68' F100 Turbo'ed 300 w/Pics

[n4longhaul]

I just became a member of the board but have been reading for some years.

I have a T68R turbo'ed 4.9L 68' F100 SWB. EFI/ ZF 5 speed... posi 3.25 gear rear end.

I'm tearing it back down for the 2nd time because of this game I've been playing with 20-25 psi boosts with out meth/inject. LESSON LEARNED THIS TIME!!! The motor is set up like this:

-300 decked block .060 bore
-240 head ported/ roller rockers on 7/16 studs
-ARP fasteners
-copper head gasket
-Balanced crank
-240 Rods
-Chevy 327 Forged pistons
-EFI manifold modified Throttle body
-Custom built turbo header
-50mm wastegate
-Blow-off valve
-intercooler
-Megasquirt controller
-Duraspark Dizzy w/locked down mech. advance

I have had the hardest time tuning with megasquirt but I've got it figured out now. If anyone has a similar set I would love to see their VE tables. And possibly spark tables. It's pretty much been trial and error for me with this tuning and through my own "Need for Speed" a costly one too.

The first motor... I didn't have my wastegate ported right and it spooled upwards of 27psi. (turbo creep) This was of course very impressive to say the least. At that point I have never felt a 300cid put SOOO much horsepower to the wheels. But, It did a number on #6 piston.

The second motor was basically my fault. I should have stopped my tuning adventures and put the methanol inject kit on it before pushing any further. Detonation is a Killer as they say. And it didn't help that I was running pump gas.

On my new motor build.. I would love to get my hands on a steel crank and possibly a ported EFI head.. or Alluminum head. As would every other person on this board too I'm sure.

I will be posting pics and build pics asap.

Thanks in advance for your comments.

I have really enjoyed looking at all the turbo builds and outcomes.

3" intercooler /had to notch the backside of the grill to make clearance

Had to cut the floor pan out and re-fab a sheet metal pan for the much taller zf-5 trans. Used the stock 92' gear shifter and fabbed some inner bushings to tighten up the throw.

I have the MS controller on a hinged plate for access to my fuse blocks and easy adjustment or upgrades.

This aluminum air intake y-pipe is actually for a Mitsubishi 3000GT. It matched up nice to the 300 throttle body. But, I used a 351w throttle body and had to use different rubber connectors to mate it up.

One water coolant line was stretched out more than I wanted but I used it anyways. The downpipe is actually a dodge cummins 4". I stepped it down to 3" before the muffler.

Custom made slip-spline drive shaft. The tailpipe is an 04' dodge ram 1500 stainless pipe. Was almost a perfect fit. Magnaflow muffler

The Zf was a tight fit and has to be pulled with the motor for removal. There's a cross member near the front that won't allow it to be dropped from underneath. Clutch is hydraulic with the master cylinder mounted to the firewall. Had to re-fab the clutch linkage to "push" the plunger. Instead of pull it like it was with the old mech. clutch.

 

[Emerald 74 4X4]

Sounds like a sweet setup. I have been running mine as more or less a daily driver for the last year and a half and have not had many problems with it. I only push 5 psi on 87 octane, but it will do about 10 psi on 91 octane. I just never put the money into the fuel and be careful with hard accelerations.

I am curious to see what your VE and spark maps look like as my biggest issue is tuning. It is so time consuming that between long periods of not getting back to it, I forget where I left off and what still needs work.

 

[n4longhaul]

I should probably try to take it easy on these old motors but, I set out in the beginning to see how much boost these motors could take... or what is the limit of potential of the rotating assembly. So far pistons have been an issue but the lower end stays put. The limitation of the head design seems to tear things apart before anything is hurt in the bottom end.

I could send you my VE and spark table but they do need some changes because the last set of pistons did not agree with the settings at all. Mind you this old six cylinder would break both back tires loose at 65 mph when the turbo spooled. This was found out by accident while passing a car on a 2 lane road. Had to pucker up for a minute to keep it straight...lol.

It's kinda hard to think that someone by now hasn't been able to get a good flowing head design out there for these motors at a reasonable price.

 

[Emerald 74 4X4]

Yeah, the head is a real bottle neck, literally as well as in the aspect of performance parts. The U flow design isn't meant for performance.

What are you running for ignition? I am really liking the EDIS for its programmability, but I need a lot of time to tune it. This might be where I am not as familiar with and what needs to get worked out. With a distributor, at least there is a mechanical advance curve built in. With the EDIS, you tune all of it. It's more or less re-engineering the ignition map of the distributor and engine, plus all the performance changes on top of that.

What cam are you running? Mine is not really suited for a turbo, but when the cam kicks in at 2200 RPM, you feel it.

 

[n4longhaul]

I'm running the COMP Cams CL66-236-4. 252 duration .433 lift with 1.7 harland sharp rockers and SBC Edelbrock Sure Seat valve springs. I was on the phone with Mr. Crower and he was going to grind a cam for my setup. It was very close to the cam that I have except the lobe separation was 114 if I remember correctly. I'm running early model fine tooth gears on with the timing set straight up (or @ 0 degrees). But, I will tell you that I have always run into a problem which seemed like the boost was blowing out the exhaust valves with this cam. What it felt like basically was @ wide open throttle... you could feel and hear at the same time massive preasure flowing through the motor but not really feel the horsepower increase like it does throughout the early stage of increasing the throttle.

It's kind of hard to explain but I am almost certain that it has to do with the lobe separation... or possibly the flow of the head.or both.

At any rate I will be having a custom ground Crower cam in this motor build. And some adjustable gears.

I'm interested in the EDIS setup. But, like I said with my duraspark and the mech. adv. locked in place I have had to tune my spark map alot. Still have a MS reset every now and then all due to this duraspark dizzy I believe... I can tell you that there isn't much advancing going on at at throughout the map. Mostly retarding from about 2000rpm on up. The detonation at about 4500 rpm was unsolvable with timing retard. Cylinder preasures and temps were way too high.

My hope this time is too use a EDIS or crank trigger... EFI head with temp sensors along with MS so that I can more closely regulate cylinder temps without burning up more pistons.

 

[Emerald 74 4X4]

I have that same airflow sound under boost as well, but I thought it was more of just the air flowing past the throttle plates. I am not a gasoline turbo guru like a lot of these import guys or hot rod supercharger guys, but I am a master diesel tech, so i deal with turbos all the time, only on diesels where you have no pressure differential across a throttle. This is the only turbo vehicle I have ever owned, so I really have no clue if that noise is normal on a turbo gas engine or not.

Have you thought about using a knock sensor at all? Also, Megasquirt has a boost controller mod that you can use to control your wastegate. Eventually, I want to upgrade to the MS3 and utilize some more of the forced induction options they have out.

 

[Turbo_B]

I have put 13 to 14k miles on my Turbo 300. The last 6k have been mostly towing a car trailer- I am tuned for 93octane. Occasionally it gets a touch of knock below 2000 rpm when towing - learned to drive around it rather than taking the time to tune it out...

I run 5-7psi most of the time. It will detonate at 11.5psi - so I set my boost level low enough to never have a problem on the street.


I can share my maps for MS1 extra if you want to see them. PM your email addy to me

 

[n4longhaul]

I have that same airflow sound under boost as well, but I thought it was more of just the air flowing past the throttle plates. I am not a gasoline turbo guru like a lot of these import guys or hot rod supercharger guys, but I am a master diesel tech, so i deal with turbos all the time, only on diesels where you have no pressure differential across a throttle. This is the only turbo vehicle I have ever owned, so I really have no clue if that noise is normal on a turbo gas engine or not.

Have you thought about using a knock sensor at all? Also, Megasquirt has a boost controller mod that you can use to control your wastegate. Eventually, I want to upgrade to the MS3 and utilize some more of the forced induction options they have out.

It was even doing this same thing before I installed the turbo.... With an edelbrock 500cfm. More or less a loss of power @ WOT. If anyone is running the 252H Comp Cam ....I wish they could chime in and say if they have felt this . It could very well be the porting of the head. I had a local shop do it and they never did flow test it. looked ok to me but.... can't tell much by looking.

 

[n4longhaul]

I have put 13 to 14k miles on my Turbo 300. The last 6k have been mostly towing a car trailer- I am tuned for 93octane. Occasionally it gets a touch of knock below 2000 rpm when towing - learned to drive around it rather than taking the time to tune it out...

I run 5-7psi most of the time. It will detonate at 11.5psi - so I set my boost level low enough to never have a problem on the street.


I can share my maps for MS1 extra if you want to see them. PM your email addy to me

PM Sent... Thanks Turbo_B

 

[Turbo_B]

Do you have any pictures of your truck and setup?

 

[n4longhaul]

I don't have any pics of the previous builds but I will pull it out tomorrow and snaps some pics of it, as it sits before I tear it down. It's definitely not as clean as I would like it to be but I lost some sizable motivation after the last motor issue. I will also be posting progressive build pics when i get my butt in gear.

 

[country fried 6]

I don't have any pics of the previous builds but I will pull it out tomorrow and snaps some pics of it, as it sits before I tear it down. It's definitely not as clean as I would like it to be but I lost some sizable motivation after the last motor issue. I will also be posting progressive build pics when i get my butt in gear.

how much compression are you running? how boost do you have when you were having these issues?

 

[Asa]

I love the look of the truck, have you had a chance to dyno it at all? or do the engines let loose too quickly?

Any pictures of the exhaust manifold?

 

[Crash5291]

Very nice indeed, i do believe that's the cleanest setup i have seen on the 300's so far.

 

[n4longhaul]

I don't have any pics of the previous builds but I will pull it out tomorrow and snaps some pics of it, as it sits before I tear it down. It's definitely not as clean as I would like it to be but I lost some sizable motivation after the last motor issue. I will also be posting progressive build pics when i get my butt in gear.

how much compression are you running? how boost do you have when you were having these issues?

The compression ratio should be 9:1 by my calculations. I had managed to curb most detonation up to 15 psi with timing. But throughout all the trial and error tuning I can sometimes get it in the 20's but its not controllable. Some tunes work but at some point or another detonation sneaks in and its usually at high rpms.

 

[n4longhaul]

I love the look of the truck, have you had a chance to dyno it at all? or do the engines let loose too quickly?

Any pictures of the exhaust manifold?

No dynos yet. I set out to a basic crash course to see exactly where the limits are and clearly found them. I do plan on dyno'ing the new set up. When I get the manifold off I will post pics. It's basically a 300 ford headman header that I had. Bolted it to a motor on the engine stand... and set up a jig to hold my turbo flange. I then took a sazall and chopped it up and used the bends and drops to re fabricate the tubes to form nicely to the flange. welded it up and checked for leaks. It took some time but it was just my cheap way of making it work.

 

[n4longhaul]

Thanks Crash5291

 

[country fried 6]

thats way more boost than anyone has reported being successful with on the street.

what turbo are you using?

 

[JonL]

Wow, nice truck!
Thanks for joining the board. It is good to see another turboed 300 in a truck, then I can tell my wife see I'm not crazy.
I need to figure out where to limit my boost... Did you ever fail a rod or the crank?

 

[n4longhaul]

No crank or rod failures yet... Piston integrity is of the utmost importance. Along with curbing detonation. I'm seriously thinking of buying an aluminum head from 6bangerbill. Even with all the cost involved, I think the crossflow design, the flow numbers, and the fact that it is aluminum are all beneficiaries to harnessing cylinder temps and ultimately detonation.