Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) Monty Takes A Deep Breath

I was out for a sunset trundle round last night and the majority of my drive was spent at around 2000 rpm going up to 3000 rpm ish..... occasionally.......towards 4000 rpm going through the gears.....!!!

8000+ rpm.....................🤯😱🤦🏻‍♂️😆.....!!!

Although I did notice that my rev counter does go up to 8000 rpm.....................😂😂

🇬🇧🇬🇧

It is bonkers Julian, but Monty seems to love a good spanking to 8k and beyond

On a seperate subject, I belive this is the high zic addative James of M2R Motorsport slathered all over Monty's new cam lobes and buckets, apparently what was left over went straight in the sump with the liquid moly engine oil.



Anyway, it's all coming out tomorrow and with Monty having covered his first 800 miles on this potion. The new cams, buckets and special big end bearings should be nicely run in now, so with Castle Combe just around the corner next Thursday, tomorrow is the perfect day to get the fresh 5 litres of Fuchs Titan Race Pro S 5w50 in Monty's sump.



The above oil was recomnended for the early oil change, and as James fitted the ported big valve head, the Newman Phase 3 cams, the fresh set of buckets and the Mahle Motorsport tri-metal big end bearings, it made sense to take his recomnendation on the engine oil.

It's also nice to see the new oil now allows me to go to 11,500rpm, this must be true as it says so on the label



Finally, the advice was to fit a genuine Ford oil filter, so that's what Monty gets

800 miles after the new cams and Mahle Motorsport big end shells, Monty get's an oil change.



The waste oil came out clean as a whistle, zero glitter so I'm more than happy with that

Castle Combe here we come

As this post will coming to a close soon, I thought I'd share a bit of light relief as a humerous antidote all my obsessive geekery



Those of you who know me and my good friend Aston, may recognise the two young scoundrels?

Never grow up chaps, it's a con!

How did the track day go!?!?

It went great thanks Andrew, but not without some drama

Firstly, the day started wet, standing water in the pit lane wet and elsewhere across the track too so we needed to apply caution, especially as we were running Toyo Proxy 888Rs. As the track dried we gradually upped the pace, and we started properly exploring Monty's new top end performance, but it soon became clear the engine was feeling a little flatter than I'd expected over 7,000rpm, so I came in for an early lunch and to check our ECU logs.

Sure enough Monty was dog rich over 7k at 10.5:1, a situation that got worse as the revs went higher, the reason for this is it's very hard to effectively tune the top end on the road when Monty is now screaming over 8,000rpm. Irrespective of the excellent AutoTune feature, reaching the higher engine speeds required to get sufficient samples over 7k simply isn’t safe, so I'd largely extrapolated the VE at the very top end and it turns out I'd been a bit ambitions with my numbers.

Foolishly I'd also only given the short term trim 10% authority either side of the AFR targets so the feature couldn’t offer sufficient correction to pull the fuelling leaner than 10.05:1 and even richer when really pressing on to 8k. This was easily corrected by applying 50% of the VE AutoTune suggested, then giving 20% authority to the wide band lambda short term trim correction.

Back out on the track and it soon became clear Monty was now pulling like a train above 7k, the rate of acceleration was night and day improved from earlier when the top end was rich. Now we were really flying, so I pushed the SD card into my EDL-1 and logged one very hot lap where Monty was held on the bleeding edge of grip and some form of correction was required on every single bend and curve. On a few occasions, I clearly felt the hard rev limiter come in and knowing this meant I'd taken Monty's Duratec to 8,400rpm I came in to study my hero log.

What I found shocked me, my AFRs were permanently locked at 25.5:1, despite the super strong performance something was clearly wrong! It then it dawned on me the earlier supper rich top end running must have poisoned and killed my Bosch LSU 4.9 lambda sensor. Undaunted, as I knew I'd corrected the VE table and the engine had responded brilliantly, I tossed Monty's keys to my good friend Aston so he could feel the improvement. Aston started to explore the new top end power and he couldn’t believe the difference, as his confidence grew in Monty's new found thrust over 7,000rpm he started getting faster and faster, I felt his last lap needed recording so I again pushed the SD card in and started the log.

Almost exactly at this moment I started to get the faint whiff of coolant, but it wasn’t strong enough to worry me, however 30 seconds later I glanced at the Monty's temp gauge and it was showing 140c!!!!



Hazards on Aston nursed Monty off the track and into our parking spot, I didn’t even look under bonnet, I took the SD card out and went to the cafe to study the log. Sure enough coolant temps had shot up to a true 120c, back at the car and Monty's bonnet up we soon found the issue, NO BELT! The 14 year old belt had clearly decided it didn’t like 8,000rpm plus so had made a bid for freedom and escaped it's long term home to start a new life on the Castle Combe track.

Much trying to work out what belt is fitted to a 2012 Duratec Plus 4 ensued, James my engine builder had some photos of Monty's Duratec engine numbers so did some Googling and came up with 6PK1305, in the mean time I'd phoned Brands Hatch Morgan and the super helpful parts guy there gave me three possibles, one of which was 6PK1305. So we borrowed a car from Henry Williams and made our way to an excellent local motor factors who had a Gates 6PK1305 in stock. Back at Monty but having no reference to confirm the belt run, it initially appeared the 1350mm long belt was too short, then Doug came in with 6PK1306 on my TM post which made me look closer at how the belt might run, luckily I had a photo on my phone that gave some clues and within minutes the belt was on.

By this time the track day was over, but we'd had our fun (and some scares), so we topped up Monty's coolant, nipped up every coolant hose Jubilee clip, tightened the expansion tank cap and ran the engine up to make sure it had survived the very short period at 120c, which of course it had. I checked to see if the engine oil smelt burnt but it was perfect, as was the level. So we drove the 50 miles back to Aston's house with Monty purring like a kitten, we returned Monty to his road tyres and I covered another 50 miles getting myself home to Rickmansworth, again Monty ran perfectly.

I arrived home safely an hour or so ago with the only casualties of the day being one £25.00 auxiliary drive belt, and one £70.00 Bosch LSU 4.9 lambda sensor. We got up at 6.00am this morning, so it was a very long (and eventful) day, however Monty is now properly mapped at the top end and going like a scolded cat. I will buy the lambda sensor tomorrow from the ECU Master's UK dealer Road Race & Rally and I should have it on Saturday morning, at which point I can reinstate the wide band closed loop short term trim and be on my merry way.



Thanks for listening

Great that you got the car running so well .... the other stuff is just the joys of the track Vs the joys of the road 🙂

K

That's the point of going to Castle Combe, you can only properly and safely test a newly tuned high revving engine on a fast open track. A track day is also brutal on the car, if it can survive that sort of punishment all day long you're doing well, and it'll certainly be reliable on the road.

The racetrack at Castle Combe is the perfect environment to reveal any issues, I already knew my top end tune needed work because it's impossible to take sufficient samples at 7,000rpm and above on the road, well not without risking one's life and licence. The belt thing also only revealed itself on the track because you can't really run sutained high revs on the road, however, in it's defence it was the original 14 year old belt.

I doubt Ford designed the tensioner with 8,400rpm in mind, so I'll definitely be carrying a spare from now on. Once I've fitted the new lambda sensor, I'll be ready to safely lay down a number at Surrey Rolling Road on the 20th June, if I'd gone before discovering it was rich at the top end and correcting it, the power number would have been laim.

After yesterday's propper all day session on the track I've been able to nail the top end fueling, so I'm now confident the number I record at the dyno will show Monty giving his best. Testing on the track was the only proper way to shake Monty down following all the tuning work, the fact it only revealed two small easy (and cheap) to fix issues is testiment to our project planning and careful prep work.... but mostly the general strength, reliabilty and tuneability of the amazing Duratec engine!

Sounds like an overall productive day. Lots of rapid development and testing happening.

Sounds like some fun driving too!

What was your noise measurement?

We recorded 94db at 4,500rpm with the decibel killer inserted up Monty's tailpipe

So safely under the 100db rule, unfortunately it made a bid for freedom halfway through the day, but as we had our sticker the fun continued, just with the volume now turned up to 11