Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) +4 GDI Air Temps

Monty’s EMU Black ECU was of course very carefully calibrated against the well known and very consistent Bosch IAT and CLT sensors so I’m confident my data is good, but given the logs show a rise in both temps at idle I thought I'd have a look at what happens to Monty's IATs and CLTs if I accelerate hard after a sustained idle period.



As we can see as soon as the engine starts pumping the IATs fall away extremely rapidly as does the CLT, Ok so with reference to CLT shortly before I accelerated off the lights the rad fan had activated but as the revs rise, the water pump starts to spin harder, and we get some air through the rad the coolant temp also drops super rapidly (95c peak at fan activation to just 73c). Also keep in mind when the rad fan comes on it'll be blowing hot air directly into the closed engine bay right where my open air filter resides, despite this and there being no cool airflow because the car is still sat startionary there doesnt seem to be any corelation between the rad fan running and a rise in IATs, to me this is further proof there really is nothing to be concerned about if you've deleted your Mondeo airbox.

Now look at the measured event area in the log I've highlighted and we can see both the CLT & IATs complete their significant decreases in just 1.45 seconds! Within less than a couple of seconds and after a sustained period at idle all temps are perfect, actually in the case of CLT its a bit on the low side (73c) but this soon corrects to the 82 - 85c normal driving range I see.

Another point of note is despite the aggressive acceleration event off the lights there's no knock detected so no ignition angle correction, IAT ignition angle correction also remains completely dormant. I again conclude that while the Mondeo filter airbox delete can mean IATs rise at idle, the moment the engine starts pumping, the high volume flow of new cool air brings the IATs right back down almost instantly.

I therefore do not see any hot air performance issues arising from fitting my open AEM DryFlow air filter, what it does ensure however is there's no restriction above roughly 172hp at WOT (wide open throttle). In summary, if you've deleted the Mondeo airbox and you're at all concerned about high IATs with an open filter, the solution is simply to stop sitting at idle and drive the car because everything sorts itself out automatically and almost instantaneously as you pull away.

I do concede high IATs at idle traditionally can lead to poor idle quality, but this is really old hat as it relates to one of the greatest frustrations of carburettor tuning, injection largely fixed this challenge years ago. Monty’s EMU Black has proved especially good at closed loop idle management by deploying both the IACV and scatter spark correction strategies referencing IAT & coolant sensor feedback to always deliver your chosen target idle speed no matter what.

More recently I’ve also activated PiD idle management, this is a new one for me but it really does help to polish off any final tiny rough edges, using all these strategies and following a relatively short period of systematic calibration I was able to absolutely pin Monty’s idle speed to my 950 rpm target with witchcraft-like efficiency, and irrespective of engine load or IAT changes.

All very impressive stuff from ECU Masters who make the EMU Black ECU, but let’s not forget Morgan didn't build these cars to sit at the lights all day

Intersting Rog

The crapola Smiths coolant temp gauge calibration with the thermistor is just as bad, mine is an absolute joke, personally I feel the whiff of hot coolant is a way safer indicator of overheating so I never bother with the gauge.

My ECU logs and the EMU Black bluetooth app I run on my phone that gives me live accurate data on the move proves my Duratec consistently operates between 82 - 85c out on the open road, which is actually a bit low for this engine as Ford designed it to run at or just over 100c, but thats all about emissions and I'm all about performance so I'm more than happy with my cooler engine temps.

I've set rad fan activation at 95c with the off point set at 90c, cycling is infrequent and when the fan does come on it's back off in under 30 seconds, I suspect my SiFab ally rad has a lot to do with it?

Simons radiators are superb. Since my previous experience I now have one of his shorty’s with a smaller forward facing surface area that doesn’t protrude out from the bottom. It’s exceptionally well behaved compared to the fun I had with my first car. I’ve never checked the head sensor’s accuracy but the OBD2 always says the fan comes on at 100c and off shortly after at 93C. It’s really consistent and I don’t see the higher temps. I agree these engines are designed to run quite hot but so far to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never hit the second fan speed temp.

Like this maybe...

I can see the logic Rog and Dave of having your inlet filter so placed. The location if I remember correctly is a relative high pressure area once on the move at reasonable speed, as air through cowl hits the upper bulkhead. My only concern would be it's temperature. It would be interesting on a 4 cylinder car to compare IAT with your intake arrangement versus the standard air box fitted with similar minimal restriction filter element, fed by large bore hose with its inlet located above from radiator.

A GDI owner showed me his similar well thought out new installation yesterday. This consisted of a bespoke air deflector fitted within top of cowl, angled upwards to take cool air from well in front of rad and over the top, as suggested by Cain at Wolf Performance. A broad collector located as high as possible behind and slightly behind rad and attached to 4 inch hose hose picked up this cool flow and fed it to air box, mitigating the heat convection/conduction from rad top tank. Important since he had the now common larger aluminium rad limiting space above.

My data proven point is while IATs do rise at idle with an open filter setup, as soon as you move off and the engine starts shifting air the IATs instantly return to normal operating levels. One correction though, I do now believe the peak IAT of 47c I saw was a consequence of rad fan activation, on closer review the log definitely shows a correlation between the two with a rise from 40c to 47c as the fan blew hot air into the closed engine bay at idle. Because the car was sat at the lights there was litrally no other air flow in the enclosed engine bay other than the super heated air pushed out by the rad fan, so the IAT rise is to be expected.



However, once again as soon as you open the throttle and move away the IATs fall rapidly,TBH if I had my time again I would probably have asked my fabricator to build my inlet manifold with the throttle body facing forward, this would have likely necessitated fitting a longer throttle cable and added other minor complications but it would have placed the air filter up front to receive cool incoming air. However, the benefit would have been very small and only likely seen at idle where in terms of power production higher IATs are largely irrelevant.

On Saturday 27th Jan I will be visiting Surrey Rolling Road to put Monty on the rollers for the first time, this will not only give me outright peak horsepower and torque figures but because a proper graph is supplied I'll be able to see where the torque peaks in the rev range, and how long its sustained for. This is what I'm paying to see, as far as I'm concerned peak horsepower numbers are more for pub bragging rights while torque and the shape of the torque curve demonstrates far better how the car genuinely performs in the real world out on the road.

However, despite SRR running a huge fan in front of the car it is afterall a static test, so I'll be recording a log during the run so I can analyse my IATs and all other data feeds after the event. I'll be comparing these figures with what actually takes place during real world driving, should my intake temps on the rollers be say 15c higher than my true temps out on the open road it's safe to say the engine's real world output could be as much as 5% more than the graph will indicate.

My personal data supported thinking is there really isn't anything to worry about in terms of real world driving power loss if you fit an open filter up the back of the engine bay, but I do strongly suspect the Mondeo airbox will start to become a restriction above 172hp so that would mean a K&N or similar could be a worthwhile mod for anyone going further than just a decent exhaust manifold on their Duratec Plus 4.

The GDI of course has what looks like a better coffee can type filter enclosure with a cold air feed, while this feed does sit over the hot exhaust manifold my data shows once the engine moves off idle the inrush of air will solve that issue more or less instantaneously. I'm not sure what type of filter resides within the GDI's coffee can but I suspect whatever it is the setup will happily support the Club Sport tune that I understand takes the engine to 185hp, and as 185hp represents the practical tuning limit of a GDI I'd recommend the OP saves his money and leaves the standard setup in place.

Actually the stock cold air fed GDI setup looks pretty good to me, so I might even copy it on Monty

I can confirm that placing an open K&N filter close to the windscreen gave the best results with my 4/4. But I am back to normal currently. It is a 10 minute job to swap the filters when keeping the MAF sensor and using a second one.

This is my setup Duratec +4

Nice setup Keith, sucking air from the side louvers



And interstingly whilst the thermal pic of my previous car shows the filter temp maybe a couple of degs over ambient, that car was a little short on louvers....

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