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

Ramble alert...

I guess much may depend upon the type of society we might think ideal, and as we age, I suspect our ideals may evolve from those we held dear when in our yoof..? (-:

For me when younger I was ever very keen to try to extend my automotive knowledge, and the years I spent on the MSCCDG, eMog etc were invaluable in terms of improving my understanding in terms of the variable priorities of Morganeers overall.

The variety of thinking available was impressive indeed, from those who seemed to have masses of grey matter, some of whom seemed also the have the wherewithal to set about "improving" on the rather rudimentary design of their Morgans. It seemed to me that even the smart guys with interesting budgets modified their Morgans to the extent that it seems they ended up no longer driving them, as their improvements threw out some degree of balance in the original Morgan concept...

Not that trad Morgans were ever perfectly balanced, which made them more entertaining for the pilot to feel he had learned what it took to overcome his Morgans little foibles, compared to the average mundanemobiles of a similar era with ever increasing digital levels of control.... Jeez even my old carb fed Morgan has an auto choke where I would far rather have the simplicity of a cable operated device...just an early sign of increasing regulatory processes creeping in...?

Those hands-on guys on the forums, a mix of skilled engineers and keen armatures, explored many areas where performance of Trads might be adjusted to suit their personal and prevailing priorities, perhaps over the years as the average Morganeer aged somewhat, he might have become less interest in polishing ports enlarging valve diameter, fitting freer-flowing exhaust systems and the likes to improve upon volumetric efficiency and increasing eventual power output.... Perhaps one of his desires could be for lighter steering, I think it was JHSII on eMog who mentioned he had successfully fitted bearing races at the base of his front springs, which I remember questioning, in terms of their possible life span at the time, also in time the design of that system was taken up by others and improved upon..? Similarly rolling around on the ground to grease the suspension became more difficult for some, and a remote greasing system appeared, also there was thinking shared on changes to suspension bearing material. added to that list of "improvements," then there was the design of rear mounted hoop to allow replacing the lever arm rear shockers to enable conversion to tubular items, which the MMC then adopted, much as they did with a number of designs that first saw the light of day on forums. The effect of ageing Morganeers was taken on board by one forum member who designed further suspension framework to be added to the rear of Trads in order to smooth out the ride, to the extent it was a tad more comfortable for us old folk...(-: It seems the MMC were perhaps a step ahead having already introduced wider doors, and a degree of interior bling to suit our ever evolving ideals, though instead of bolting on more framework to old trad design, they better matched the requirements of market priorities by designing the CX format...incorporating so much of modern-day expectations, both good and for some Luddite inclined, some not so good... Shrug, no halting "progress." ?

I have no memory of dire warnings relative to the letter of the law being applied to any such interweb design generated "improvements" in those earlier times, though if there was.... I put my hand up and suggest it might have been ME...!!

By the time I had arrived at thinking a Morgan might be the ideal machine for me, I had been through all the primitive processes of tuning and spending my limited resources attempting to make mundanemobiles go faster, starting with m/cycles then on to cars, until I finally gave into my ex racing m/cycle rider uncle`s suggestion.... " Perhaps best to stop spending money on mundane machinery trying to make it go faster, and start out with something initially designed to go faster." ? It took a while to sink in but it did so eventually, thus around the time I was up for a change to something different, having spent a few decades messing around in air cooled Porsches... I think my bias was more along the lines of prioritising originality was well set by the time I became the very fortunate custodian of a Morgan.. (thanks Lorne) (-: I suspect I was more influenced by degrees of originality that I associated with Vintage vehicles at the time.... How times change..?

Today we have regulation after regulation built on top of more regulation, seems the grey areas where some degree of flexibility was wisely built in, are becoming ever more black and white, which in effect is increasingly restricting the freedoms of reasonably minded folk...? By comparison, the effect on the criminally minded.. ? Perhaps reducing their jail time after sentencing, to free up space in prisons provides an example of the way it seems society has been guided by the great and good for quite some time...?

On the automotive front it seems there has been a move towards introducing ever more restrictive measures relative to the ability of owners to maintain and or repair their vehicles, so much so that in the US there has been all sorts of noise created in terms of folk demanding "the right to repair" in situations where they have been locked out by manufacturers, either by software, or even spares supply being restricted to only authorised repairers etc.etc. etc.?

These days when seeking to buy parts for one of my cars, I have to provide proof that I am indeed the owner of the machine...

If you want to live in a black and white world, perhaps check out China, seemingly that population may be monitored to the degree that theft is almost negligible, and that it seems the govt can reward citizens by upping their credit score, if they report any wrong doing by your neighbours or others.... Hmm...?

Fancy some of that...?

Rather obviously no A.I. processes were used in any aspect of creating this ramble, just the decaying grey matter of a grumpy old man, who occasionally favoures music is the sound of an old ICE on full chat, and if it`s lube system is running on Castrol R, what`s more to want...? (-:

As ever, each to their own..

Well I suppose we could turn the clock back to those better days, when the likes of Health and Safety didn't really exist (which is estimated to save on average 5000 lives a year in the UK alone). And enjoy the socierty of eg machinist,wood turners and so on, wearing the badge of honour of their trade, visible on their hands or face. In that how many fingers have they lost on each hand or how many functioning eyes they still have. Lets go back to the days before the Clean Air Act, where most urban environments were dreadful in winter with coal fires pumping out and choking our air and resultant smog that filled our Hospitals and Doctors waiting rooms with chronic chest complaints and often resultant deaths.Those good old days......which thankfully are behind us .maybe progress is often for the better.

I remember reading the environmental report undertaken on the residents living conditions around one of the major London Circular ring road traffic islands near Park Royal, where there were noted a very high incidence of premature deaths often in their early 50's. Not surprisingly, but unfortunately for those residents, noise polution and vehicle emissions etc. in that area was a key factor, leading to early deaths. So cleaning up that environment, restricitng HGV emissions and requiring hush kits fitted to HGV's and aircraft landing at Heathrow, improved their lot over time. Of course some may consider it a bloody inconvenient and expensive for the operators to meet those additional costs, just to make some Londoners have more acceptable living environment.

Maybe regulation has a useful role in society, whilst we may as a individual baulk against some of it's requirement and restrictions imposed and some freedoms lost compared to the past. But it it usually improves the lot of society as a whole. Of course, striking the right balance is very important and that is a difficult one, as vested interests compete for preference in treatment.

Thanks Dave/Monte for the cat part numbers, as I didn’t realise they were stamped on amongst the general rust and dirt.
Sewin: exactly the same cat as on my early 2011 Plus 4.
Mine started blowing around the annular weld, and as you can see from Monte’s ,the weld isn’t great quality.
I welded mine back up but have been searching for an identical part ever since with no luck. So maybe it is a discontinued part, with it now being about 20 years since Ford last used it.

Ok, for those of you interested in the true purpose of this post, I can now share the results of my de-cat exhaust testing. At this point I should be clear I did not return to the dyno, the very limited testing was completed as safely as possible on the road, and data gathered using Monty's excellent EMU Black ECU. At this point I'll step back and let the legal eagle comentators debate taking Monty's Duratec to 7,258rpm on the King's highway.



Firstly it may help to explain Monty's sophisticated wide band lambda sensing provides a very accurate window into his combustion chambers, the oxygen in the exhaust being sampled as an average of all four cylinders by a fast responding Bosch LSU 4.9 lambda sensor placed at the entrance to the now empty void that once housed the cat core.

Prior to testing Monty had been carefully tuned to hit the 13.0:1 AFR target within Monty's lambda target table at full load above 3,000rpm, what we are looking for therefore are changes in short term trim that would indicate an enleanment condition, that in turn would point to increase in volumetric efficiency over the previous exhaust configuration. In simple terms, if the ECU is calling for more fuel to hit our 13.0:1 AFR target, the engine must be moving more air, and if we then match that additional air with more fuel in the correct proportion, we will make more power!

This is the principle that drives the EasyTune feature within the ECU software and while it is clever, it's certainly not magic. Changes to the VE table are simply suggested based on the target lambda table, a table of target AFRs that are of ones own making so it's really only as good as that. However, we do know best power in a naturally aspirated engine can be found around 13.0:1, and we do know Monty was hitting 13.0:1 at wide open throttle and full load with no correction on the catted exhaust, so any suggested corrections are a pretty good indicator of any extra power we may (or may not) have found from the de-cat?

Below on the left you can see Monty's unchanged VE table, a VE table is just a way of ilistrating the fuel we are applying at a given point in engine speed and load, in this case it is represented as Volumetric Efficiency (VE). On the right we can see another VE table, this is what the ECU is suggesting in order that the target AFR is hit, the difference between the two is therefore the percentage of enleanment or enrichment reqired to hit the target.



I've highlighted the full load cells at the problematic area where power was previosly failing to climb, what the table is telling us is that in these cells Monty is now calling for 4% more fuel. To be honest, I was expecting more, what the EasyTune table is telling us is the engine is moving 4% more air so it now needs 4% more fuel in order that the target AFR of 13.0:1 is met.

It's not an exact science, but 4% more air matched with 4% more fuel should deliver at least 4% more power, in my experience and when tested on the dyno the gains are typicallly more than the indicated percentage. However, I would be pretty confident in saying Monty's previous 182hp is now somewhere in the low to mid 190s, more acurately and if I was a betting man, I'd say what we're seeing here is an engine now making 193hp.

So it's still a long way off what we were expecting, and I now think the only way we'll find the missing horsepower is to fit a set of vernier cam sprockets and return to the dyno for a proper cam timing session.

Thanks for listening chaps

Dave.

.Dave, apologies for the thread drift and for ranting in response to the introduction of legality into your thread.
I for one am impressed that you put in the time and effort to share your very interesting voyage of discovery relative to modifying your digital Morgan, and overcoming the odds against doing so....




On my thinking of rules and yet more rules perhaps not providing the best outcomes, I suspect having ever been a hands-on type who valued some degree of self reliance, I ever admired those who pushed the boundaries, a tad more than those who pushed the pens creating regs, for sure there is a degree of balance best applied...BUT..?

My thinking was more based along the lines of folk modifying their Morgans and the boundaries which they pushed, I tried to provided some examples in my post which seem to be along similar lines to the more up to date methods recently applied to improve the performance of a Morgan in this thread.

It seems the sledge hammer and nut analogy might apply when using H&S data the clean air act, and the supposed lives saved, when applied to the reality around modifying a Morgans, given that if the future might indeed be electric to some degree, it seems rather unlikely that the ICE will dominate in transportation as it has done in the past, and if one considers that is also seems likely that folk modifying their Morgans or even having the capability to do so, seem few and far between compared with times past, having been discouraged by regulatory processes some of which have been incorperated in their design...Identify that as progress if you will..Shrug.

On a wider perspective I do admit to being concerned for the young, and their reliance of digitec, having been seduced by the convenience of it (as have I) away from the multitude of different skills their forebears required to learn in order to build a reasonable way of life..... I suspect I have no need of creating a list in terms skills that might be required if the lights go out for any reason, leaving a highly digitally dependant population potentially floundering somewhat....?

As ever, each to their own, while attempting to disagree agreeably... (-: