Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 2012 in for engine replacement

I took my 2012 to Northshore Sports Cars because we heard a noise coming from the right cylinder. I also wanted some upgrades done. Well turns out both heads are cracked, and both camshafts are bad. So I'm getting a rebuilt motor from Phil Bleazey for them to install. Don't have any date on that yet but I hope to have it back by sprint time. The car has been a real disappointment as I'll have $ 30,000 in repairs in it with the earlier Bleazey conversion, the cam belt upgrade and now a new motor.

That is a real shame. I can understand your disappointment.
Probably explains why these vehicles don't do very well on the second-hand market....

Does your M3W have a lot of miles on it and/or raced a lot?
I am curious if this is how they wear out, or just bad luck.

Sorry to hear of the costs incurred by you with your m3w. although somewhat surprised when considering that the Touring group Fab5 have probably amassed 100,000 miles between them over the past 3 years with no major expense's incurred...

mine has about 20k miles and now burns a qt of oil every 200 miles. Never raced it and generally I am a consrvative driver.

You didn't say how many miles your engine has done Dutch. Some US cars have big mileages on them. It's a bit sad that the best place to get a replacement "All American" S&S X-Wedge engine is now in the UK. At least you have a good exchange rate at the moment. Tariffs???

There must be an element of luck (and build tolerances?) involved with these engines. Not wishing to jinx things but my engine has done just over 46,000 fairly reliable miles, burns little or no oil, has good compression, doesn't wet sump much when left and generally runs reasonably well. It has had regular oil changes with good quality oil, had the urban cooling kit fitted early in its life and rarely gets the chance to drive in very high ambient temperatures. High temperatures in engines is never a good thing. The urban cooling kit is not elegant but does help keep engine temperatures under control.

Just a conjecture, but these engines really don't seem happy if they are "lugged" at all, so driving style may play into the issues some are having. And the factory ECU tune doesn't seem to help either. On my 2012, I replaced the ECU almost immediately with an unlocked unit and removed the cats (after one self destructed), and after allowing the engine to auto tune the fuel then saving as a new baseline a few times, the engine seems much happier, smoother, and definitely cooler than the before state.

Of course there is also the very real possibility that S&S's quality control wasn't exactly world class....