Flogging the wee wee out of a Jeep 4.0 I6

[TurboTom]

One of the great mods here suggested I start this thread....so here we go

So first, a little background. Turbo Tom has been beating up lowley 6 cylinder engines for some time. A chevy six with a Quadrajet in a 68 chevy pickup. A turbo charged 6 cylinder Jaguar powered Altered (see a 1989 vinatge copy of the National Dragster). Ran low 10's shifting at 5500, blowing through 2 Rolls Royce 2" SU carbs (man was I more stupider then). Turboed quite a few sand rails. The best was a Toyota 22R powered mid engine buggy, running 15 pounds of boost on alky. Kinda steered that one with the gas pedal.
I bracket raced for a few years, won a few Mopar events and qualified for the Div.1 Bracket Finals once.
Bought a 1979 AMC Spirit about 17 years ago and started a drag car project. After much work, I ended up selling it to a very good friend... all becuase my wife at the time, said our house was too small... for her and "that bimbo I was messing with" Went road racing as an engine builder and car chief for about 15 years, ran a Trans Am team, did some club stuff and worked for the factory BMW road race team (what a great 6 banger).....Fun Stuff. About 5 years ago I started my own business selling some R/C Helicopter products I invented, developed a new distributor spin fixture ( http://www.statorgator.com ) while building products for Davis Technologies( http://www.moretraction.com ).

So fast forward to today...errr... last year. Went to a Mopar meet with the "NEW" wife and got the bug again. Bought back my old Spirit and went to work on it. Bought a 2000 4.0 from E-Bay. Gathered up my old Turbo stuff and off I went. Now the Spirit has a 9" ford rear, ladder bars, spool, Moser axles, Willwood rear disks and coil overs. The car build is still coming along as I design my lite weight front suspension. But long story short, it will end up in the 2150 pound range with my fat butt in it. But the car does not matter much here, most people here want to know about the engine. In the next couple of posts I will take you through the fuel system, the Turbo and the broken parts.
To keep you interested here is the first Dyno run...pushed head gasket out and broke 2 stock pistons http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWhaTvfG9I8


Stay tuned

Thanks
TurboTom

[1bolt]

Let the flogging commence!

BTW feel free to post details on the car and some pics, as long as it's got something to do with AMC/Jeep/Mopar and I6 Performance it's fair game in here.

[Flash]

Let the flogging commence!

BTW feel free to post details on the car and some pics, as long as it's got something to do with AMC/Jeep/Mopar and I6 Performance it's fair game in here.

I will 2nt that, Can't wait to see this thread grow!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[seanyb505]

Bring on the carnage!

[John]

Uh oh. I see collateral damage coming!
John

[amcinstaller]

haha, ill be watching this in two forums!! this is my favourite part!!! bring on the whoopins!!!

[crustodd]

Turbo HO!!! YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!!!!!!!!! Is my (likely) 9.6 static compression too much for a rear mount turbo?

[TurboTom]

Crustodd. 9.6 is high and will limit your boost. Will it work? yes. I would look at running E-85 with a stand alone fuel system.

I will start with the fuel system. After years of running blow through carbs I had always wanted a real fuel injection system. The ones we ran in the race cars were $12,000 - $22,000 so that was not going to happen!!
Then I found the MegaSquirt. I bought the MS-II with the upgrade CPU from DIYAutotune, $250 for the kit. Around $70 for a universal harness.
You get a nice box full of VERY well marked parts and the instructions for assembly are online. I do electronic work and it took me about 10 hours to build it.
The instructions are aimed towards the noob, so if your not a total wire hack, you should be able to assemble it.
They also sell a stimulator (which should be your first project) That you will use to test your construction along the way.
The tuning software is free and is VERY good.
My system is running on what is called Speed Density. That means it calculates the fuel injectors open time based in the RPM (speed) and the manifold pressure (density).
It also uses Air intake temp and coolant temp to make corrections for those items. The throttle position sensor is really only used for the "accell enrichment" (accelerator pump in a carb) and for something called "Flood Clear" (shuts fuel off when cranking if the throttle is opened far enough)
A 2 BAR MAP sensor is built onto the MS board, I use the stock TPS and GM coolant and air temp sensors and a modified a jeep fuel injection distributor.
I have the MS-II controlling an MSD box for spark and have complete control over the timing from the software.
I have 38 LB injectors running at 5 Bar (75 PSI). These may need to be upgraded but they were free.
The learning curve on all this stuff is steep...not a verticle wall... but steep.
I cannot strees enough, the need for a stand alone fuel system. Trying to trick the stock system will never get max power from a modified engine.
Here are some pice of the assembly process

[1bolt]

What are you doing for a distributor Tom? I'm curious because I've often thought about getting an MSD Pro Billet for the 258 and modding it for 4.0 use, the 4.0 dizzy is such a completely overlooked thing; Probably because it does its job just fine for most street uses, and is supposedly good to 250-300hp at normal RPM ranges (accourding to Lee Hurley).. I've never so much as taken one apart, but I wonder if the factory ECU control setup could be modded into the MSD dist. for moderate builds this would give a stiffer stronger more accurate dist. without aftermarket engine management being required.

An option which some of us could use for higher level builds, would be an entirely stand alone approach like you have, which is why I'm curious about your setup...

Have you thought about distributorless setups?

[TurboTom]

My dizzy is out of a 90's FI jeep. It has a hall effect sensor and a 2 event shutter wheel. I got a 90's Ford 3.0 V6 dizzy from E-Bay that has a 6 event shutter wheel. The 2 wheels are mounted in the dizzy the same so you just bolt the 6 shutter wheel in. There is 1 wider slot in the Ford wheel, but the way I have it wired it does not matter. The pickups are almost the same so with a little wiring work you can have a spare pick up. There is another ford wheel out there that has even spacing but I am not sure what it is from...300 straight six maybe?. I then ground the flange round on the dizzy (factory it only bolted in 1 spot) and used the clamp off of the cam sensor (that was stock in my 2000 engine) to hold it in place.

My engine acually came with a coil pack that bolts neatly to the head. Nice piece but heavy. I am not a fan of wasted spark on a boosted engine. It may work just fine, but I am not a fan. Also to run the coil pack I would need a trigger wheel and sensor, and more electronics to run the coils.
As for a billet dizzy, I really see no need. My timing looks very stable. The MSD stuff uses a VR (Variable Reluctance) sensor that came off an old 200 Ford six I believe. So no majic there. The stock dizzy uses a hall effect sensor which is better in my opinion. I manufacture a distributor testing machine (Phase-Tronic), and have not had one, out of the box MSD dizzy that did not fire at least 1 cylinder 1-4 crankshaft degrees out of phase. I would not run an MSD dizzy without testing it first. Esspecially on a hight performance engine.
Now the Nascar guy's use a distributor machine to test, and then acually bend the reluctor to run different timing on different cylinders. That takes alot of dyno time to figure out but it does work to get every Ft/Lb out of a engine.
A stock dizzy with a hall effect sensor and mechanical advance can be made to drive an msd box, most likely through the white points wire from the MSD.
That is the wire I am using for my setup.

[ARH]

Wait! We need more tech, specs and pics... don't spear on the details!

You peaked 342BHP/450ft/lbs @ 4000 RPM? What did the power bands look like? What kind of boost? Fuel octane? AFR? EGT's?

It's a bone stock 4.0? No internal mods, just the Megasquirt ECU and bigger injectors? I must be missing something!

The head gasket was actually pushed out between the head/block due to the extra pressure? What do you mean by damaged pistons? Melted/deformed tops?

[TurboTom]

Sorry for the lack of updates, lack of the green stuff has put me behind. Thought I would post some pics of my turbo exhaust.
Started with a stock tubular exhaust



Made a plastic cutout of the Turbo flange on my CNC router and mounted it where the turbo would set



Some U bends from CarQuest, some cussing and cutting and got the exhuast headed toward the turbo



Here is the header before the real turbo flange arrived



Where the turbo goes




Turbo plumbing



No pics of the waste gate as that has to be redone...no boost control. Original design made a nice "Air injection" system.
working on that now.

ARH:

Yes bone stock engine...you are not missing anything.
I actullay peaked at 395HP and 465ft/lbs at 4500 rpm at 14 pounds of boost (3/4 throttle as I was trying not to over boost)
Running 104 octane unleaded. Piston's (2) were just overloaded and cracked from top ring land to pin. No sign of detonation...just too much push.
AFR was around 12:1. You have to understand this was the first few test passes to get the fuel map somewhat figured out...Then it broke (thought it would)
20 degrees of timing.

Power Band? Can't really give you a full report as we were still mapping when it pushed the 60,000 mile HG out, and broke the stock pistons.
255+ degree intake temps did not help anything.
Working on that also.

[John]

"255+ degree intake temps did not help anything"

Have you considered spraying water/alcohol?
John

[Mgardiner1]

into the intake air stream? That would effectively raise the compression as well..... H2O injection is pretty big with the diesel guys to bring the compression up a bunch, kinda like a shot of nitrous

[1bolt]

Going to need an intercooler which I'm sure Tom has already planned for. The 4.0 already has a slew of charge heating issues even without a compressor heating the charge up even more. The header heats the intake very efficiently, and the exhaust ports being on the same side of the head as the intake means the intake ports perform as a very efficient fast flowing iron to air exhaust charge cooler, which slows the exhaust down a tiny bit, but more importantly expands the intake charge so less of it flows in. Our 4.0's are one engine that I could really see benefiting from intake port wall ceramic coatings.

Tom where are you going to run? Haggerstown? When I some day build my Street/Strip Muscle MJ (when other projects and green stuff allow) I'm hoping to use E85 with Turbo. I've Got a Chinese T4 (63 AR turbine 50 AR compressor) BOV, Intercooler, WG and various fittings red top 30 (something) pound injectors and a bunch of hardware on a shelf just waiting patiently. Next to a Perfect Power stand alone engine management system. Also have an Eaton M90 sitting around waiting on another project.

The fun kind of stuff that gets shelved when the economy goes into the toilet