Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing My continuing GDI saga, and its not good news.

DAVE THIS REALLY IS A CONUNDRUM! You don't suppose AR locked your ecu to protect your/their download. The odd thing here is you can't access your OBD2 port. Going to be interesting to see exactly what is causing this though. Who reflashed your ECU back to standard? and how did they manage that. Did AR re chip your ECU in which case the reboot might have just confused things more. This surely has to be electronic as I'm sure you will have checked and checked the mechanical elements until you were sick of the sight of them. I do hope there is honesty relayed back to you and that a solution is achieved. This really flies in the face of what trad Morgans were all about. Slowly, slowly they have moved into this secretive market trying to make owners buy and service their cars with them, even effecting the few long established dealers available to us should we need them....... I do hope for their sake they have got the market right. The porsche owner will not put up with the one fully booked dealership nor the 400 mile round trip when they do agree to see him/her!!

For sure I know I would be exactly where you are now, without a clue as to where to look next. Think I'd be asking Dave, Monty the car, how to go about changing the whole brain and getting rid of that locked Morgan abomination.!

My absolute sympathy with your situation Dave and I hope MORGAN pick all this up especially as you have done so much to support Morgan and especially Morgan owners to be able to afford the ownership of their trad car. I always thought a FORD meant Afford!

As far as I know Sewin, all the GDIs are like this. The flash-back to standard was at the MoT at Ledgerwoods. The dealers can reinstall the standard profile because they were all sent a modified flash on the standard item, which I think dealt with the hair trigger throttle, which not all had anyway. Figure that out!
The AR flash can only be done at MMC and there was talk that this may be no longer provided soon. In addition there were two AR flashes. The full one if you have the AR manifold and system, and a lesser one if you have a non factory manifold and system upgrade.So there are four out there. Original standard, upgraded, AR half assed, and full AR.

Hi Dave, really sorry to hear of your problem. I'm with Richard I find it hard to believe that MMC have locked out basic OBD2 access. As I understand it OBD2 compliance was made a legal requirement in America for all new cars sold from 1996 and Europe followed suit in 2000.

My car is a 4/4 with a Ford 1.8 silver top Zetec. The car left the factory in November of 1999 and was fitted with an ECU that is not OBD2 compliant it doesn't even have a MIL light fitted. It just scraped in legally for this country by a couple of months. It could not have been legally exported to America at that time with that ECU fitted. It took me a very long time to find software and hardware that would connect to this car. I eventually did and it turned out to be Ford DCL protocol. By 2016 that should have been long gone.

I can't help but wonder whether the inability to connect problem, is in fact a wiring fault. I am sure Richard would be able to check if cables from the diagnostic connector share a common multipole connector with the MIL light somewhere on rout to the ECU. It may be the ECU connector itself needs reseating or even (most unlikely) the ECU is faulty. Even if MMC locked out OBD2 access there would be no point in disabling the MIL light and given your severe symptoms that should defiantly be illuminated.

The photo bellow shows the standard pin out for the OBD2 connector. The lower diagram is for your car, note the diagram does not mention that pin 16 is at battery + volts with ignition on or off. You can ignore the upper diagram that is for my car and ignore my scribblings.


Regards Tony

Hi Zach.

MMC and the dealer can access the port. Although I do wonder if the mapping is corrupted. The fault the second time emerged very slowly, over 20 miles, which is also weird.

Well hopefully it's getting the necessary identification, rectification and a permanent solution.

I remember when Mercedes first introduced ABS, I had a new convertible that every time it rained heavy it went into limp home mode, this was back in the days when there was no fault code memory, so unless you could replicate the fault with the engine running and a code reader attached , you stood no chance with intermittent faults.

Despite all of Mercedes vast experience, they never fixed it during my short ownership of the car Maybe a decade later, I was discussing the issue with a Mercedes mechanic, and he just had a wry smile, they eventually found out it was a faulty ABS sensor. As the number incidents of it's occurence increased across the range, they eventually found the root cause was a faulty batch of ABS sensors.

You may remember my 2012 Plus 4 sport lost all power. Everything was checked by Lifes fuses, connections all the onvious known areas to investigate and they couldn't find anything to explain why. An autoelectrian tracked it down to a burnt terminal/wire on the undersude of the fuse box, which was not obvious until you took the fuse box off........frustrating but fixable............thats why I always recommned a wiring check for anyone buying a used Morgan.

I can only image your frustration and sometimes sense of helplessness, as some things are beyond your control, but hopefully the fix whatever it is, will increase the knowledge base, if it is a generic fault,.of running a GDI Morgan, all you can do is keep the faith.............

.I don't allow the complexity of the CX to worry me, as I have neither the inclination or skills to work on it and accept the inevitable garage visits, and resulltant costs. hopefully infrequently...but it is a hand built Morgan.......and they can be more maintenance intensive, that other mass produced cars as a result........

In 2013, when I was adding over-riders to my 2012 P4, and MMC were building cars with over-riders, it took six weeks to get 4 over-riders and brackets from the factory by my dealer.

I've seen inside the hallowed stores complex and its brimming with stuff. I've seen the first box of assembeld parts which were the step 1 after the chassis of a Trad was first put on the trestles.

You would think that it would be a simple step from there to supplying spare parts, but it is not. This is Morgan.

This unfortunate saga is worrying and doesn’t reflect at all well on MMC.

What strikes me is the very different behavioural characteristics exhibited by certain models that to all intents and purposes should be very similar. Dave’s GDI had a hair trigger throttle from new whereas mine has never exhibited anything close to this, either before or after the ClubSport upgrade. Some early Mustang engined Roadsters exhibited the now infamous rev hang, yet this mysteriously disappeared on later models. My 4/4 Sport bordered on appalling, yet there are good folk on here who clearly love theirs. Perhaps I am trying to convince myself, and other GDI owners, that the particular issues with Dave's car will not necessarily be inflicted on all other similar models.

My admiration to Dave for persevering with this issue with metaphorically hands tied behind his back. Lesser mortals, including myself, would have thrown in the towel and summoned the dealer long ago. It must be unbelievably frustrating.

Curious as to why BHM? Geographically, there are nearer Morgan dealers to South Yorkshire.

I seem to remember he bought the car from them Chris & IMHO they are a good dealership

Morgan buys in all it's engines and gearboxes, so it is to a certain degree captive to the vagrances of the supplying manufacturer and the extent they allow modification to the ecu software without voiding their supplying warranty etc. Most engines ecu's tuned to operate in much heavier cars and so on. Weren't the ecu upgrades to the Supersport 400 undertaken by a BMW approved tuner, so they still exercise some control over the specification etc. of the engine. so protecting BMW's warranty and reputation exposure in using BMW engines etc in powering Morgan cars.

The original manufacturers may have made changes from the earlier spec'd engines to correct problems they may have experienced overtime in their cars, and it may not be anything that Morgan has done eg the Mustang engine rev hang. I note my autobox creeps forward more than I would expect so I have to hold it more on the brake when statutionary, which I think may be due to the lightness of the car compared to BMW cars and possibly the gearbox settings have not been changed (if they can be changed) to reflect the weight differential in applications.

So whilst it may reflect on MMC, some of these matters maybe completely outside of their control, or their freedom of movement to alter specification of supplied components.

Morgan, courtesy of engines available, have been dragged into the arena of overwhelming mechanical/electronic complexity where even the main dealers of world-level car manufacturers sometimes can't sort the problems of their own motors! ... not a great scenario going forward.

K