the garage got to the root cause and hope you can begin to restore your faith in the car with some nice trips out.
That is a lot of outlay in repair costs for a newish car so I'm not surprised you are struggling to love MMC at the moment and remain loyal.

Good that you shared it on here that others can learn from it as it appeared to be another new fault by the responses that came in thumbs


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Originally Posted by roof down and go
Dear All, I just wanted to give you an update of how this all ended..... Well, as mentioned I had no warning lights and I instinctively didn't want to change the cats in France. We limped home at 65 and after swapping could packs and plugs etc, there was no difference. In the end I phoned the legendary Billy Bellinger and took the car over to him. Billy and his Dad are geniuses. They finally traced it to a gap where the bonding had degraded by cylinder 6 on the plastic air inlet manifold. Basically the air inlet manifold on the roadster is made up of two halves sandwiched and glued together along the top and bottom sections. it appears that the immense heat that we have been having caused the glue to melt on one edge which affected the air /fuel mix going into cylinder 6 (which was running 40 degrees cooler tat the others). They glued it back together and although the car is fine, I've actually fallen out of love with it now.

I have had 4 Morgans and have been loyal to the cause, often turning a blind eye on build quality. The roadster has cost me at least £7000-£10,000 in fixing things that should never have broken in the first place. But when something as fundamental as an inlet manifold fails, it takes 2nd rate build quality to another level. The car is 6 years old; I even thought that perhaps I should trade it in for a new one, but as far as I know the new ones are equally as bad.

I will need serious persuasion to stay loyal - I think its time to move on

No wonder you have fallen out of love with your morgan. Bizaar that the melting of glue led to this. I would have thought that as the manifold is bolted on, the it would have held everything together. Surely there could be a better design for what will be a cheap part. What manufacturer makes your engine?

Edit. Just realised its the manifold itself that's failed not the gasket.

Last edited by Leroy; 16/08/22 06:24 PM.

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I guess the good news is you have solved it. I hope whatever you do next works well for you.
Thanks for the update


JohnV6
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RD&G, thanks for taking the time to post the info on what caused the bad running issue, these things are always very helpful to other owners

I do hope you can perhaps take a pause & fall back in love with your Mog, in contrast I have a pal with a 3.7 that's 10 yrs old now and almost 40k covered and he's had no issues except normal wear 'n tear, (& the lucky bu66er doesn't get rev hang)


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Originally Posted by roof down and go
Dear All, I just wanted to give you an update of how this all ended..... Well, as mentioned I had no warning lights and I instinctively didn't want to change the cats in France. We limped home at 65 and after swapping could packs and plugs etc, there was no difference. In the end I phoned the legendary Billy Bellinger and took the car over to him. Billy and his Dad are geniuses. They finally traced it to a gap where the bonding had degraded by cylinder 6 on the plastic air inlet manifold. Basically the air inlet manifold on the roadster is made up of two halves sandwiched and glued together along the top and bottom sections. it appears that the immense heat that we have been having caused the glue to melt on one edge which affected the air /fuel mix going into cylinder 6 (which was running 40 degrees cooler tat the others). They glued it back together and although the car is fine, I've actually fallen out of love with it now.

I have had 4 Morgans and have been loyal to the cause, often turning a blind eye on build quality. The roadster has cost me at least £7000-£10,000 in fixing things that should never have broken in the first place. But when something as fundamental as an inlet manifold fails, it takes 2nd rate build quality to another level. The car is 6 years old; I even thought that perhaps I should trade it in for a new one, but as far as I know the new ones are equally as bad.

I will need serious persuasion to stay loyal - I think its time to move on

Thanks also from me Dave and sorry to hear of your experiences and expenses. Bear in mind that MMC likely have little to do with engines supplied built up other than specifying their logo on inlet manifold. Great plug for Billy Bellinger in finding the obscure fault. I have to say my four year old car has cost nothing extra in the 22,000+ miles covered to maintain its total reliability other than a rad change, which I was expecting to do anyway by way of an improvement.


Richard

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Unfortunately I think the inlet manifold is a Morgan part not a ford part. The ford bits never go wrong , its the Morgan bits attached to them that fail. I'll write to Morgan but Im expecting to be ignored / not have an acceptable outcome. They normally just shrug their shoulders

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It is a feature in their vernacular sadly


JohnV6
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Originally Posted by roof down and go
Unfortunately I think the inlet manifold is a Morgan part not a ford part. The ford bits never go wrong , its the Morgan bits attached to them that fail. I'll write to Morgan but Im expecting to be ignored / not have an acceptable outcome. They normally just shrug their shoulders

An exclusive to Morgan part yes, MEP4052, but I very much doubt made any differently to Ford's design. Below same external webbing common to other 3.7 V6 applications, in this case Mustang with forward throttle body. Note same split design.

[Linked Image]

I doubt whether anyone other than Ford themselves would be able to justify such a small production run of this custom logo part. Thoughts are it would be a crate engine option provided through MMC's UK supplier. Happy to be proven wrong though.


Richard

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I would agree Richard the tooling for that would be I guess £100k up and you would need a good blow moulder to make it. The Morgan script is probably a mould insert. I'm guessing Ford also put different branding on it where the Engine is used e.g. Mercury , Lincon & Mazda.


JohnV6
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At the time MMC were negotiating to buy those engines, Ford were not especially interested, and had adopted a take it or leave it approach. This story was related to me in the canteen at MMC by a senior member of the team, at the time when Roadster production had stopped, and I was interested in ordering a new Roadster.

So any changes to that engine will be minimal.


DaveW
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