Building a Ford 2.3L 4-Cylinder Lima Engine For The Dirt Track - HorsePower S16, E16

dirt-track Racing is hotter than ever and today's horsepower is all about building a high-revving poor banger race engine you'll be blown away at how much power you can get from this 2.3 liter rocket [Music] unless you're seeing double you might think we're four Pistons and the cylinder has shy of what we need for a typical horsepower engine bill but this is going to be no typical bill you see our very first four cylinder engine project is custom-made for short track race competition with about a thousand short tracks to run on and dirt track racing is the most common form of auto competition in America it's fun and it's affordable for fans and racers align what you can watch a full night of competition for less than it costs to park your car at a NASCAR race Clarksville Speedway is a 3/8 mile dirt track where local drivers compete in nine classes frenching from many Sprint's to late mom drivers come from all walks apply and at all ages and sizes Logan Browns only 13 years old and recently stepped up to the many modified class a cool class with fewer rules than many others his new number ten cars powered by an S winger 2,300 cc engine like the one will build today on our show so how did it feel compared to the many strand he used to drive this thing their engineering is a family company that specialized in four-cylinder Ford Performance for more than 30 years they've developed and refined a single overhead cam engine that powers everything from drag racers to well many modified slight Logan's car a similar engineering made about 90% of the parts here you see that we're gonna use to build our own four banger race engine and well if vans is a man that runs the company grew up in the business what kind of thought process goes into building an engine that can run eight thousand rpms four hours well you first have to start with a belief in whatever problem comes up you can solve it so mechanically when things go wrong you look for for what's where the where the area is that's failing and you fix it and move to the next area that fails well he more than fixed it he redesigned most of it from the crank and rods on to the aluminum high-performance heads he even cast its own modified 2.3 liter block for the engine well interestingly enough the components of this race inch and had their origins in a production motor that powered vehicles well like your dad bought a drip architectural II it's the same 2.3 Lema engine Ford produced for several of its vehicles from 1974 to 1997 now we've got this one in here just to show you its makeup now it came to us from a nationwide company called lkq who specializes in use and rebuilt automotive parts now Leamas named after the Lima Ohio Ford plant came in several different configurations from carbureted setups efi like this even intercooled and turbocharged engines this one came out of a 93 Ranger pickup it's a hundred and forty cubic inches and has two plugs per cylinder plus it's a distributorless ignition system will start the teardown by removing the EGR tube that connects from the factory tube header to the throttle body elbow followed by the elbow the intake manifold is aluminum and houses the injectors fuel rails and several sensors with that removed we can see the D shaped intake ports for this truck head in 83 through 85 these were round some of you may have had one of these Lima engines in the past that only had one plug per cylinder well the second one is to increase the speed of combustion by providing two flame fronts it means for a more complete combustion cycle better emissions and reduces the possibility of detonation Lima engines feature a more modern overhead cam design it doesn't use push rods so the lack of gives a reduction in valve train weight for more stability at higher rpms roller cam followers and hydraulic valve lash adjusters make up the valve train components behind the timing cover a cog style belt is turned by the crank which also turns the oil pump rides against the tensioner and finally turns the camshaft now loosen the tensioner remove the accessory belt pulley the crank sensor reluctor hub the sensor its bracket and the timing belt now the oil pump pulley has to go to make way for the back half of the timing belt cover the front cam bolt also doubles as an oil gallery plug now the cam is oiled from a lower and an upper hole in the camp towers then oil is forced through the core the cam to each individual lobe where a small hole oils the roller in the follower as well as the rest of the valve train components up top was it effective and that was just turning it by hand finally we can remove the oil pump drive components now you know the basic lowdown on Lima engines next you'll see how to build a high-performance version for racing at 8,000 rpm today on horsepower we're building a race engine capable of high rpms lots of left turns and the power takes to win races and all kinds of four-cylinder classes it starts with a block cast and machined by s endure engineering and it's designed to handle up to 1,200 horsepower and engine sizes from two to three point one liters the cylinder walls are much thicker in siamese the main webs are heavier and then we built it out of better material on all levels it's it's quite a bit stouter than what we started with the factory ford crank is a cast piece that can handle some abuse but it does have its limitations like small counterweights which can restrict how fast you can turn this thing in the RPM range overdo it and you're going to have some messed up main bearings now the Esslinger crank is constructed out of billet steel this thing weighs in it 38 pounds and it's built in-house it has a 3 350 stroke and it can handle 10,500 Plus rpms and 1,200 horsepower we're laying it down on lubed up coated cleveite bearings now we can slide on the rear main seal and the beefier stronger Esslinger cap and lube the ARP studs with ultra torque lube will torque the mains in three steps 30 60 and 90 foot-pounds I wish you could feel how smooth this turns we're gonna fill the bores with Ju Pistons that are our Lite forging with flat tops dual valve reliefs and vertical gas ports now we loaded ours up with low tension total seal rings Eslinger also makes the i-beam connecting rods there are lightweight design 5.7 inches in length and made a 4340 billet steel there she is another weak link in the 2.3 was the factory auxiliary shaft now this thing is made out of cast and it was prone to breakage right in front of the journal now the best linger piece it's made out of billet has a drive for the fuel pump and is about four hundred percent stronger the oil thump rides on a needle bearing and that allows better oiling to the front main since it doesn't get lubed by pressurized oil anymore the most important step to take one assemble and a 4-cylinder engine like this is to use Loctite on all the fasteners except the rotating assembly and the cylinder head bolts or studs these engines naturally create a lot of vibration and it will loosen the fasteners lock tight keeps them in place with the oil pump drive in place we can bolt a Melling high-volume pump to the block and this Canton pickup will guarantee we are at the right depth in the sump the billet Esslinger timing cover can go on next followed by the five and a half quart Canton oil pan now it's designed for the left turn circle track racing with three trapdoors and a built in crank scraper it'll clear stock starters and it fits Fox Body Mustangs pin O's and mini Modifieds now first thing to go on in front is the auxiliary shaft seal cover then the Esslinger water pump followed by the timing belt cog drive on the front of the crank and the pulleys with the belt loosely attached here's our stock cast iron head next to the new aluminum SVO we're using major differences are the SPOs larger valves and smaller combustion chambers Eston you're not only designed this SVO head they machine it in-house with larger intake runners that are designed for a better shot at that vow now what got orders when it gets this choice of cam profile and other components and well these things that turned out to be really popular with racers hydroplanes offroad trucks and in our case of course circle track racing it'll sit on a fellow pro gasket with a 51,000 compressed thickness with the flat top pistons and 40 CC combustion chambers the compression ratio is going to be 12 and a half to 1 ARP studs will hold the head in place with the same 30 60 and 90 foot pound torque see once we used on the main another trick piece on the head are these lash cap stands father designed they accommodate more lift by adding a radius tip his dad even invented this tool to install the factory followers and have been proven to last in extreme racing conditions these mousetrap clips act as a noise suppressor when running a solid lift camshaft this next step is pretty interesting for all you v8 guys that use magnetic bridges dial indicators and degree wheels to time your engines throw all that stuff away when timing one of these now Dan likes to use what he calls an e bar you place it on the front two lobes of the camshaft and rotate the camshaft until the e bar is flat and level with the cam Tower once that's done we know that the camshafts on TDC now we can come down to the crank rotate it to TDC on the pointer and route the belt around the tensioner and on to the pulley I gained a lot of respect for this little engine and the parts dan design port it's on to the dyno next we're back and continuing our first four-cylinder engine project every modification was designed for circle track racing including the cam now it has a broad power and torque man through the entire rpm range it's a single pattern with 620 lifts a 111 and a half lobe separation and duration at 50 is 269 and we'll cover it all with this cast aluminum valve cover from Esslinger to mount to the dyno we got a bell housing adapter from Canfield industries it converts the 2.3 bolt pattern to that of a 5 liter Ford we also had American powertrain machine a custom flywheel with a 2.3 crank pattern but a five-o pressure plate pattern for our Drive flange inside the dyno in goes six quarts of clots 1550 race engine braking oil it's Dan's choice for all his bills the intake is another one of Dan's designs he's proud of and like most of his parts made in-house and in the USA my dad did his time in the service and the firm believer in in everything in America and American is better racing started here so I don't know why we'd take it anywhere else if we didn't absolutely have to the intake is made for a Holley 4112 two barrel car that floats 500 CFM it's mandated by several sanctioning bodies for electric spark a mallory yuna light distributor along with a set of Sidewinder 8 millimeter wires dan even brought a long tube header with fittings for our egt sensors so we can monitor temps at each of the tubes with a tank of 110 racing fuel and a quick float adjustment it's time for 20 minutes we ran the engine at different rpms and different engine loads this was to ensure that the ring seat properly and the oil temp is hot enough to make some pulse for the first run we'll set the timing at 32 degrees according to that is just dead rich now we're swapping from 80s 262s to lean it out we finally got a run in the bag but there's a small issue third cylinder is still ice-cold that's that's what we're hitting soon until we put that baffle on two and four are running you know the running the right temperatures one in three are are pretty cool basically all the fuels going down is 1 & 3 Jamie Miller our cylinder head guy and I spent about three days one time coming up with his baffle that we put in the intake manifold to kind of redirect the fuel and even out the fuel flow to each cylinder typically it goes in and and the exhaust temperatures get more even we can jet a little more aggressively make a little more power throw this in and see what happens baffled you won't be Dan's a master at finding horsepower in his modified 2.3 stay with us we're back along with Dan Esslinger tuning one of his modified 2.3 race engines now he's using an intake baffle to equalize fuel delivery monitored by cylinder heat number one and number three were thirsty reinforce that for got really on real hot no flow bench required just experience plain and simple [Applause] cylinder 4 leveled out but at the expense of three one more minor trim all right this will be the one [Music] Wow a lot better everywhere everything's within 5 degrees except number 3 hold it's only 100 off yeah we also got an impressive 253 horsepower and 200 foot pounds of torque time to start building on that with a few more degrees of timing and taking the run to 7,500 rpms 258 204 right again this turned out to be the longest dyno session I ever had the privilege to be a part of several timing changes led to multiple cam adjustments yeah we found something doesn't like yeah doesn't like any time enough dan knows what's in there and he's going to find it you got to try to understand what's going on inside of things what's going on inside the plenum where's the fuel going where's the air going what does it meet you know what's it gonna do on the racetrack we could chase big numbers with big numbers don't necessarily learn relations you got to have something that runs through a whole range wherever they're gonna be giving it gas that thing's gotta run right again we try to wear them out on the dyno a little bit just to be sure that we know where they're at I'd rather do a little more here than make the customer figure it out 261 204 yeah the next change will be to the car installing a power valve block off which will require larger jets so back to the 80s there's 62 203 they're fuels aren't going to get any better than that up top well you heard the man and the back-up run was identical time to quit not a chance we'll make another cam timing change back to zero and drop down one jet size [Music] 268 horsepower 211 foot-pounds of torque yeah yeah absolutely well it's all about winning at the end of the day there's a there's a race to go to all we can do is do our best and try and make something that meets their needs and get some up front give them a chance to win something

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 1,284,631

Rating: 4.883357 out of 5

Keywords: 4 cylinder engine, lima engine, Automotive;, Cars;, Vehicles;, How-To;, Auto, News;, Howto;, How, DIY;, Car, Tips, ford, engine, powernation, engine rebuild, automotive, automobile

Id: pv6h9auhMPQ

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 03 2019