Yellow not mellow

1980 Australian Moke 1380 cc Fuel Injected 100 hp with all mod cons.

If you imagine sitting on a racehorse that’s been given a bucket of Red Bull and then kicked in the plums, that’s what driving this Moke is like. Owner Alan Margison, all innocent like, said “Would you like to have a go?” Daft question really, who doesn’t want to have a go in an injected 1380 Moke on a sunny day?

This Moke is seriously an animal. The engine is not only a 1380, it’s been very carefully and scientifically fuel injected, and the lightweight Moke has also been fitted with a cross pin differential for strength. The gearchange is so quickshift it barely twitches between gears, and the cammy engine bangs in a huge chunk of power at 4000, revving to the electronically limited 7000.

The Canems injection system at the heart of the car is designed to overcome the Mini’s fundamental induction problem. The firing order in a mini engine is 1,3,4,2 with cylinders 1,2 and 3,4 sharing the siamesed ports. If fuel is supplied to the manifold at a steady rate, as with a carburettor, cylinders #2 and #3 will draw in the fuel supplied over 1+1/2 engine revolutions, while cylinders #1 and #4 draw in fuel from only 1/2 a revolution. So the inner cylinders tend to run rich while the outers tend to run lean, and this gets noticeably worse at higher revs. Check the colour of Mini spark plugs and you will see that the inners will be sooty compared to the outers.

The Canems Engine Management System fitted in Alan’s Moke injects the fuel to cylinders #2 and #3 just as those intake valves open, which keeps those cylinders from running rich, and all four cylinders will have very similar correct air/fuel ratios. The benefits have to be felt to be believed!

The engine uses an Electronic Control Unit and is programmable by the user plugging in a laptop to the connector on the dashboard. It is easy to completely map: injected fuel quantity; injection phasing; spark timing; warm up adjustments; acceleration enrichment; and more, all according to engine speed and load.  A three-dimensional 3D map can be viewed to aid in visualizing the ignition timing, fuelling etc. from idle up to max revs. With wideband oxygen sensors in a feedback loop, an accurate picture can be obtained of what’s going on.

The Moke has an electric radiator fan, thermostatically controlled by the ECU. An electric high pressure fuel pump with regulator is installed. A high output alternator handles the extra load beautifully. There’s no conventional coil here, and no distributor: the system has two modern-style coils that use the wasted spark system – they fire in pairs all the time and the cylinder with fuel and compression uses the spark. Spark timing is achieved by a sensor and a toothed trigger wheel mounted on the front pulley.

One really good feature is that you can switch between two fuelling maps allowing for Sport or Economy modes on the fly, so you can have a shopping/bimbling/economy map and then flick the switch to the maniac/nutter/thrash map and boot it in a cloud of screaming tyres and rubber smoke depending on whether you’re feeling mellow or frisky.

Canems’ David Hampshire proved helpful and enthusiastic about working with Alan to use the ECU to tune the engine.  Alan has got the hang of tuning the system, in particular using the logging functions, and he understands what’s going on with the fuelling, the timing and the engine. It’s over 100bhp for sure. The next step would be is to get the car on a dyno and fine-tune the maps.

Another consideration on this Moke is the air filtration and providing a workable plenum chamber. Alan just got stuck in with sheet aluminum and made a cold air plenum that uses a readily available rectangular paper filter, and the bottom of the chamber is clamped in place by the oil filler cap, which is rather clever. When you top up the oil you can also check how dirty the filter is! The top cover is then secured by a few screws, and away we go.

The re-designed dash contains an instrument cluster from a Hyundai, purely because it was the only one in the recycle yard with a cable-operated speedo and an electric tacho. After much action with the soldering iron and the furrowed brow, Alan got the whole dash cluster working. The speedo and tacho were simple enough, but he also got the temperature gauge and fuel gauge working, and then went on to connect all the warning lights as well. After that, the digital gauges for oil pressure, oil temperature, Voltage and AFR, were a doddle.

What else?  An efficient crankcase ventilation system. Steering wheel changed from RH to LH, Disc brakes all round with booster. Recent engine rebuild including balancing of crankshaft, front pulley, lightweight flywheel and clutch. The gear change box moved rearwards and gear lever made quick shift. Custom, quiet exhaust to please the most discerning wife.  Hi-los front and rear plus front and rear camber/caster/toe in are adjustable. The Radio/CD/SD player is hooked up to six speakers. There is a lockable trunk. And…seat heaters!

Alan has put together a webpage that answers lots of questions and has interesting pictures of the build process.