Even at $3 a gallon that motor and truck mods are gonna take 10 years to equal in gas.

 

Good stuff BBF250, Of course a guy could do just the ones he could afford or short pay outs.

Let’s see:
Use a standard transmission with overdrive. Done but want to go to a 5 speed. I'm looking want it on the cheap-- like $50 or $100. I have looked for a while and figure I am just going to have to buy a wrecked truck the 5 speed tyranny I want.

Don't use a locker rear. Done

Don't use 4x4. can do as needed.

Run moly lube in the engine, gear box, and differential.How expensive is moly lube-- can you get it at smucks or napa? Would it really help that much.

Use rollers not sliding friction: roller cam, roller rocker, roller cam bearings, roller main bearings. Maybe try roller rockers here as no engine break down to do and I assume not allot of $

Knife edge the crank or run a dry sump system to avoid losses while mixing up the oil. Or at least a baffle, crank scrapper, and windage tray. Don't have the windage tray but that would be the cheapy to go with.

Headers and dual exhaust. got the dual need the headers but would like to find some used head- darn your cheap(I know--- got several kids big house etc.---)

Ported heads yep ported polished, and gasket matched

Light weight valves and valve springs - less energy to compress the spring. should have thought about that during the rebuild.

Figure a way to disable the V8 to a V4 (ala Northstar Caddy). It needs to leave the intake valve closed and open the exhaust so the pumping losses are less. Have to think about that one but-- don't think so

Don't lift the truck - drop it or use a wind fairing like the diesel trucks do now. don't want to drop it-- want to lift it humm?

Use thermal coating on the piston and combustion chamber to increase thermal efficiency. Aint gonna do that one.

Use thermal coatings on the engine and the oil pan to reject heat. would not the coatings hold heat in unless like it adds surface area for more cooling?

Use thermal coating on headers to keep heat in and increase scavenging effect. there you go-- this is holding the heat in-- need to do have not done.

Use thermal coating on intake to keep intake charge cool. yep! need to do-- cheap easy and can do it yourself

Optimize the ignition. Run advance until knock under load then back off for full rpm range. yep. I am soon going after this big time. Tricks with manual manipulation of the vacuum advance

Optimize air fuel ratio. Run lean. Use an Oxygen meter to set jets or reprogram the ECU to run lean. Humm.. I am carbed but still want to put in an O2 sensor and vacuum sensor.

Run an aluminum drive shaft. Use aluminum flywheel. Use aluminum rods. Use aluminum block. Use aluminum heads (last two for weight reduction). Hey, I could maybe do an aluminum drive shaft (make it myself) other would be too $ how about AL wheels -- but don't want thin tires.

Dynamically balance the engine to 1 gram at 7000 rpm. too much $ unless I decide to pull the engine for some major adjustments-- then it would not matter cause my wife would kill me for the time it would take

Use a switch to cut out the alternator. This is a cheapy-- Had thought about this but to take it one step further put in a drive shaft with a solenoid so you remove the rotating mass when the alternator is not running.

Use an electric water pump. what's the $, who has em shmucks/napa?

Use an electrically driven fan. Yeah, I want to do this-- put in a used one out of ? should only be around $5 or $10 used.

Use MSD ignition. Open the spark gap up on the plugs. For highway run cold plugs (if your going to run it lean). Is the MDS really the way to go-- electronic no pts right? yep run it very very lean and fight the heat-- cold plugs, valley pan, water/alcohol inject, acetone in the gas-- yeah baby

 

I accept this challenge.

I should be able to slip the new engine into the crewcab at the end of October, and depending how fast the snow comes (in NJ) will determine how much tuning I will have done.

Either way, come next spring, I'm confident I'll have right around 20 mpg in my crewcab, assuming I'm not leaning on the throttle.

 

Great Fredric, I have read some of your other posts great stuff. I would love to learn some on tuning issues.

 

Thanks!

Before you start tuning, lets remember a few things about OEM's.

The manufactures build cars to tolerances, so the tuning they do, have to cover a potentially wide variation of the "hardware", i.e. the engine, transmission, et al. Also, OEM's put power, performance and reliability second to emissions, in their tuning. The reason is due to current rules and laws. If a new car design cannot pass emissions, it cannot be sold. New designs that pass emissions, but are sluggish or not so fun to drive, can be sold, but probably won't win any of the "car of the year" awards. So emissions is the top priority in the OEM tuning world. Once a emissions compliant tune is established, then they tweak a bit to achieve acceleration, and so forth.

Optimal power, and optimal miles per gallon, doesn't necessary coincide with optimal emissions. LIke everything else in life, it's about tradeoffs.

Also keep in mind if your engine is capable of 250 horses, you would not be using that the majority of the time. Rather, only to accelerate, loaded or not. Generally, at 65mph on a level road, you need so much less, plus enough to compensate for parasitic drag of the tranny, differential, wheel bearings, rolling resistance, air resistance, the alternator, AC, PS pump, emissions air pump and so forth.

There was a thread somewhere on FTE that I responded to, and I think for my 93 F350 crewcab, unloaded, I calculated a ballpark of 75HP to maintain highway speed. Doesn't really matter, whatever it is it is, but it can be calculated. I'm too beat to pull out that math at the moment. Maybe I'll try to find that thread later.

As far as "hardware" goes, BBF250's list above is an excellent foundation in reducing friction, and rotating weight. The more weight you have away from the center of the crankshaft, the more parasitic use of horsepower you have. This "use" is not for your rear wheels, it's wasted. Shave the weights as far as you can and still balance the motor helps tremendously. Knife-edge the crankweights, crank scrapers and windage trays, all that stuff he suggested is sound.

However, some of it, while sound in theory, doesn't buy you enough to make it worthwhile. For example, I'd never run an electric water pump on anything I drive on the street. Blow a fuse and overheat. I'd never switch out the alternator, because once you switch it back in, you have to recharge the battery anyway. Energy is not free, and since alternators, engines and batteries are not 100% efficient, there is nothing to gain here other than the hassle of a pissed off battery from deep cycling it. Just my thoughts, feel free to disagree.

Optimal miles per gallon is found through many, many things, but all those things come down to "efficiency". First, gas engines as you know typically are 15-20% efficient, tops. The other 80-85% of potential energy is totally wasted, in heat absorbed into the block, pistons, oil, coolant, engine compartment, firewall, exhaust system, and whatever is not absorbed, goes out the tailpipe into the atmosphere. That's a huge waste. This is why I like turbochargers. When you need the extra power to accelerate or two, you can get it with the turbos, recycling some of the normally wasted heat and exhaust airflow, and when you don't need it, back off the rpms and the turbos spin down a bit. It's a neat way to make an engine bigger, without adding displacement, more parts to cause friction, etc.

Second look seriously at the gearing. Gearing the vehicle high (numerically low) doesn't always give you better mileage. I had a car that gave me better mileage with 3.55 gears instead of the stock 3.01 or whatever they were. Why? Because the 3.55 gears allowed the engine to run a little higher RPM, which put it into it's peak torque curve, so I as the driver didn't have to mash the pedal so much to get the darned beast to move. As the torque curve of the engine slopes down on either side of optimal, it's less efficient.

Many people state that higher compression gives you more miles per gallon than lower compression. In an by itself it is true, however what they really should be saying is the more cylinder pressure right at the spark point, the more power you get out of the fuel. There is a point where you can have too much pressure, and the fuel vapor won't ignite, so you want to get close to that, without quite reaching that point. Hopefully, that point is below your head gasket "release" point. This is why several of my friends and I generally do not run headgaskets on our turbocharged projects, and in the case of aluminum blocks and heads, on one engine we added "ears" to the outside of the block/head to give us more head bolts.

Anyway, once you get your optimum hardware, then you can start tuning. Start with a generic ballpark and shove a wide-band o2 sensor before the cat, and watch what happens. You can see rich/lean very easily, and tune accordingly. Modern day EEC's have enough data values that you can actually tune peaks and valleys for twice or four times the resolution as the older EEC-IV stuff. This makes a huge difference in accuracy, and allows you to compensate for anomilies. Generally speaking, a really well-tuned car doesn't have to have a really smooth fuel curve. There sometimes is the need to peak or valley the curve here and there, to compensate for oddball, but real-world things you won't see in a lab. The OEMs, even though they know this, find that to be too much work and I don't blame them.

I spent almost 250 days tuning my twin-turbo 451 stroker 75 dodge pickup. And it was worth every second I put into it. The stock 318 / 4sp with a 2bbl gave me a whopping 8 miles to the gallon on the highway, unloaded, on a good day. With the turbocharged 451 stroker and a 5-sp, and slightly taller rear end gearing, I easily tuned myself into the 17-18 mpg range. Not when mashing the throttle, of course. But cruising on the highway, 17-18 was doable.

My crewcab is getting a 500cid stroker... and the components and machine work was chosen carefully. I used an old late 70's block "just because", but the heads are industrial 460 heads, which are "neat" because they have the EFI intake pattern, the bolt right onto the older block, and have larger exhaust ports and chambers. You'll find these on 429's and 460's from the huge trucks, like the F500 and F700, as well as combines, huge water pumps for farms, jet engine starter engines, that sorta thing. And, we ported the heck out of them too. The camshaft profile is probably too conservative, and I'll have to get myself a custom grind. Much lift, very fast open/close times, which maximizes the intake and exhaust cycles. Very good for turbocharging. Since I don't plan to hit 5000 RPM, the very fast open/close times should be okay. Ceramic coat everyting, blah blah blah, and I do expect when not leaning on it, to get around 20 mph, even in my over-bloated massive crewcab. Since it will be turbocharged, it will have tremendous "snap" but at the same time I can cruise without the turbos going nuts.

Time will tell of course, but this is what I'm expecting.

 

I'm confused. What is this you speak of?



I'll be really interested to see the results you get Frederic. Sounds like you've put a lot of time into planning this engine.

 

The gas pedal. Meaning, if I didn't smash it to the floor the truck did fine in the mileage department. Obviously, with a big block stoker and a pair of turbos, pushing that pedal down abruptly was fun, but not so good on the gasoline consumption.

Yes. This project is really an extension of the dodge twin-turbo stroker, using some of the limitations I had on that dodge as a guide of what to change for the Ford crewcab.

 

I'd say your best shot at 20+ MPG would be out the back of a C130 at max elevation with the engine idleing.

Roger

 

LMAO. Be skeptical, that's AOK. I got 17-18 mpg using 1993 GM EFI, and 1970 dodge engine parts, and the truck was twin turbo'd and a big block stroker.

But again, we'll see. 20 mpg was my goal, so we'll see how long it takes me to get there.

My 351W 93 F350 crewcab with 300+k miles hovers around 15ish, up from 9-10.

 

Hey Frederic, lets talk more about these cyl. heads. I know Ford fuel injected their 429 in their med. duty trucks in the 90s, but I've never herd they used a different head. Do you have any info on thease like valve sizes, combustion CC's is the exhaust port the same as other EFI heads? Basically what is diffident about the industrial EFI heads from the pick-up EFI heads? Also do you have the casting numbers?
Thanks
Leadmic

 

indexing the plugs cant hurt either

 

Leadmic - I'm more than happy to provide answers to the questions you ask, once I get the engine back from the shop. They are machining "ports" for temp/pressure sensors for the combustion chambers, which has turned out to be rather complex. From there, they can reassemble the engine, degree the cam, and do a pressure test. Just been slow going. Anyway, when I get it back, I'll be glad to take pictures and put forth the data you ask for. I didn't think to measure much before shipping the items to the shop.

 

Ive got a recently overhauled 460 with new everything in my 75 Supercab with a 5 speed NV 4500 and I get 18 mpg at a steady 58 mile per hour(painful to go that slow) Thats with a 3.73 Dana in the back. Course the mileage goes way down around town. Maybe I could get 20 if I dropped down to 50 mph but then I would die of impatience. Cost me a bucket of money to do the 5 speed but I like it anyway. I dont have a tach so Im not sure what the RPM is in 5th gear so I guess that'l be another project.

 

whd507 - please inform a noob what it means to 'index the plugs'?

also - mentioned above is that using a locker (locking rear differential) would hurt mileage. would this be true if the locker were not engaged, like for highway use? 'reason I ask is I misread the axle code when I bought my truck, it's 45 not H5 (sticker is scratched up) and does not have limited slip ... I was thinking of adding a locker for towing my boat and trailer up slippery ramps, and some sort of traction beyond an open diff is needed ... a locker would fill the need quite well, but I don't want to do that if it will hurt mileage all the rest of the time.

thanks all ... very informative thread

 

indexing the plugs relates to shimming them with different thickness of washers so that when they are properly tightened down all of the electrodes point in exactly the same direction within the combustion chamber, and there is an entire science devoted to determining which direction is the best possible for a particular combustion chamber size, and shape.