I'm puzzled by this post. Michael Palmer's book "Morgan 4/4 The First 75 years" doesn't list any GM engines being used in 4/4s (solidly Ford from 1955 apart from a dalliance with Fiat in the early eighties). Was this an upgrade by the owner? I can see the sense as the Z18XER has more oumph that than the Duratex (1800) or Zetec (1600) engines as provided by the faxtory. But both the Ford engines are easily tweaked and any Morgan dealer will know what they're dealing with.
It was an option offered by an independent Morgan specialist. Replaced pre-Zetec engine in Tim's car. Several conversions were carried out.
Zetec 1800 were fitted from '93 and came in 1800 cc capacity.
Yep. The idea for the conversion came back in 2007 when Steve Halstead, then the importer for GM crate engines, did a deal with Westfield to produce a package to suit installation in their cars. He went to Kevin Vernon for advice and to do the development work, and the idea of bunging it into a CVH-engined Morgan was born.
The conversion consisted of the Z18XER motor mated to a Ford T9 gearbox with a bell housing from SBD Motorsports, who also supplied the MBE Systems ECU. Mapping and setup for the system was done by John Ravenscroft of TVR (He's the J in the AJP Motor name). Dropping in the conversion needed new engine mounts, a new engine wiring loom, Alloy radiator and expansion tank from Peter Mulberry, and twin-piston brake calipers from Hi-Spec running on the original discs. The really handy thing about the Z18XER motor is that the package is really neat and compact as the catalytic converter is integrated with the exhaust manifold so it stays nice and hot and the engine runs very clean even at wild states of tune. You've also got the advantages of variable valve timing etc which was a great leap forward from the CVH.
The tuning of the engine is pretty sporty, it piles on power like nobody's business and wails like a banshee all the way up to 7000rpm. I had mine on a dyno and it gave 165bhp and 147 ft-lb of torque, which when you think my CVH engine could barely manage 90 is quite a step up. Downsides are you get a big of rev-hang when you drive it gently and with a 4.1:1 rear diff it's not the world's greatest motorway cruiser
As for servicing, it could indeed be an issue if one wanted a Morgan dealer to do it, but mine's not been near any dealer since I bought it from Bill Wykeham in 2000 and I have no problem looking after it myself, the MBE ECUs come with a software application called EasyMap which allows you to do everything one could think of to the engine, the only downside is that it's not OBDII compliant so you can't use one of those cheap scanner jobbies, you need a proper laptop.
I think Kevin did 5 conversions in the end. I've got one and a mate of mine who lives in France has one, I don't know what happened to the other 3.
