Turbo 300 in a F150

Turbo_B

Well-known member
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.
ford_ms_assy.jpg


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


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.
ford_turbo_test.jpg


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.
cnc_bends.jpg


J_pipe.jpg


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.

fmic.jpg
 
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.

I'll modify future pictures so that they fit in my post.
 
I have dug around with the search feature and did not find the answer I need- hopefully somebody can chime in and advise.

I want to know the peak ignition timing value and the RPM that peak value occurs at for a Stock EFI 300. I have a base and very safe ignition map in the megasquirt now- peak at 28 degrees and pulling steadily out for boost. I have read values over 40 degrees in other threads? Can this possibly be correct? My turbo MGB with premium fuel and aluminum head won't tolerate much past 30* before knocking!

BTW- the head studs from ARP(part number 152-4001) came in as well as the headgasket (part number 1024) from felpro. Going to try to get it going again Jan 23rd.
 
Every engine is different. The older slower revving and less efficient engines with larger bores need more advance. I'd say 40 is approximately right. I came up with about 37 degrees maximum. I think it all depends on your application, driving style, and how you want it to feel. Heres some links (iI know they are hard to find in the Megasquirt labyrinth):

http://www.megamanual.com/ms2/configure.htm#make - Scroll down to "Making a Spark Advance Table"

http://www.megamanual.com/ms2/configure.htm#make - This is the basic tuning page - theres a lot on basic setup and the reason why.
 
Emerald, Thanks for the reply. I have been using megasquirt for 3 years and have never seen that page. The numbers indicate that my MGB should tolerate 33 degrees which is darn close to what I have seen on the street!

Thats a great page to have, thanks for sharing that.
 
Yeah there is so much stuff to wade through. It can be overwhelming, especially for newbies. I haven't done anything with my MS for about 5 years now so when I have to go back through and relearn and find information, it gets frustrating. It took me a couple minutes to find it, its hidden.
 
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.

#$%&
 
your build looks great, very clean and professional. where did you get your programmer? i have the exact same truck as your color and everything except i have a 91 and i have only been able to find one power chip for it, which looks kind of cheap.
 
I only have about 25 miles on the current setup. This engine had some funny smoke before it ever stepped into boost, once boost hit it had some real funny smoke!

But, in 25 miles I managed to get the truck driving almost like a stocker. It responded very well to the Megasquirt.

I have a parts list together for the truck and should start pulling the engine end of this week. Hopefully two weeks from now I will have it to the machine shop.

Will keep the thread updated.
 
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.



 
This is just coming from when i had my old 87 rx-7 turbo, but I know when I had put a custom downpipe on it that it cracked the pipe around the flange weld fairly often from engine twist and vibration. I was talking to one of the local tuners when I lived in the seattle-tacoma area and he said if I was to put a flex pipe between the down pipe and the exhaust it would stop doing that. Well low and behold his common sense worked perfectly and I never cracked the down pipe again.

So I would recommend just from past experience to put a flex pipe in there some where to keep that from happening and keep the maintenance down on the exhaust. luckily our trucks with the six in them have alot working room in the engine compartment. but I'm sure it would be a pain to have to do any work that could've been avoided in the long run like that.
 
Still waiting on the machine shop.

This guy is good, but dang if he doesn't take his sweet a$$ time.

He has told me I should have it back by May.
 
Back
Top