Is Black Betty's Work Done Yet? I say No!!!

[KaiserBill]

Here is a list of things I think Black Betty should test out:

1) Transmission Dyno-- let's find out if the 6spd manual gearbox is even close to the advertised specs.
2) Dynatrac Dana 60 fronts and rears if you like a matched pair or perhaps a Dana 80 rear? Or Currie Rock Jock Axles
3) ARB Airlockers or perhaps Ox Lockers? Something different than your standard E-Lockers by Eaton.
4) Sparco or other brand of racing seats--
5) Water-Methanol Injection System
6) Blue Print the 3.6L Pentastar.. This could be really fun... Think about all the aftermarket parts you could test out...
7) Custom Cams
8) Custom Exhaust Headers
9) Perhaps Irok 38 or 40 inch tires perhaps Bias Ply v. Radial BFG K02???
10) Atlas Transfer Case or the Rubi-Crawler Doubler... It would be fun to see if can be installed on the manual gearboxes.
11) King, Fox or Walker Evans Coil Over Shocks and Springs
12) Custom AR500 Skid Plates for the vehicle.
13) Warn Winch instead of the Engo-- who knows give a whirl see if you like it?
14) Perhaps a Whipple Supercharger? A hybrid blower might be fun to test out.
15) Hydro Steering System
16) Sodium -Filled Exhaust Valves and Titanium Intake Valves

I think the Betty can still do a lot of good work for Jeeplab...

[UselessPickles]

1) Transmission Dyno-- let's find out if the 6spd manual gearbox is even close to the advertised specs.


Advertised specs are that it can handle 370 N-m input torque (273 lb-ft). There are already plenty of people running bolt-on FI kits that produce anywhere from 300 lb-ft up to 410 lb-ft *measured at the wheels* without any reported problems about the transmission, so it's already known to exceed the specs. What would you want to do with a transmission dyno? Just find the failure point, destroying the transmission in the process?



5) Water-Methanol Injection System


There's really no point to this if you're not also going to custom tune to take advantage of it. It would allow you to run more boost and/or more advanced timing and/or leaner fuel with increased resistance to detonation, to make more power.

The beauty of the bolt-on FI kits is that someone else has already invested the time/money into tuning, and has tuned it to levels that they feel are safe enough to to have confidence that they can produce and sell the kit in fairly large volumes, risking their company's reputation if they got it wrong. I wouldn't want to take the risk of pushing my bolt-on kit beyond that. I bet most people feel the same.



6) Blue Print the 3.6L Pentastar.. This could be really fun... Think about all the aftermarket parts you could test out...


Blueprint it to what specs? What would be the benefit? What aftermarket parts? There's essentially zero aftermarket support for Pentastar internal parts from what I can find.

What I understand of blueprinting is that it's really just machining all the parts to more exact specs (greatly reducing tolerances). This is most beneficial to large racing teams that need to have multiple back-up parts and even complete engines to do quick repairs/re-builds/replacements at the track, or in between races, and have guaranteed consistent fit and performance (no time to fine tune and calibrate things).

I suppose it would make it easier to have completely custom parts made to fit your engine if you had more exact specs to order against, but we're really getting it to major high-dollar mods with this. This isn't something that people in the Jeep community are going to do. If you want to spend large amounts of money on engine mods, you're better of converting to an LS engine, which does have lots of aftermarket support already.



7) Custom Cams


Why? Customized differently than stock in what way? Custom cams does not automatically mean "better". It just changes how the engine delivers power through the rpm range. What is the design of the stock cams (where does it concentrate torque, etc)? How would you change it? What about the VVT system? That's probably fine tuned to complement the OEM cams. How would you either keep the custom cams within "spec" to still work well with the VVT, or customize the VVT to complement the new cams? Can the VVT system be tuned through the Diablosport CMR software? Or can the VVT system be *practically* tuned by altering/replacing actual physical components?



8) Custom Exhaust Headers


The Pentastar does not have conventional headers. They are cast directly into the head. You would need a custom head to get custom headers.



10) Atlas Transfer Case or the Rubi-Crawler Doubler... It would be fun to see if can be installed on the manual gearboxes.


Considering that the Rubi-Crawler is specifically designed to replace the tail end of the automatic transmission, it's pretty safe to say that it would be quite an undertaking to make it work with a manual (i.e., not worth it)



14) Perhaps a Whipple Supercharger? A hybrid blower might be fun to test out.


There's no Whipple system available for the Pentastar. Who's going to invest in a one-off custom intake manifold (and other supporting components, plus custom tuning) when there's already several different types of bolt-on supercharger kits available on the market?



16) Sodium -Filled Exhaust Valves and Titanium Intake Valves


Why? What's wrong with the stock valves? What benefit would there be to the new valves. Are such valves even available on the market for the Pentastar?

[Timmy]

My question is... When is KaiserBill going to buy a Jeep and spend his own money to "test" these types of things. Sure is easy to spend someone else's time and money, right?

[UselessPickles]

This sums it up:

1586

[KaiserBill]

Advertised specs are that it can handle 370 N-m input torque (273 lb-ft). There are already plenty of people running bolt-on FI kits that produce anywhere from 300 lb-ft up to 410 lb-ft *measured at the wheels* without any reported problems about the transmission, so it's already known to exceed the specs. What would you want to do with a transmission dyno? Just find the failure point, destroying the transmission in the process?



There's really no point to this if you're not also going to custom tune to take advantage of it. It would allow you to run more boost and/or more advanced timing and/or leaner fuel with increased resistance to detonation, to make more power.

The beauty of the bolt-on FI kits is that someone else has already invested the time/money into tuning, and has tuned it to levels that they feel are safe enough to to have confidence that they can produce and sell the kit in fairly large volumes, risking their company's reputation if they got it wrong. I wouldn't want to take the risk of pushing my bolt-on kit beyond that. I bet most people feel the same.



Blueprint it to what specs? What would be the benefit? What aftermarket parts? There's essentially zero aftermarket support for Pentastar internal parts from what I can find.

What I understand of blueprinting is that it's really just machining all the parts to more exact specs (greatly reducing tolerances). This is most beneficial to large racing teams that need to have multiple back-up parts and even complete engines to do quick repairs/re-builds/replacements at the track, or in between races, and have guaranteed consistent fit and performance (no time to fine tune and calibrate things).

I suppose it would make it easier to have completely custom parts made to fit your engine if you had more exact specs to order against, but we're really getting it to major high-dollar mods with this. This isn't something that people in the Jeep community are going to do. If you want to spend large amounts of money on engine mods, you're better of converting to an LS engine, which does have lots of aftermarket support already.



Why? Customized differently than stock in what way? Custom cams does not automatically mean "better". It just changes how the engine delivers power through the rpm range. What is the design of the stock cams (where does it concentrate torque, etc)? How would you change it? What about the VVT system? That's probably fine tuned to complement the OEM cams. How would you either keep the custom cams within "spec" to still work well with the VVT, or customize the VVT to complement the new cams? Can the VVT system be tuned through the Diablosport CMR software? Or can the VVT system be *practically* tuned by altering/replacing actual physical components?



The Pentastar does not have conventional headers. They are cast directly into the head. You would need a custom head to get custom headers.



Considering that the Rubi-Crawler is specifically designed to replace the tail end of the automatic transmission, it's pretty safe to say that it would be quite an undertaking to make it work with a manual (i.e., not worth it)



There's no Whipple system available for the Pentastar. Who's going to invest in a one-off custom intake manifold (and other supporting components, plus custom tuning) when there's already several different types of bolt-on supercharger kits available on the market?



Why? What's wrong with the stock valves? What benefit would there be to the new valves. Are such valves even available on the market for the Pentastar?



1) A Transmission dynomoter is not a destructive test. It is a test to see if the transmissions' claims are correct. You can test maximum torque, but you can also check for the more important factor Torque Rise Between Gears which directly relates to the performance of the transmission and power loss attributed to it. That is really what you want to find out if the manufacturer says first gear gives you 20% more torque than 2nd gear-- this will figure that out. You can also do an entire range of diagnostic tests on the transmission with this system.

2) Water Methanol Injection will give you more power no matter what tune you are using... It does three things: cools the air-charge thereby increasing density, cools the cylinder head temperature, thereby reducing the possibility of pre detonation and finally it adds more fuel and air to mix for more power-- If you put this system into the prodigy turbo kit you could easily see a 30-40hp increase with an economy setting up to 100hp with a maximum boost setting. Also it will allow you run maximum boosts on street legal pump gases for the aforementioned reasons.

3) Blue Print- in this case you would bring the engine in line with minimum specs set by the manufacturer. Sloppy engines perform badly and rob you of power. The benefits are usually substantial in that you've cleaned up the sloppiness of mass produced engines. You would also most like port the engine during this process so you will improve over all flow. There is a reason why Smokey Yunick made awesome power from engines. Other people blue print engines to specific specifications they've found work best for certain applications.

As for aftermarket parts-- those would be just custom pistons, rings, rocker arms, connecting rods, ect and so on.

4) I wasn't aware the Pentastar had a cast exhaust header-- well-- You might not build a true custom system, but you can do porting and polishing and clean it up some that way for better flow. Which will also increase power!!!

5) Advanced Adapters website is not specific and annoying to use-- but if the rubi crawler won't work I know the Atlas 2 or 4 will fit the manual gearbox. So, use that one.

6) Whipple Makes The Universal Supercharger Kit-- Who's going to invest in it? A person that is a serious petrol head and likes a challenge.

7) What is wrong with the stock valves? Well once you port and polish the intake area the odds are you might want want to optimize valve size for better flow... Sodium-Filled valves support higher cylinder head temperatures better because they use the low melting point of the sodium to transfer heat to the oil more efficiently. This improves valve lives at higher temperatures with higher octane fuels or when you turn the boost up to 20psi. Also like the titanium valves they are lighter and reduce moving mass which makes for more power going to the crankshaft instead of operating the valve train.

8) Cam Shafts-- the profiles will change depending on what you plan on doing with the engine. You might want to extend the high end rpm up to 7000rpm-- that means new cams or you might want to drop the torque down to 1500 or 1600rpm that means new cam profile. Not to mention when you port the engine and get flowing better you need to change the cam profiles to maximize this improved air flow. So basically custom cams become a necessity.


The point of my post was simple-- there are plenty of things that can still be done to black betty without an engine swap that would be interesting to test out.

[KaiserBill]

My question is... When is KaiserBill going to buy a Jeep and spend his own money to "test" these types of things. Sure is easy to spend someone else's time and money, right?


I own two-- a Jeep Liberty Company Car and Kaiser-Jeep M35A2 ( I checked out the vin aka serial number recently it is Kaiser-Jeep product). I just don't own a Wrangler? I love the M35A2 -- the Liberty is a turd.