Jeep Strokers

hey all I have a 01 jeep wj grand Cherokee it has a stock 4.0 in it now with 128,000 miles. mods to the jeep are IRO 6.5 long arm lift , 4.56 gears , 285/75/16 tires and a locker in the front axle. I daily drive my jeep it avg around 15k miles per year. i have had it for sale for some time with no luck of selling and I need something that will tow a 14 foot landscape trailer with around 2000lbs on the trailer. right now I do tow that load with my wj and it struggles big time I have to start towing that same load much further and my stock 4.0 is not up for that challenge. will a stroker motor be a good towing motor? also what kinda mpg`s are yall seeing with your strokers as mine will be a DD? also in the future I plan on going up to 35" tires.

I build mine to tow my (brace yourself) 7000lbs trailer full of firewood for my business.

I put a torque/towing cam from 505 performance in it and a 6 speed from a Wrangler.

I did serious axle and brake upgrades also but for the towing part, I got metric size tires that are 34"tall and 11" wide with 4.10 gears. (only available with 16" rims)

result??? I wish I did it years ago. Gas mileage is about the same except when I use the extra power. Duh... and I can actually use my overdrive (6th) gear and keep up highway speed easily. Its not much for snappy acceleration but its a torque monster.

damn 7k...I don't want it to be fast I could care less about speed. I want it to get up and go when I hit the gas pedal and not totally dog out on hills and i want to tow my rhino without a problem.I would be ok if I lived in a flat start but im in south east P.A. and travel to W.V. for Hatfield McCoy atv trails and also go to western PA for atv trails. I was going to keep the transmission that's in my wj now. I know I may have to beef it up a bit and im ok with that.

The answer is absolutely yes. The more specific answer is, "You need something that puts out more power."

I put the stroker I built into my MJ. The most I have put in it so far is 500 pounds in the bed, but it handled it like it was not there even going over the mountain while accelerating in overdrive/four gear(0.75) on the AW4. That is with 4.56 gears and 32" tires. It continues to impress me with what I have been missing out on all this time.

scarecrow wrote:will a stroker motor be a good towing motor? also what kinda mpg`s are yall seeing with your strokers as mine will be a DD? also in the future I plan on going up to 35" tires.

Depending on the specs of the stroker build, it'll either be a very good or an excellent towing motor. You'll need an engine designed to make a lot of torque at lower rpm so you could do a replica of the 4.6L modified poor man's stroker using your stock cam.

Or... you could swap in a 4.7L, as someone pointed out to me (halfway through my rebuild). There seems to be a lot of conflicting information about the viability of that swap. Some claim it's easy peasy - others say it's next to impossible. I'd look into this - the costs of doing a stroker could put it in the range of a normal swap.

I have both a 4.0 WJ and a 4.7 HO WJ. The HO has plenty of power - pulls my boat (5K lbs) easily. I gotta believe that a regular 4.7 is more than sufficient for a 2K lb load.

the 4.7L Ho is definitely a good engine. My mom has one in her 04 WJ and even with 180,000 miles it still hauls ass. However, you would also need the transmission from the 4.7LHO donor as the 42RE doesn't even last behind the 4.0L.

SilverXJ wrote:the 4.7L Ho is definitely a good engine. My mom has one in her 04 WJ and even with 180,000 miles it still hauls ass. However, you would also need the transmission from the 4.7LHO donor as the 42RE doesn't even last behind the 4.0L.

I have to say that V8 4.7 sounds way better than the inline 6, even stroked but whenever I go out on trails, 99% of the time I am surounded by people with 4.0L engine and almost all part are interchangeable.
I think an engine swap is way more complicated now and could potentially be more problematic in the future than a straight rebuil/stroke 4.0L

If I went thru the trouble of a full engine and transmission swap, I'd put in a Mercedes 3.0 or 3.5 Diesel but that's just me... I love torque.. (so much for interchangibility LOL)