Aftermarket ECU controllers

[amcinstaller]

i knew it could fire more than 4 injectors. reading in THEIR forums, guys have these on V8s. i think theres more than 4 injectors in those but now seeing this other piece that john pointed out, its making me wonder what kind of octopus could this turn into??

ill need to read more when i have the time

[1bolt]

Not much response here, looks like either there is little interest or little experience. The thread on aftermarket intakes was about the same. Maybe because of cost, not allot of people seem to building very high performance I6 motors. It seems once you get over 6,000 rpm or 300 HP, things start to get very expensive.

Like it or not the Stroked I6 is a nitch between full on V8 swaps and moding the 4.0 with bolt ons. You seem to be grousing at no one in particular because we haven't paved the way for you, maybe I'm getting the wrong impression of you but this isn't the first post from you I've read where you seem to be venting at the forum in general because of the perception of cheapness or low budget-ness or lack of sophisticated aftermarket support being already in place for you....

Right or Wrong this is the third of fourth time I've gotten this impression from one of your posts, hell maybe I'm being paranoid. If I'm wrong then sorry for accusing you.

Regardless you're in no mans land, trying for a LSR with a Jeep engine. People who want to break LSR's with odd engines usually do it because they savior the challenge, imagination, creativity and ingenuity that is required to get something like an AMC I6 (or a slant six or a Flat head, or a Buick Straight Eight etc. etc.) to do things it was never designed for. Faster than someone else who also wanted to do the same thing with the same engine/Vehicle. LSR's are expensive, and require home brew fabrication and ingenuity, because if you can buy it off a shelf someone else has probably already used it for a LSR.

[Plechtan]

Maybe i am just supprised that the highest performance amc I6 i have been made aware of was built by Barney Navaro ( about) 35 years ago! I guess if they had some kind of race serries for Jeep I6 motors more work would have been done. I know that people use high performance Jeep engines in rock crawling, and they also have the Jeep Speed series for the XJs. Perhaps i think there should be more information out there than what I am seeing. 20-30 years is a long time for an engine to be in the market. It seems i could count on 1 hand the number of engines I have heard that are over 400hp. So i think it is a reasonable question as to why no one is building higher performance engines.


The LSR engine is significant invest both in time and dollars. Can you really fault me for trying to get all the information i can so i don't make some strategic mistake? A real show stopper for me was the Cam Harmonic, the "Max RPM" thread brought allot of information foward and is good information to anyone who wants to build a engine that will operate above 5400 rpm.

I believe the topics like this are generally important and have use beyond just the LSR engine. I look at the lack of responses to the topics this way:
1. People haven't done it so they have nothing to talk about
2. People have done it, but don't want to talk about it
3. people haven't even thought about doing, but after reading the thread, realize that it is a possibility and may do it.


I would like to take some of the knowledge and engineering i have done and will be doing on the LSR engine, and sell some components, but if people have no interest in say a aftermarket ECU, then what i will do is just cut the factory connectors off the harness and splice into the wires directly, but if there is some interest, i could make a plug and play setup that reuses the factory connectors. Either way i have to do the engineering and debug, but to make a product it takes the extra step of designing a harness that can be manufactured.

I guess i an a greedy guy, and i have got more off this board than i have contributed. I think everybody gets more of the board than what they contribute. As the engine moves forward, i will continue to share my experience ( see the 5.0 stroker thread) come spring it should get real interesting when we fire it up. Hopefully people will be able to then take my experience and build even a better motor.

[Plechtan]

i knew it could fire more than 4 injectors. reading in THEIR forums, guys have these on V8s. i think theres more than 4 injectors in those but now seeing this other piece that john pointed out, its making me wonder what kind of octopus could this turn into??

ill need to read more when i have the time

The Megasquirt will only support 2 injectors or injector banks ( 2 banks of 3). It started out controlling the old GM TBI which had 2 injectors. The transistor drivers can drive up to 4 injectors, so you can't do sequential, but if you are looking for high performance, it may not matter. Fuel injection systems are designed so that the injector would be on for 85% of the time at maximin hp output. Well the intake stroke is only 25% of the time, so 60% of the time the injector is firing the valve is closed. Sequential has some benefit at low rpm and is a little smoother at part throttle.

The Mehgasquirt is a work in progress, constantly being upgraded, the sequential stuff is suspose to be coming out soon.

By the way what year is your rig?

[Plechtan]

I received the Haltec unit the other day, It looks like i can pick up most of the signals by plugging into the factory (Renix) connectors. Since i will not be using a distributor, i will have to make a coil harness. I thought about using the coil bar from the 99+ motors but the ECu will support coil per cylinder, so i decided to go with the LS6 style coils. They are normally bolted to the valve covers on the Chevy. They are cheap, available for about $25.00 each on Ebay. I will make a bracket that bolts to the 99+ head and mount the coils on that.

A big issue is the crank position signal. the Jeep signal is not consistent and is not acecpted by the ECU. I could replace the distributor ( gee i just said i wasn't going to use one) with a older one that would give signal for each cylinder, but then i would lose the cam sensor. The simplest solution would be to mill 3 slots on the harmonic balancer and move the crank sensor to the front. I saw advance adapters makes a kit that works like this, but it has a group of 4 notches per cylinder. The ECU is only looking for 1 event per cylinder, so 3 notches would work fine.

Another solution would be to put a 36-1 sensor ring on the front of the balancer. Ford used these for their EFi and ignition systems. It is basically a 36 toothed gear, with 1 tooth missing, so you get a signal every 10 deg, and the missing tooth locates #1 cylinder at TDC. The 36-1 would work with either the Haltec or the Megasquirt, The 1 event per cylinder would also work with both but you would have to run a distributor with the Megasquirt or use the Ford EDIS wasted spark ignition.

In any case a bracket will be required to hold a sensor to pick up the pulses from the crank pulley. I will start working on it and post some pictures when i get it done.

[amcinstaller]

my rig is actually the Spirit. it came out of the factory sporting a 258. in my rather newb opinion, not a bad engine, for its day. however, its day was long ago. the 4.0s bolt right in, and already having most of the parts for the stroker, it was a natural choice the second i heard it was a possibility. i hope to build a mild street/strip engine, not to be driven everyday, but maybe friday/saturdays on the street or drag strip.

if you look on the amc forums around the net, their firm belief is that the 4.0 actually originated from the amc 232 design, making the 4.0 older than 20-30 years.

fuel injection i think scares alot of people, not necessarily people on this board, but alot of people. what i notice alot on here (and no offence anyone) is the easier way to make a streetable engine is to add something to the stock computer to make it "like" these engines. as well, silver xj hit it on the head when he mentioned emissions and inspections. in alot of places you need to have the computer intact and happy to pass the inspection, especially for emissions.

[1bolt]

Can you really fault me for trying to get all the information i can

No I'm not going to fault you for that. What I'm saying is off the shelf parts aren't going to break land speed records, so why the get irritated that the Jeep I6 community hasn't paved the way for you? You're actually that much further ahead of the game... Imagine if you were running a Small Block Chevy in something like a Corvette... sure you could get lots of off the shelf bolts ons, and lots of people could give you advice: But no way in hell would you have the slightest shot of getting a LSR with those parts, not with thousands of other exotic high dollar builds ahead of you.

I can't imagine why you would be shocked that not that many max performance 4.0 builds have happened or are being talked about. The Navarro engine is the highest performance AMC I6 quite possibly ever: but I should think that any 6 cylinder engine family that had an engine in a 60's INDY RACE CAR could say much the same thing. Let alone any engine that had a variant tweaked and worked over by a Hot Rodding legend. Do Offy's have a claim to fame more impressive than Indy car? How about Chrysler slant sixes? Ford 300? Buick 300ci? Unless an engine takes on wide popularity at the drag strip there's not much further up the food chain you can get than having been built up by a legend to run in an Indy car.

Just forget about all that and think that this is an engine line that was almost entirely built to power Jeeps, and be a "peppy" upgrade for AMC's 4 cylinder economy cars, or a base engine for AMC's mid size cars.

In my opinion what you are suggesting is a 40 year old mark of inadequacy, is in reality something that VERY FEW similar engines can lay claim to at any point..

Anyway I've rambled enough, I am looking forward to your build, you're going to be treading some uncharted territory, but if you weren't you would have that much less of a shot at a record. Want to try for world fastest Diesel pickup truck and compete against Gale Banks Engineering Inc. Bonneville Division? The fact that there aren't 5 or 6 guys on here who can walk you through what you need to do is a good thing. I wish I had the money and time for something like what you're doing! I think I could do the creative/inventive part if I had the other two

[Plechtan]

I think we are a little off topic here, I should say that i did investigate ford and Chevy I6 motors as well. I have a dyno chart for a 260 chevy I6 that puts out 490 hp at 7,500 rpm. I believe that motor was built in the late 60's or early seventies, by the way, it was naturally aspirated.

I will have many custom parts on my engine, i was going to list them out on the 5.0 Stroker thread.

I should say 1 thing, any internal combustion engine has a limit on how much energy it will produce, you have a optimum air fuel ratio, A gallon of gas only contains so so much energy. So for a naturally aspirated engine, the maximum hp you can make is around 2.2hp per cubic inch. These factors apply to you, me, Gale Banks , anybody If you can even come close you are doing great. When i changed the displacment on the engine from 262 to 302, the peak hp shown on desktop dyno didn't really change, it moved down in the RPM range, but it didn't change. Looking through the numbers, the problem was airflow through the induction system. those damn laws of physics again. On the chevy 6 motors they had a similar problem. somebody finally took a 2 v8 heads, cut 1 cylinder off each one and welded them ttogether The intake ports were on the passengerside, and the exhaust ports were on the drivers side. This allowed more airflow because you were not trying to fit 12 ports on 1 side of the engine. It was so successful that the NHRA outlawed it, because it made too much power. Banks ran a 90 deg V6 that shared allot of parts with the Chevy V8 , including the basic head design. He may have even cut down a pair of V8 heads to fit the V6. So the head to me seems to be the limiting factor, we decided to go with a special Hesco head to start ( not the off the shelf version) And we will see how it performs. We are thinking about moving the intake ports up an inch or more and have the head bolts below the intake runner. This would let the intake become wider and moving it up would reduce the angle the air would have to go around to get to the combustion chamber. This could only be done with the aluminum head, because it would require welding the new runners on the the head. The exhaust ports could also be widened because they would be below the intake. So who wants to start cutting up a $2,000 aluminum head? If people have an interest in talking about this please do not post a reply here, start a new thread.

the Goals for this years Bonneville have changed a little since the project has started, we were originally going to run in the 4.3 cclassand have to go 184 mph to break the Banks record. Since we have switched to a 5.0L motor, we are in the next class up where the record is only 156 miles an hour. Hp rrequirementsincrease as a cube of the speed, so 155, vs 185 is a huge difference. The goal this year will be to prove everything out as much as possible. The aerodynamics of the truck also play a big part in how fast you can go. If everything works out, we will have a custom crank and rods made to reduce the stroke so we have a 262 cid ddisplacmentand return in 2010 to try to beat the Banks record. Right now I don't have the money for a custom crank.

The worlds fastest pickup id a 2004 dodge Ram, run by the JJessellteam. It went 248 mph naturally aspirated with a 360CID motor. Guess what? it was a NASCAR motor. Tens of millions of dollars went into the development of every part of that motor to squeeze every 1/10 of a hp possible out of it. It was an off the shelf Nascar motor. I would really like to see somebody else come with a Nascar motor to challenge Jessell, but not many people have pockets that deep. The next closest full size pickup of any displacment only went about 215.

From what i have read on the board, people are able to get around 1 hp per cid without much trouble. so motors in the 250-300hp range seem very common. Perhaps work on the LSR will come up with information that will let people get 1.25 hp per CID. I think if you limit your top RPM to 6,000-6,500 range, you should not get into oiling problems and the valve train components would still be reasonably priced. Right now the ODB2 computer limits you to 5,400? RPM or so. So maybe the need for an aftermarket computer, or maybe Use a Chevy V6 OBD2 computer, maybe there are more tuners available for that. That would be interisting.....

[SilverXJ]

From what i have read on the board, people are able to get around 1 hp per cid without much trouble. so motors in the 250-300hp range seem very common. Perhaps work on the LSR will come up with information that will let people get 1.25 hp per CID. I think if you limit your top RPM to 6,000-6,500 range, you should not get into oiling problems and the valve train components would still be reasonably priced. Right now the ODB2 computer limits you to 5,400? RPM or so. So maybe the need for an aftermarket computer, or maybe Use a Chevy V6 OBD2 computer, maybe there are more tuners available for that. That would be interisting.....

The PCM can be reprogrammed to limit higher. Mine is set at 6000 rpm, which does me no good because the tranny computer still shifts at 5400. Blargh.

[Plechtan]

Get a 5 speed manual

[SilverXJ]

The thing is the AW4 is a pretty good transmission. Now, if I had a RE42 from a ZJ I would rip the pos out in a heart beat. But I know that the AW4 can take a beating, so I don't want to just rip it out. Then if I did go manual I would have to get a manual tranny PCM... and while the company that did the PCM reflash will continue to change the PCM as I ask for they won't reflash a different PCM for free... all this factory computer crap is annoying with its limitations.

[SilverXJ]

I will make a bracket that bolts to the 99+ head and mount the coils on that.

I would like to see the mount you come up with. I am planning to replace the stock coil rail with one injector per plug and run it with the stock pcm. Of course I would still have two plugs firing at once. However i would still be running AC which will get in the way of a mount on the #1 plug.

[TurboTom]

Not sure if I missed something here. But the MS-II will run 2 banks of 8 injectors. ( 16 injectors)
Sequential injection does nothing for power over 3000-3500 rpm (and very little below) remember carbs are constant or batch injection.
After using it, I would put the MS-II up against anybodies injection, And I have run Motec, EFI, Bosch and a few others in real race conditions.
It is just as good, for sometimes 100th the price.
I have heard people say..."Well I would'nt trust the MS on a 1500 HP engine"...Now someone tell me how a FI system really knows the output of the crank?
Or what the output really matters?

[seanyb505]

Its not me saying my budget wont allow for high dollar components. Its my budget. If I had it I would spend it. At the moment Im not sure what an aftermarket ecu would do for my setup. Once my wallet grows I may (will) add a turbo, which would see greater hp benefits from an aftermarket unit. I know the megasquirt system is well within price range, but the learning curve is too steep when you're trying to graduate college.

[Plechtan]

Not sure if I missed something here. But the MS-II will run 2 banks of 8 injectors. ( 16 injectors)

It depends if you are talking about high impeadence or low impedience injectors. But you are correct you can run 16 high impedience . It might be fun to try 2 injectors per cylinder, see if it makes any difference.