Turbo F150 with 300ci Inline 6

[1868ccmgb]

The purpose of this build is to produce a strong pulling truck, it either has a bed full of junk, or a car trailer behind it.

The truck is an '89 with EFI and a M5OD.

Not wanting to learn to program the factory ECU, I opted for a Megasquirt piggyback setup. The plan was to simply plug the MS into the factory wiring harness and clip the factory SPOUT and injector wires, but let the ECU retain control of everything else. More on that later.

The turbo I am using is from a Cummins Diesel. Its a Holset HE300, which should be from a 5+ liter engine. I purchased it on ebay, it still had the Holset green grease and purple turbine markings on it- brand new turbo for $250!

Lets see some build pictures. Some of these are huge. Sorry for the URLs, I typed this whole thing up and then got errors from the BB about 450x600 pixel requirements, rather than change every picture on my web host I just made them URLs.

I started out assembling the Megasquirt. For those familiar with MS, this is processor 1 on board V3 running the extra code.


and the wiring harness - in the past I have purchased wiring harnesses from DIY Auto, but this time I opted to make my own...


Next step made the truck undrivable on stock engine management. This engine uses something like 13lb/hr injectors stock. These are barely enough for the 150hp the engine makes when stock. My upgrade is 30lb/hr injectors off of a 90+ turbo Volvo 4cyl. (The pre-90 injectors are 29lb/hr) The math indicates that these should support a bit over 350hp.

I have seen some people who managed to mount the turbo under the intake manifold, but this one didn't stand a chance of fitting there.


I initially planned to just hack up a stock set of ford manifold to catalytic converter pipes. These would allow me to route the exhaust gasses up to the turbo. After starting the mock-up a friend told me he knew of a guy with a CNC mandrel bender, so we took the mock-up pipes to him and had them bent. I then tacked on the ford flanges so that the J-pipe assembly could bolt to the stock exhaust manifolds.




With the turbo location, fuel, and ECU squared away I went to plumbing the charge pipes. I picked up this intercooler on eBay for under $70 shipped. Its not as good as a name brand part, but it cost about 1/10 as much as a name brand. Its over-sized for the 7-10psi I plan to run on this truck. 18" wide core, 12" tall, 3" thick!

I almost wish I had gone a little wider, but at the time of ordering I was concerned about trimming sheetmetal to route charge pipes around the radiator. As it stands, I added a 3" extension onto the ends of the IC and still had to do some trimming of sheet metal to clear the ridiculous 3" IC outlets.



With the intercooler mounted, I mocked up the charge pipes.





Scream BLASPHEMY !!! But I needed a cheap exhaust system larger than the 2" thing from Ford. I went to the junkyard and for $25 I came home with a complete exhaust system minus cat from a 2000ish Chevy work van. 3" inlet to the muffler and 2.75 out of the muff. I chopped up the ford muffler hangers, welded them to the chevy exhaust system and hung it under the truck! Almost looks stock.

I did have to work the pipe which leads into the muffler. Seems the Chevy didn't' have a cross member in the same place as the ford. Here are a few pictures from the downpipe fabrication and the modified muffler inlet pipe. All 3" pipe.


There is an O2 bung welded into the 90* bend coming out of the turbo. This is for the Innovate WBO2.





The flanges are from ebay- about $27 shipped. They are 1/2 inch thick, while the machining isn't great, they are flat, and only line up properly in 1 orientation. Somebody didn't' do a good job of fitting them to the jig when drilling the holes.


Thats all for now.

The truck has been driven on 4psi for baseline tuning and shakedown. I learned a few things on the first run. The turbo spools about where I wanted - 22-2500ish rpm. This will come down with a car trailer behind it. Also, Ford didn't include an exhaust gasket between the manifold and the head. Felpro makes one. Ball and socket exhaust flanges are difficult to line up and leak if they aren't lined up properly!

20+ year old headgaskets don't like boost. The compression numbers were a little funny when I started this, now they are real funny and I have water in the oil- It never knocked! Head gasket on order and ARP studs are on order.

[1868ccmgb]

Parts came in to replace the head gasket on the truck. Got the truck torn down Friday night.

Head gasket looked perfect coming out
Head looked perfect
Block deck looked perfect

I figure whatever, it only had 4psi and the timing peaked at 28degrees before pulling 2 degrees per psi boost and all the signs point to a blown head gasket. So I replaced the gasket, torqued the head and did a compression check before completely reassembling the engine. Compression numbers came up the EXACT SAME as before. Cyl 2 showed 140psi, cyl 3 showed 85psi.

Shot oil in the cylinder and retested number 3, pressure jumped to 190psi. Let it sit for a few minutes and retest, 150psi. Retest 120psi, Retest 100psi.

At this point I am thinking I have a serious problem. I ran compressed air into the cylinders and felt a steady flow of air escaping from around the push rods.

So it looks like I am going to be tearing down this engine over the next few weeks to figure out what has actually happened.

I suspect that I will find broken piston rings on cyl 3.

#$%&

[1868ccmgb]

Engine Came out of the truck Feb 18 and was torn down in my driveway. Pictures explain themselves- this engine was supposed to only have 86k miles on it...














Engine went to Glendale Machine and Balance on the following Monday.

I got bored and decided to repaint the intake manifold and other assorted engine parts. Any color was better than Ford's industrial grey that covered the entire engine.





I am going to use the factory FPR unless it begins to cause trouble.

I went and picked up the bottom end of the engine from the machine shop. The head is having new seats put in.

This machine shop deals mostly with the local race car teams and as such the guaranteed work from the teams is his primary focus- this has been a back burner project for him.

I'll post a few pictures from the block assembly- no art here!


Here is the ARP stud interference with the oil pump. I read a few posts on the forum and opted to cut the stud and grind the pump body. Be careful, there is not much material in the pump to remove.





I just realized that photobucket will allow me to insert clickable thumbnails-!







More build pictures.





My carefully cleaned, etch primed, painted lower intake manifold cracked in two places while following fords torque sequence. Torque to 35lb, I was at 25lb when it snapped. Went and got a dirty manifold from PAP to replace my clean one.



It too broke while following fords sequence. A sharply machined edge creates a stress riser on these things- so I welded my first cast aluminum and fixed the crack and then radiused(with weld) any place that looked like a potential stress riser.








Had a cast iron water outlet originally, cleaned, primed, painted like the manifold. It too broke, had one hand on a 3/8" ratchet and the ear broke off. Found an aluminum one at Advance Auto.

Smog pump had also seized and had to take it apart for cleaning.

[1868ccmgb]

It finally runs! Of course, it is still fighting with me. First drive the truck ran great. Shut it off and tried to restart and nothing but a slow starter. Figured the battery was dead so I charged it for an hour and the truck fired right up. Drove to the parts store tonight for a battery and alternator test. Shut it off after a 20 minute drive and it would not restart! Nearly 600 amp draw when attempting to start.

Bought a new starter(changed it in the parts store parking lot) and it fired right up. Of course, the starter which I replaced tonight only had about 3500 miles on it...

[1868ccmgb]

I have been struggling with processor resets due to wiring issues with the ford.

It appears that Ford used a single power wire to drive all of the 12v applications on the engine, and then grounded them all on a single ground wire. Megasquirt was NOT impressed.

I picked up a spare engine harness from the junk yard and removed all of the emissions equipment wires and then provided individual power and ground to each module or sensor on the engine. Have had to go through the engine bay and sand all of the body ground points and the ground wires that attach to them- even the stock ones.

My signals are all pretty stable now, I have gotten away from the false triggering TPS, the 435 degree temp spikes, and the 3+ volt spikes and drops in the voltage to megasquirt. The processor resets are almost gone except for on occasion it will reset a bunch of times in a row for no apparent reason. I have driven the truck 60 miles with not a single reset, then yesterday on the way to work I got 12 in a row and then none on the way home from work.

Going to add some accessory grounds to the cab and battery when I get time.

This drives almost like a stock truck with more power- next up is to get the IAC working!

[Bossman]

Very cool build. Don't see many people doing the 300 six.

Sucks about the grounding. Should make anyone else with a Ford nervous.

[BigLumber]

I know im pulling this post out of the past but if I could ask you a few questions about your setup that would be most helpful