We Put All the Tricks into Newcomer Racing's Big Power Jeep Engine Build [Dyno Surprise]

[Music] what's up everybody if you've been following the horsepower monster for any length of time you've probably seen some of our videos in conjunction with newcomer racing that's engine builder keith newcomer right there and he's been pushing the limits with straight six jeep motors and also the amc's and stuff like that the latest build he's got is really cool thought you want to see he's trying to see how far he can take this 60s technology with modern engine controls like a holley dominator he's also fabricated a way to get a racing style crank trigger ignition on here fabricated his own uh cam sensor as you can see we've got individual coil packs we're going to show you how we made it all work and then we're going to bust it off on the dyno to see if it actually makes some power hang on this is going to be fun [Music] we've already done a really cool video with keith newcomer building a budget jeep stroker engine with mostly stock parts that boosted the stock 190 horsepower engine to just over 300 and there's a link in the description below if you want to check that video out but now he's trying to blow that number out of the water and make the most naturally aspirated power possible for these engines burning pump gas and with the same rock solid reliability these jeep straight sixes are famous for so that means some serious port work previous testing has shown the edelbrock stock aluminum cylinder head for these engines right out of the box is about as good as a fully ported stock cylinder head so in order to get maximum performance newcomer has spent about 16 hours porting this new edelbrock cylinder head take for example the combustion chambers the shape is mostly the same after all the edelbrock head is a good modern design with a heart-shaped chamber but newcomber knows he's going to be working with a larger cylinder bore so he was able to lay back the walls of the combustion chambers to help move more air out from around the valves that also opened up the combustion chambers from 55 cc stock on the edelbrocks to just about 60 but that can be made up with the pistons now here's a look at the ports newcomer says the trick with these heads when it comes to increasing flow is to raise the roost of the ports he doesn't really bother with the floors because so little air flows across the bottom of the porch he's also widened both the intakes and the exhaust as much as the castings will allow and equalize the port dimensions in terms of both height and width as much as possible from port entry all the way to the valve seat that also requires a good bit of work around the valve guide boss also to help move more air the valve sizes have been increased newcomer is using ls based forea hollow stem valves with extra long stems to allow increase in valve lift from the cam the intakes have been up from one inch nine hundred ten thousandths to two inches eighty thousandths while the usual inch and a half exhausts are now a full hundred thousandths larger at an inch six hundred so how much does the port work improve flow well keith is keeping the flow numbers to himself but he does say it's significant anyhow i put the cart before the horse a little bit with the gorgeous port work on those cylinder heads before we can put them on anything we've got to get the bottom end built so let's get to that the block is an oem 4 liter cast iron unit from a 99 through 04 jeep grand cherokee newcomer says these blocks usually have cylinder walls that are just a bit thicker it's also one of the nbh blocks that are used in later model jeeps nvh stands for noise vibration and harshness but it's important to us because these blocks have thicker webbing around the crank bores and include a stamped main girdle both of which should help overall strength while the block comes from more modern jeeps the crank is definitely old school this is a fully counterweighted crank out of a pre-1981 jeep it's also a crank out of a larger 4.2 liter engine with a stroke of 3.895 inches that's 481 thousandths longer than the crank from the 4-0 engine the rest of the build is based around once the king bearings are in place and the bearing clearance is confirmed the crank is lowered into the bearing saddles and the cast main caps are cured by twerking the main bolts to 100 foot [Music] pounds [Music] notice the main bolts have studs extending from them these are for the main girdle we'll be adding later [Music] while the main and rod bearings are from king the cam bearings are from acl newcomer works with bullet racing cams for his bump sticks this one is a mechanical flat tappet that's pretty aggressive for a straight six it has 518 thousandths net lift of the intake valves and 527 at the exhaust the duration is 226 and 232 at 50 000 stafford lift on a 112 degree center line honestly one of the biggest hurdles when it comes to building jeep or amc straight six performance is a lack of aftermarket support there just aren't the same options out there that you can find for chevy and ford v8s the connecting rods are forged units from eagle unfortunately they only come with a press-fit pin bore so newcomer modifies them himself with bronze bushings so they will accept floating wrist pins which don't rob power like press fit pins the big ends of the rods are also upgraded with arp 2000 bolts and like we already mentioned they're outfitted with king rod bearings these rods are also slightly longer than stock to improve the rod stroke ratio here's a stock rod on the left and one of the six inch 125 eagles on the right mounted up to the connecting rods or a set of custom slugs from je pistons these are 30 over so the bore is now 3.905 combined with the longer 3.895 inch stroke that makes total displacement 4.58 liters or 280 cubic inches the pistons are flat tops with valve pockets just large enough to clear the valves wire locks keep the wrist pins in place and the rings are a lightweight low friction set size at 1.5 millimeters for the top and second ring and three millimeters for the oil ring notice how easy it is to slide the pistons into the boards with the low drag o rings now we don't really care how easy it makes the engine to assemble but that does translate to more horsepower when the engine is running newcomer just snugs up the caps and rod bolts and then once all the pistons and rods are in the block he flips the engine over so devon row can torque up the arp 2000 bolts to 45 foot-pounds [Music] like the camshaft the solid flat tappet lifters are from bullet racing cams it can be really tough on a flat tap of valve train running an aggressive cam lobe and lots of rpms so these lifters have a very tiny hole cut into the face of the lifter that injects pressurized oil into the area between the cam lobe and lifter face this oiling hole significantly helps improve durability [Music] newcomer installs the upgraded double roll timing chain and degrees in the cam to make sure the valve train is set up exactly where it should be and now we've finally made it back around to the ported edelbrock cylinder head we started out discussing i just can't get enough of those big old ports but the real skill when it comes to hand porting is making all six intake ports and all six exhausts exactly the same we haven't discussed the valve springs yet these are actually a set of brian thule racing springs for an ls engine modified to work for this application they're a double nested spring setup but newcomer reduced the overall spring pressure by using just the outer spring lots of installed height is needed because the total valve lift will be just a bit over half an inch using just the outers there's approximately 100 pounds of pressure on the seat and 280 over the nose the extra long valve stems are necessary to get the tall installed height because you can't cut the spring seat on these heads deep enough to keep from getting in the coil bind titanium retainers help keep the overall valve train weight down the head bolts are run down to 80 foot-pounds in three stages the push rods are super stiff 3 8 inch diameter 80 thousandths wall hardened steel units that are 9 inches 300 thousands long and you should probably be able to tell by now that newcomer plans to make this straight six scream on the dyno way up in the rpm range where most engines like this would have long ago given up the ghost the rocker arms for this build are also a pretty trick for a jeep they're 1.7 to 1 ratio aluminum rocker arms from scorpion racing these are full roller rockers with a 1.7 ratio a bit more aggressive than the stock 1.6 here's a shot of a stock replacement set of stamped steel rockers so you can see the difference besides adding more lift and duration with a higher rocker ratio the fully roller scorpion rocker should work more efficiently than the stock units plus the beefy aluminum rocker bodies are much more resistant to flex which can ruin valve timing in the running engine newcomer did find that he had to grind a bit of material off the back corner of the two rockers on the very ends to clear the valve cover but that wasn't a big deal once everything is in place there lasted 12 thousandths of an inch for the intakes and 10 000 for the exhaust cold the target hot lash will be 18 000 all around [Music] the oil pump is a standard volume melting unit and the oil pickup is for the stock pan which we'll be using [Music] but before the pan goes down newcomer first installed the stamped steel main girdle the girdle bolts down using the studs that extend from the main bolts but because this is a stroker build you'll notice that the spacers have to be used to create just enough clearance for the connecting rods as they swing by once newcomer confirms that we aren't going to be crashing the rods into anything he torques the main girdle down tight and then adds the one-piece oil pan gasket the one-piece gaskets are a huge improvement over the old four-piece pan gaskets but they can still potentially leak in the corners so a little oil resistant silicone there helps assure that this engine won't be drooling on the driveway once it's in its permanent home in a jeep with the oil pan in place the engine is rotated back to right side up and break in oil is poured in through the drain holes in the cylinder head newcomer spins up the oil pump while raoul rotates the crank and valve train until they can see the oil has moved up through each rocker arm now we're ready to seal up the top of the engine but the standard valve cover can have trouble fitting with the taller valve train so newcomer has his own valve cover spacers machined to his specs after the first gasket goes down this pin helps locate the second gasket so it can't move then the 3 8 inch thick cnc cut aluminum spacer goes down with another gasket on top this is a stock cast valve cover that's been machined and touched up a bit and it now has plenty of clearance for the aftermarket valve train setup now we're getting to the part of the build where that you've never seen this stuff before on a jeep innovation starts newcomer wanted fully computer controlled efi and we're not talking about the stock hard to work with stuff here we're talking about fully modern aftermarket efi systems that are unlocking so much power these days on this engine but like we've already mentioned the jeep and amc straight six lacks a dedicated performance aftermarket like many v8 engines so we asked newcomer to explain how we made it all work all right so one of the challenges we had was trying to run a motor like this with a bunch of options was the fuel injection we could have possibly taken one from an obd2 stripped the harness and made it work that way we've done that before but we decided to go all aftermarket we can control everything so we worked with holley with their hp system and one of the challenges a lot of guys will see is there's not a good trigger for the crank so we came up with this we got the the weights everything in it um we got the pickup amount and we'll just adjust it to get our air gap where we want it so one of the stumbling blocks in this system is a cam sink they're not available you can't get them so we came up with this one and um it'll support pretty much any aftermarket system this is a stock one hall effect sensor it simply you know turns goes through the window but their system most systems don't support that they want a cam sync so we came up with this it's actually got the eye the magnetic pickup inside it's all machined and this is just like a stock one so what you'll do is put it that i can get on here it'll fit just like a stock one you'll take this in until it bottoms out once this is tight and then it'll bottom out it's bottomed out and you back it out 50 to 80 thousands you set it lock it down and there there would be your air gap and it would get the proper signal to support that kind of system the crank trigger also required a bit of work a crank trigger replaces the distributor it's much more accurate because the greater diameter of the trigger wheel compared to a distributor reluctor provides much greater resolution when it comes to cylinder timing newcomer started with a generic no-name trigger wheel and retrofitted it to work on the jeep engine but the good news is newcomer planned to work with either a holley hp or a dominator ecu and either works practically with any brand crank trigger and pickup and controls everything without a hitch the ignition is also converted to a modern individual coil setup using holley smart coils because they provide a stronger more consistent spark than the single coil traditionally used with this engine to make it all work newcomer fabricated a coil bracket that mounts tight to the block so everything still fits in the engine bay you will notice that the main bracket holds five coils while a6 sits slightly below the rest in order to get everything to fit clean and tidy the reworked cam position sensor fits right where the distributor would while the crank trigger tells the ecu the location of the pistons the cam sensor helps the ecu know when each cylinder is on its compression stroke and ready for a spark this obviously is the first and only one in existence and it required a ton of hours to science out and machine up but newcomer says he's looking at ways to manufacture them more economically one of the quirks of the jeep head is that the intake and the exhaust are on the same side jeep uses bolts and thick washers that catch the flanges of both the intake and the exhaust to seal them up against the head this can create an issue if you're using an aftermarket intake and exhaust like we are because the flanges are likely to vary from stock the stock washers are often just too small like you see here and often won't fully seat against the flange leaving you to hope for the best after dealing with this issue one too many times newcomer has developed his own steel washers laser cut from thick steel plate these come in two different shapes and they're thick enough that they shouldn't bend no matter how much you crank down on them here you can see how the stock washer doesn't make enough contact with the flange on an aftermarket intake manifold and now how newcomers laser cut washers fix the problem but that was just for mock-up by the time we got to the dyno newcomer had two custom fab intake manifolds ready one was a traditional style intake with a top mount throttle body the second intake i'm calling it the cannon maybe that'll catch on is a front mount with a huge plenum and shorter but equal length runners it's going to go onto a later big turbo build and it's all cut from billet aluminum but we wanted to see how it compares in a naturally aspirated application since this is an r d piece he didn't have a jig so he carefully welded little bits at a time moving around the intake to minimize heat warp so let's take this bad boy to the dyno [Music] we're at the dinos of automotive specialists in concord north carolina you may be familiar with that name because we've also done several engine builds with the guise of automotive specialists besides using their dyno jeff dortmund is also helping with tuning the efi system first up we're testing with newcomers custom fab intake in the traditional layout that's a 93 millimeter throttle body mounted on top of the intake there's also a set of 48 cc injectors from excel installed on the runners to provide fuel everything on the engine plugged right in with a holley wiring harness and as we already mentioned the engine controls were handled with a holley dominator ecu the programming allows dorton to simply upload the engine parameters on a laptop and a baseline fuel map is built automatically from there dorton can adjust the fuel and timing curves from the laptop as he sees fit one note you will notice the exhaust header change the other header is a custom built stainless steel piece that newcomer fab for a no holds bar turbo build he has coming up and believe me we're going to cover that one too after initially setting everything up on the dyno newcomer decided to make an update to the prototype crank trigger assembly by the time we got back on the dyno he was already mocking up the turbo plumbing for his turbo project so we switched over to this header for the dyno testing anyhow enough talking let's get to it so after a thorough break in remember these are flat tappet lifters and several different runs to see where the engine like spark timing and fuel newcomer pulled this 280 cubic inch 6 all the way to 6200 rpm which is screaming for an engine like this it made peaks of 367.4 foot-pounds of torque and 395 horsepower that's two times the 190 horsepower the original engine was rated for but for you big tire guys it's the torque line that's going to look a lot like christmas the pull starts at 298 foot pounds of torque ends at 334 and never gets lower in between what's cool is that dorton was able to take advantage of the dominator ecu to tune the engine to maximize power but we should still have great low rpm manners on the street or trail even with the giant throttle body this one this is first time for me you know on uh holley hp um jeff dorton helped me a lot on that and um you know i got to give him all the credit but i will say it's it's pretty cool you know you just i'm not going to do a jet change hold on a minute boom boom it's a live change make another pull and it's just one after another you can change everything you can look at everything it's a lot of work to get this done but in the end it runs awesome it's hard to beat so that already makes this day a success but newcomer also wanted to test the cannon the idea here is to see how the equal length runners and large plenum affect the power curve we're using the same size throttle body injectors and fuel log by the way in case you're wondering those two large braided lines running up from the valve cover are just breathers so so after a few tuning runs we were able to find the best fuel maps for the cannon it made better peak torque 374.2 to 367.4 which is an improvement of 6.8 foot-pounds but we lost four pink horsepower overall however the jeep straight six did seem to like the canon better with improved averages of both torque and horsepower across the range but i'm sure you probably noticed the dip in power starting around 5200 rpm with both pulls i suspect that this is probably the valve springs hitting a harmonic range that affected valve control and consequently hurt power a double nested spring is normally more resistant to harmonics and using just the outers may have been an issue anyhow fixing the dip will likely be as simple as a valve spring swap unfortunately we didn't have any on hand on the dyno session so we can't show it to you overall outfitting jeep's iconic straight 6 with modern engine controls a crank trigger ignition and individual coil packs was a bit of a project but the results were better than even newcomer had hoped it made great power all the way across the rpm range and once the engine is in a vehicle it should be as easy to start and reliable for daily driving is any new vehicle you can drive off the lot we call that a win hey thanks for watching please like and subscribe and we'll see you next time for another great engine build [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Horsepower Monster

Views: 859,958

Keywords: Jeep, stroker engine build, newcomer racing, keith newcomer, jeff huneycutt, holley dominator ecu, holley smart coils, edelbrock jeep cylinder head, eagle jeep connecting rods, how to build a jeep engine, jeep 4.0 stroker, amc engine build, jeep efi engine, horsepower monster, how to build a racing engine, jeep racing engine, jeep crank trigger, jeep valvecover spacer, jeep cam sync, efi for 4.0 engine

Id: YWcZMjA7ZgQ

Length: 25min 33sec (1533 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020