Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) Sports Cats & Engine Management Light

Hi,

Has anyone had any issues with their engine management light coming on when they fitted less restrictive sports catalytic converter?

I'm especially interested in feedback from anyone with a Duratec Plus 4, I'm about to have a full exhaust system fabricated that will have a less restrictive cat, but I'm keen to understand how my ECU will get on with it.

Can I get away with a 200 cell cat or is it likely to trip a fault code?

Thanks, Dave.

No idea on your plus 4 but be careful with a 200 cell cat it might not pass the mot.

You will also need a remap to get any realistic gains and the standard Morgan ecu can be quite restrictive.

I understand the ECU can be quite restrictive if mods cause the O2 sensor readings to fall outside the adaptive envelope. This can cause issues at MOT time as well.

I have the the ITG filter, full stainless exhaust system with sports cat and the remap on my Duratec plus 4, and yes it can be PITA to get through the emissions at MOT time. I usually ask for the emissions test to be carried out first after the 4 mile drive to the centre in 3rd gear. Mostly this works but I have on one occasion required a re test.
The engine management light comes on fairly regularly so I bought a cheap reader to put it off.

I have a similar set up to Gordon’s with itg air filter, sports exhaust (with 200 cell cat) and a remap. The exhaust manifold is standard. There were some teething troubles at first with the engine warning light coming on but this was fixed by Williams Morgan and the light hasn’t come on for many years now. At MOT time I ensure the cat is well warmed through and the car has never failed on emissions although the tester has, on occasion, had to let the cat warm up further before recording the results.
Bob

2013 Duratec Plus 4.

Thanks Gordon, that's basically the set up I'm about to install myself, sorry to hear you're having issues but there is a solution, it's worth remembering that Morgan specialists such as Williams and Wolf Performance are not engine management experts, but they will have gone to one to get their calibrations built. I've run a number of stand alone ECUs over the years on different cars, building my own calibrations is a well trodden path but this time with Monty I want to see what can be done with the stock ECU?

I've completed quite a bit of research so far on the subject but I'm still learning, anyway here's what I've learnt so far:

The ECU we have is a Visteon, Levanta 32 bit module known as the 'Black Oak', it's a standalone ECU but not in the after market sense, it has 1 megabyte of memory and is a member of the Ford EEC family. The Levanta 'Black Oak' is the first ECU that used Freescale PowerPC architecture, it was used extensively in Ford vehicles running the 2.0 Duratec HE engine up to around 2006, but Morgan continued to use it until around 2014 in the Duratec +4’s until the GDI came along.

Morgan sourced the ECU from Power Torque in Coventry.

https://www.powertorque.co.uk/ford-parts/

It may have received a bespoke calibration for the +4 but I'm still trying to confirm this, what I can tell you is this ECU is designed to be read and reprogrammed using Ford WDS (Worldwide Diagnostic System), this system was used by Ford dealers from 1997-2006 so given Ford have long since moved on to far superior systems you can pick up a used WDS hand held controller fairly easily and I would image any decent tuner specialising in Fords will have one. As such, I strongly suspect tuners with extensive Ford engine management experience like Mountune, Deam Science and Puma Speed etc etc etc will have absolutely no issue working with this ECU.

Let's be frank, much later and far more sophisticated Ford engine management systems have long since been hacked so our early to mid 2000's series Levanta 'Black Oak' should present no challenges at all, my guess is Ford tuning specialists will actually have their own tuning software to communicate with the ECU rather than using the old Ford WDS.

In terms of functionality that relates to this post, the ECU analyses and records oxygen content in the exhaust gasses before the catalytic converter via a pre-cat wideband lambda sensor, it will most certainly be using a closed loop strategy where once the engine has completed its warmup phase, the ECU will reference a Lambda table and shoot for the target figure in the specific load/RPM cell its in at any given time with a bit of interpolation to smoothing things out. The ECU also references oxygen content post-cat via a second post-cat sensor, so it will be comparing the variance between the two sets of Lambda data, this is essentially a strategy to monitor the performance of the catalytic converter specified by Ford.

The ECU is programmed to throw a fault code and turn on the engine management light if the difference between the pre and post cat Lambda sensor output data streams exceed a predetermined threshold, this is why you are having issues Gordon! Your ECU is seeing your sports cat as a standard cat that's underperforming, which of course it is as proved by your MoT tester. To solve the issue a good tuner with the right software will either overwrite the code to take the second Lambda sensor and its readings out of the equation, or better still recalibrate the trigger threshold so the ECU no longer throws a fault code with a 200 cell (or similar) sports cat fitted.

All this is why I'm continuing my research with specialist Ford tuners rather than Morgan specialists, it's the Ford tuning world not the Morgan people who hold the knowledge and the solutions we need.

For your goals, I would say that VW can definitely help you.
To give a serious answer, I would use a Brain 300 cell metal cat. I have it too, it lets the engine breathe well with plenty of power and the standard ECU unit is never unhappy with the lambda values for many years now.

Though a fiddle with the mapping might defeat the warning light, to me that’s simply “papering over the cracks”.
I don’t think it will fool the MOT man when he measures emissions with a 200 cell cat. But…what do I know?

I have a 200 cell cat on my 4/4 Sport and it goes through the MOT with no emissions issues, as long as it is nice and hot (a run up the motorway and back is adequate).
No mil lights on the dash with the original Morgan ecu re-mapped by Wolf performance.