F-134 Performance Report

Recent rebuild by myself, PO had .60 shaved between block and head, .60 bore but he/someone got a bit over zealous with RTV, plugged galley/pickup, wiped #4 bearings, so all new internals and NOS crankshaft. I added NOS camshaft, sent to Isky for grind 240/238, Prestolite IAY-4401 sent to Advanced Distributors for rebuild/recurve, at 12* currently, upgraded to Weber 38 DGAS, SVTEK airhorn, itb Sausage airfilter, 2" exhaust w/Flowmaster absorption free flow muffler. Ran decent overall, bit rich. Had exhaust shop weld in bung for wideband.

I've been busy but had 30mins the other night, dropped to 160 mains from the 170's the Redline K380 kit ships with. Holy smokes! Woke it right up, revs and pulls hard, much like an MGB with street cam and Trophy exhaust if you've ever driven such.

I am well aware of the F head limitations, just optimizing it for what it is, and I appear to be very close. Once I get wideband in, see numbers, hope to get some dyno time to further dial it in, curious to see some numbers vs stock. But with these mods and the Husky OD, I am happy. The only thing else I may pursue is a custom tri y header, found a few places online in the $1K-1300 range that can do it.

 

Dyno slip?

OK the ECJ5 inside joke. I am curious as to what you will end up with.

 

Still 5 months till Thanksgiving

 

I'll bite...
Por que?

 

http://www.earlycj5.com/xf_cj5/index.php?threads/67973/

 

Uff Dah!
Not sure if I'm happy I asked... But yeah, now I get it.
Luckily Spence ^^ doesn't digress into his love life, but then he does have a passion for his F head!
My first Wagon was a 51 F head, daily drove the snot out of it. After the 2nd rebuild, I found a 225.
Now I have a 350, life is SO much easier
(Rumor has it Spence has a 225 in the closet.)

 

Buick 215 ;-)

 

As am I. I am thinking 90ish-hp and 120-130 ftp torque.

 

Just had this thought, with the increased compression and timing, curious should I open the gap on the plugs a hair. I'm at stock gap .030 now, perhaps try .035?

 

035 is pretty common on old points ignition systems.

 

I guess a place to start .035, maybe .040 as test/comparison between the two, but no higher I would assume with the modest modifications. I know Jeff accounts for E10 when he recurves, but I usually run non ethanol due to it burning more completely/more energy efficient. Running a Beru oil filled coil, 7mm solid core wires from Brillman.

 

Some reality check for you.

The HP numbers posted for Willys engines are bare engines running on a engine stand type dyno with the HP rating coming off the crankshaft. No generator no fan open exhaust

on a chassis dyno your looking at a good 35% loss by the time the HP gets to the rear wheels.

On my souped up 134L .060" over .042 shaved balanced crank nut to pressure plate. High energy ignition Custom aluminum intake with a Weber DGV-5A 32/36 no fuel pump no fan TRI Y header 2" exhaust flow through muffler My Dyno pulls show 48HP at 3650 rpm with 81ftlbs torque at 2400rpm The engine was run up to 4350 rpm during these tests These tests were down to tune the carb. I run E-10 fuel as a higher octane fuel would be way to slow for the compression ratio I have 7.2-1 Static. I am running 12° BTDC in a IAT-4405 Vacuum advance distributor.

Granted the tests had to be done in OD (my OD is a 30%) which does effect the results some.

What I am saying is that if your working off the idea that your starting with 75HP and your improvements should add 15HP it won't look that way on a Dyno pull.

My jeep weighs with me in it 2800lbs and so far my best 1/4 mile starting in Direct drive 1st gear then shifting to 1st OD and staying in OD until third is 23.5 sec at 55mph it takes 28 sec to hit 60. And at 55mph I get 17.3-5MPG having gone as far as 179 miles on a single tank of fuel with two people and gear.

Yet having someone with a HUGE amount of Willys jeep experience ride with me (Richard Darr of Washougal Classic Jeep) the first thing he says as we pull out of his driveway is MAN THIS DON"T HAVE 60HP NO MORE.

I have a lot of experience street racing (actual 1/4 mile drag racing in my youth for money) and I am quite sure that once I can get my OD to remain in Direct my elapsed time will drop and my top speed will rise. Since I am doing these runs with an effective 3.80 rear gear ratio (due to the 30% OD)

 

Of course, I understand about powertrain loss but not many onlookers in our hobby dive that deep so throwing big numbers accounting for the PT loss in the end. Actual dyno and adjusted for PT loss will be posted.

With that said, I drove this Jeep after purchase with 11K, Daytona UN2, great compression, ran well. I've now driven it after my rebuild and modest upgrades, night and day difference. How about you take my $1500 and replicate your tri y for me? ;-)

I was incorrect, plug gap was at .035, adjusted to .040 definitely smoother/stouter pull up grade. Side note, I work in cloud infrastructure, I excel at this because I notice minute anomalies others may overlook. Same with tuning, to me, I notice these small changes. Another side note, my college degree is in audio engineering. You can be taught to move faders and knobs, but ears, that comes naturally, that sense, you either have it or you don't and this also works well for me in tuning. Also a curse because I continue chasing that last wee bit when others may call it good.

Interesting on the E-10, from my understanding non ethanol burns more complete=higher energy. Local pump has midgrade 89. Which also leads to plug indexing, some of the info out there says worth it but of course in high power applications which the F head is far from, and then other info says no solid data, more pseudo science in most applications. Unfortunately the likes of Smokey Yunick are long gone or I've yet to discover them.

I just drove around town, pulling great, smooth powerband and the muffler is growing on me. Hopefully I'll find some time this week to get the O2/wideband installed, see where I am, book a dyno session. I seem to recall a guy has a hub dyno in HSV. The midrange is where I am seeing the most improvement, and for me, being a daily Jeep around town 70% of the time, I am really happy thus far. Now, for the other 30%, hopefully I enhanced that as well down low, seat of pants says yes, we shall see.

I have a 71' T120 scrambler I am building, engine builder is waiting on a roller to put the head back on. That's my trail hooning rig. Always a project or something demanding attention.

I appreciate your feedback and experience in tuning your own rig.

 

E-10 is as the name implies is 10% Ethanol. Ethanol has 60% of the BTU's of gasoline so your loosing 4% of total energy compared to the same octane straight gasoline. Our engines and their very low compression ratios were designed to run on 70 octane fuel. To run even 87 octane requires advancing the timing to make up for the slower ignition of the higher octane. Hence my running 12° BTDC instead of the recommended 5° BTDC as stated in the manual. To run a higher octane fuel has no advantage. Now that 4% loss in BTU's is certainly something but it is not a 4% loss in power. And is just not enough to make the hassle of trying to avoid it worth my while. I built my jeep to be able to run all day at 60-65mph solo and 50-55mph while towing a 1200lb trailer. If I run 3 tanks of fuel in a day on a trip at 15mpg thats roughly 450 miles. To try to figure out how to run non Ethanol fuel doing that is just not worth my effort. EVERTHING in my fuel system is new and everything is designed to handle Ethanol fuel from the Holley RED electric fuel pump to the Weber DGV-5A bought brand new.

You mention indexing your plugs Speedway motors sells a set of washers to do this easily. Only thing is the index changes every time you remove a plug so it gets a bit tedious reindexing your plugs. As to any gain hard to tell unless you were to have a base line to compare. mine are indexed lets say on faith. I to tend to obsess on the little details. Like using a MSD-6D Spark box and a Vacuum advance distributor. Sadly as there is no Petronix kit for any of the Willys Auto-lite or Pestolite vacuum advance distributors I am running a set of Blue streak points and condenser. With Accel 8mm wires And something no one else seams to be doing I am running Champion UJ-8 spark plugs (they are a booster gap plug that makes the coil fire hotter) Very obsolete now but over the years I have managed to amass a huge supply of them. I also run a Petronix 3ohm 40K coil.

As to building another Tri Y header I hate to say this but that one off project was way more then I ever want to try again. I had almost 5 weeks in designing and building. The ceramic coating alone cost almost $400 And if I do ever do it again it will be to correct the mistake I made on this one (it hangs lower then it needs to)

I'll be watching for your Dyno results with great interest.

 

My head is thankful I went with a 4.3l tossed in a cam and pistons then let someone else at affordable fuel injection worry about the ignition and fuel curve.

Now on the 134 don't worry about the header and find one turbo off a ford 3.5 eb big side or small side whichever you prefer. Then build a megasquit fuel injection system and turn down a Pontiac hei distributor.

Dino videos please...

 

How about an aluminum crossflow SOHC head??

 

I was thinking two dohc Subaru heads but it has to be two of the same side.

 

At 45, I did the resto mods early on, just not my cup of tea now. I prefer period correct modifications, "coloring wildly within the lines".
I'm happy with the F head for now, but may build the Buick 215 I have at some point, call it a day. 215 is 317lbs, lessen unsprung weight with some Analog HD aluminum "steelies"

My personal thoughts are anyone can throw in crate motor, use ECM tuning. But at the end of the day, it's a 60yo vehicle and I prefer it to behave/perform as such. Or else why not go buy a new Wrangler, that's just not my thing. I prefer the very tactile and analog experience of the Willys CJ5. I feel it takes more research and luck in scoring vintage parts when building something period, and that's where I find my own personal enjoyment. Having something no one else has that I built to my own liking.

 

This thread is actually turning out to be quite entertaining! Pretty cool that you've gone through the effort with this. It's fun to see what the lil 134 can be capable of with the right knowledge.

 

Only because I had to rebuild a rebuild, it didn't cost me much more than $1000 between the Isky grind, Weber 38, IAY rebuild/recurve and exhaust. I feel definitely worthwhile if your F head is in need of a refresh, may as well get as much as you can to optimize it further.