Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) Monty Goes To The Dyno

Nice one Bob, thanks for sharing your journey, it definitely all sounds very familiar

It's also uncanny what you're saying, having slept on it I woke this morning with the idea to retard my cam timing by a couple of degrees, the theory being this should move peak horsepower up to where it should be at 7,250rpm, instead of falling off at 6,500rpm as it is now.

Actually, as we can hear from my post run video cam timing was the bobble hatted idiot's (me) very first thought when I saw the power fall away early.



Of course you don't get something for nothing as retarding the timing by two degrees will also lose me some torque low down, as you'll know tweaking cam timing just takes the existing window and moves it up or down. However, Monty is a light car and being honest he's such a pussycat right off idle I really don't think I'll experience any drivability negatives by swapping a bit of torque low down for some top end power.

Like you I shied away from ITBs, when I started all this I sat down and debated with myself what I was looking to achieve from tuning Monty, I concluded what I really wanted was a nice driving road car with a sporty twist, I wanted OEM cold starts and a smooth torque rich drive, not a screaming track day weapon that would be a frustration to use every day.

The Fusion Fabrications inlet I went with is indeed a long runner arrangement, it's basically a hand fabricated copy of the cast aluminum Mountune MR200 inlet that's no longer available. As the name suggests Mountune's MR200 kit was designed to give a Mk6 Fiesta ST150 a genuine and repeatable 200hp from it's 2.0 Duratec engine, they achieved this with a set of fast road cams, a better exhaust manifold, their long runner cast inlet manifold and an ECU tune.



Mountune are very skilled engineers so as we can see from the above 204hp graph their MR200 package did exactly what it said on the tin, they also did it in a way that Ford themselves were happy to endorse. If you bought a new ST150 back in the day you could send it to Mountune and it would come back with at least 200hp, still be OEM everyday drivable, and Ford would stand by the car with all your factory warranties still intact.

The Mountune MR200 package and results really appealed to me, so I simply set about copying it on Monty, but sadly Mountune have long since deleted the MR200 kit from their catalog. For the Morgan application I would also need to have a bespoke exhaust fabricated anyway and MR200 inlet manifolds are super rare and expensive when they do come up on the used market, so it made sense to send the car to Matt at Fusion Fabrications for a custom exhaust (basically his Plus 4 Supersport copy) and his hand fabricated MR200 copy long runner inlet manifold.

Below is a dyno graph of a Fiesta ST150 running Newman Phase Two cams, a decent exhaust and a Fusion Fabrications long runner inlet, basically the identical spec I'm running on Monty, for some reason it makes 10hp more than Monty but take a look at how the power also falls away at 6,500rom just like Monty's did on Saturday.




Now compare it with the above Monty graph which looks frighteningly similar to me, so perhaps power dropping off at 6,500rpm is exactly what I should expect from the Fusion Fabrications inlet and there's something else going on with the Mountune MR200 kit that allows the engine to keep making power (my added blue line) well over 7,000rpm?

It's hardly a big deal though, as we can see below my MR200 copy setup is clearly producing the torque characteristics I set out to achieve, the lovely super wide window of torque is right where I want it and have been enjoying in the real world on the road for the last few months



The Mondeo ECU element did present an issue as nobody really tuned Mondeos back in the day, so nobody ever bothered to hack it. I'm sure it can be done but as I've worked with aftermarket stand alone ECUs before I started to look at options. That's when I found ECU Masters had already created one plug and play EMU Black for a Duratec Plus 4, so with no loom to build this looked like a great choice. I liked the idea of not messing with Monty's factory wiring and of course this would also save the cost of building a loom for the new ECU too, better still I negotiated a free ST150 calibration with the package that I'd estimate was worth anything from £300-£600.

Greg at Road Race & Rally adjusted it slightly to run speed density as the ST150 calibration was designed for ITBs so was running Alpha-N, he also needed to sort the CAN to get the speedo to work but I now think this was as simple as choosing 'Mk6 Fiesta' already offered in the EMU Black software as Morgan seems to have used the Ford protocol. I would say the calibration Greg gave me for free was 90% there, all I really needed to do was tune the idle air control valve behavior and develop the VE and ignition tables a little. With some additional work on the closed loop lambda target table and transient enrichments (all of which I did myself for free) my new ECU was OEM good.

I now had complete control over every engine management parameter, this is exactly what I wanted as it leaves the door wide open for future tuning work

At the end of the day it seems the package of components I've chosen is working well and is delivering the characteristics I wanted, if I can just stretch the engine out to keep making power past 6,500rpm to 7,250rpm it'll be absolutely perfect, and it does seem possible simply retarding the cam timing by 2 degrees may be all it needs to achieve that?

Of course, the only way to find out is to try it

Agree with your thinking Dave but it could be that Mountune developed their cam specifically to work with their long runner inlet manifold. Although they called it a fast road cam they might have tuned the cam profile, lift, timing and overlap etc to work with the pulses in their intake runners. (and the exhaust of course)

Mountune are very experienced Ford tuners and do work directly with Ford on some special projects so maybe developed the cam with Ford.

Only guessing and maybe they actually did use the Newman cam as well.

Mountune also developed ECU calibrations on some of the Roadsters for Morgan / Powertorque

This is the sticker on my Roadster ECU

I have the Mountune (215 ?) upgrade on my Fiesta ST2, think it gives something like 212 bhp from a 1600 turbo charged engine. Goes well anyway.

That's an interesting and highly logical theory Bob, I'll call Mountune and try to speak with an engineer.

There are no Duratec cams offered on their website but they're clearly still involved with this engine, here's their 250hp Duratec build on ITBs.

https://www.mountunestore.com/produ...gine?_pos=2&_sid=32e76147e&_ss=r

Hopefully I can speak with someone who has direct technical knowledge of the old MR200 kit?



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Interesting Bob, I never knew that, much like Cosworth, Mountune seem to be engine and engine management tuning consultants to OEMs like Morgan (via Powertorque), Ford, and others. My attempt to copy the Mountune MR200 kit has certainly given me a super smooth driving and torque rich engine with an additional 30hp over a standard Plus 4, throttle response is also massively improved.

All of this significantly enhances the Morgan driving experience I fell in love with when I first drove Monty, and all the evidence suggests there's still more to come

Looking at this another way I've added 34hp at 6,500rpm, an increase of 23% over stock, I've also added 25 lbs/ft of torque from 5,250rpm to 6,500rpm, an increase of 20%.

And now we know Monty makes 173hp, assuming he weighs 877 kg..... that's 197 bhp per tonn!



So the exact same power to weight ratio as a 260hp 3.6 litre Boxster S, a car Porsche said did 0-60 in 5.5 seconds.

https://www.autosnout.com/Figures-Specs/Porsche-Boxster-3-2-S-260-1999/480

To my mind that's quite rapid for something that looks like it was born in the 1930's



Monty not only gives great pleasure to his driver, but also seems to bring joy to everyone who encounters him out in the wild. Filling up with Shell V-Power in Farnborough before visiting Surrey Rolling Road a random but rather attractive young woman approached me with a seductive smile, and simply said...

"Your car is absolutely beautiful"

"Your car is absolutely beautiful" . Shame about the driver

Just looking again at Dave's graph for his Honda K20 Civc Type-R engined Z-Cars Mini.



And highlighting the all important area under the curve is quite revealing when I compare the same on Monty's graph.



Monty has plenty under the curve

Ok so Dave's Mini definitely makes 12hp more, but it only arrives at the very top end, everywhere else and in the rev range you actually use in the real world, the faster car is defiantly Monty, with a meaningful 15% more torque.

Happy with that

Cheers Rog, and merry Christmat to you

TBH it's all just a daft distraction to what life throws at us all eventually, I'm actually at risk of running too many Monty projects at once, but now is the time to get the jobs done while the weather is not that great.

So in addition to a few rear suspension experiments discussed on the other thread, my latest hairbrain horsepower improving scheme includes this fully ported cylinder head from AL Develolments who are the masters at porting the Duratec.







Monty also goes from his current Newman Phase 2 cams, to a set of Newman Phase 3's.



After fitting the head and carefully dialing in the cams with a DTI to avoid any 'valves meet pistons' mishaps, I should have concluded my mapping work and put Monty back on the same dyno at Surrey Rolling Road by mid March. Even after some ignition timing changes Monty refused to give more than 180hp, but he does have an amazingly broad spread of torque while still delivering outstanding everyday drivability.

I should probably stop tuning but as we know 'power is all corrupting' and I remain determined to make over 200hp, this while stubonly avoiding going down the ITB route. Fitting ITBs may come eventually, and with them Monty would easily hit 235hp plus with the new head and cams. However, I absolutely love my Fusion Fabrications long runner inlet and the mid range punch it gives.

The new target is really just another crack at my old target of 210hp while retaining Monty's pussycat town manners, I'll add an update here when the results are in.

Wish me luck, Dave