Turbo minivan (planning 3.8L ford windstar project)

[js335]

Hey guys, thought I abandoned this project didn't you? Life's been very rough for me lately due to a number of things, but its starting to come back together. So I'm ready to start working on the project in the up coming weeks and figuring out what I want to do. The van is in need of a tune up and has a slight vacuum leak in the intake manifold that needs to be addressed. I did my first fuel economy test the other day and returned poor results, 15 city/hwy mix, and 11 short tripping it around town. This has got to go so I'm weighing my options, the easiest would be to keep the van and repair and turbo the engine. other possibilities include an engine swap or mod a different van. we only have two vehicles at the moment so downtime must remain at a minimum. I could downsize the engine to a 4 or 3cyl, I think the 3.0 vulcan has the same bellhousing bolt patern, which would make things alot easier to swap in a zeta engine according to this thread: Two questions. Gen 4 cheap coils? Eco engine swaps? - Taurus Car Club of America : Ford Taurus Forum

Using the same trans saves a lot of fab work like axels and trans mounts and shifter.

I also thought about a metro 3 or 4 banger or vw 1.8t but that would require some machine work, I have experience in complex rewiring and motor mount fab, I normally leave the stock PCM in place and feed it just enough inputs to properly shift the trans, the tps signal can be played with as well to encourage soon upshifts and tc lock-up. But the adapter plate department I have left alone due to the precise measuring and machining required, but may give it shot as the ones that can be purchased carry a high price tag. I think a tiny 3 banger would be cool under the hood, and donor metros can still be found cheap, but I wonder if it would be dangerous to get out into traffic.

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

AX4N transmissions found on those cars are garbage.
At minimum I would recomend a canister style hydraulic oil filter and air to oil cooler.

This is true, it has the ax4s, same junk, if I roll with it I will look into the filter/cooler setup. This and the down time involved in a motor swap makes me want to buy a cheap broke down van off craigslist and mod from there but with a smaller engine the ax4 may live a little longer.

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

I have K03 down pipes if you need one.
And coolant lines.

I do need the flanges, I'll will keep you in mind if you want to sell them

[oil pan 4]

I still have the K03 down pipes.

I don't know what kills the AX4N transmissions, but none of the vehicles equipt with them that i have seen appear to have any sort of effective trans cooler.

[trooper Tdiesel]

in stock form the windstar was NOT sold with manual trans.
any windstar with a manual is custom after market.

a ford tempo, focus, contuer engine trans would be a very out side the box windstar

the windstar had a 3.0 or 3.8L the 3.0 is ever so marganly better on mpg i randomly picked a year 1996 to compare.

with the 3.0L
Compare Old and New MPG Estimates

with the 3.8L
Compare Old and New MPG Estimates

your 11/17 mpg is right on par for dedicated city driving.



for an idea of what your windstar would get for mpg with a 4 poper and manual trans this is the last year of the dodge vans to get that set up 1995
Compare Old and New MPG Estimates

you could put a 2.0L out of a dodge neon in a van and get a little better mpg but it would be a silly slow, unless you found one of the DOHC 2.0Ls they had in the 90s then it wouldn't be quite so bad.

my 0.01C find a van with a I-4 and manual trans.

[js335]

I have no intentions of converting to manual, she won't drive one, trust me I have tried. I would totally do it though. I did look for a 4 cyl caravan but could not find one for the same price that wasn't stripped down and beat up.

[razor02097]

Not trying to discourage but just finding and buying a turbo is fitting the key in pandora's box. Once you start cutting and fitting you will have opened the box. Equipping a vehicle with a turbo the correct way to make it safe and reliable is a very expensive and time consuming endeavor.

Even running low boost not all OEM ECU will be able to compensate. It will depend on the engine and the capabilities of the ECU. Either way you will need at least a wideband, data logging software and software to retrieve, modify and upload tunes. You could invest in an aftermarket ECU like FAST or megasquirt which would make it easier to tune but you would have that additional cost.


I am not trying to beat you down... I have researched heavily in putting a turbo on my 4L Jeep engine.... I found out that there are a lot of hidden costs and problems that would have to be solved. After I added up the costs for the estimate...it was north of the $5,000 mark. For that kind of money I could do a 4bt engine swap and have more power and economy than a turbo 4L.

[Miller88]

I think if you really want to do a turbo on this, it's going to need some sort of I4. The 3.8s are packed in there REALLY tight. I think adding a turbo would make the heat problem worse with the 3.8. You'd be replacing head gaskets weekly!

The MTX-5 transmission that was used in the Tauruses might be strong enough for the Windstar. There've been one or two people that managed to mate one up to their 3.0 Vulcan Taurus. I wouldn't bank on a MTX-75 (used in the smaller cars) holding up for too long at all.

What about a small diesel? Find a wrecked TDI or something?

Originally Posted by razor02097

Not trying to discourage but just finding and buying a turbo is fitting the key in pandora's box. Once you start cutting and fitting you will have opened the box. Equipping a vehicle with a turbo the correct way to make it safe and reliable is a very expensive and time consuming endeavor.

Even running low boost not all OEM ECU will be able to compensate. It will depend on the engine and the capabilities of the ECU. Either way you will need at least a wideband, data logging software and software to retrieve, modify and upload tunes. You could invest in an aftermarket ECU like FAST or megasquirt which would make it easier to tune but you would have that additional cost.


I am not trying to beat you down... I have researched heavily in putting a turbo on my 4L Jeep engine.... I found out that there are a lot of hidden costs and problems that would have to be solved. After I added up the costs for the estimate...it was north of the $5,000 mark. For that kind of money I could do a 4bt engine swap and have more power and economy than a turbo 4L.

There's a video of a turbo 4.0 TJ ... it picks up the left front tire it has so much torque! I've never felt any of our 4.0s were underpowered, though. Fuel economy ... it's a tractor engine from the 60s, powering something with no consideration to aerodynamics.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

A 3-cyl out of a Chevy Metro would be pretty insane, even with a turbo it would still be overkill into a Windstar

Unless you could get that Euro-spec Volkswagen 1.2TFSI I wouldn't recommend you to get a 3-cyl gasser into the Windstar.

Originally Posted by Miller88

I think if you really want to do a turbo on this, it's going to need some sort of I4.

The Duratec 2.3 out of a Fusion could be a good option, already bolted to an automatic transmission if your wife wouldn't drive with a manual transmission.

What about a small diesel? Find a wrecked TDI or something?

A small Diesel would be the best option, if you could get a wrecked Passat TDI already fitted with an automatic. Or if you could mess with the electronics and the torque converter of the stock transmission, a Kubota V-2203 can be had for cheap, retrofitted with a random small turbocharger and still provide decent performance with fuel savings. The ability to run on some alternative fuels such as waste vegetable oil is also a good reason to get a Diesel

[js335]

Originally Posted by razor02097

Not trying to discourage but just finding and buying a turbo is fitting the key in pandora's box. Once you start cutting and fitting you will have opened the box. Equipping a vehicle with a turbo the correct way to make it safe and reliable is a very expensive and time consuming endeavor.

Even running low boost not all OEM ECU will be able to compensate. It will depend on the engine and the capabilities of the ECU. Either way you will need at least a wideband, data logging software and software to retrieve, modify and upload tunes. You could invest in an aftermarket ECU like FAST or megasquirt which would make it easier to tune but you would have that additional cost.

I am not trying to beat you down... I have researched heavily in putting a turbo on my 4L Jeep engine.... I found out that there are a lot of hidden costs and problems that would have to be solved. After I added up the costs for the estimate...it was north of the $5,000 mark. For that kind of money I could do a 4bt engine swap and have more power and economy than a turbo 4L.

No worries, I have turbo charged many vehicles before, some ghetto style, pandora's box has put a hurting on me many times. This is a mass airflow engine that will compensate for some but not much increased airflow, and its without a map sensor that would freak the PCM out when it see's boost. I only plan on running around 5 Psi at first without management. I see the honda guys do it all the time, while beating the crap out of it every day. This van is not beat-on at all so there will be very few and far WOT situations.

I really want to get into Megasquirt, the price, function and support are amazing, I have been digging into the black magic of tuning lately, it is really helping me with my diagnostic skills as a technician. I also might be able to use it to lean burn cruise like that crazy turbo civic that I have been reading about, and control the water injection and so on, I would be playing with that thing for months when I finally get one lol.

Speaking of Jeeps and turbos, my bro has a TJ with a 2.5L 4 banger that we were about to turbo before a valve dropped and married a piston. I did alot of research on that and read over and over again that guys were getting increased mileage from the turbo. None of the jeep guys seemed to care, actually received a lot of nay-say but I ended up just putting a camaro 3.4l V6 in it. I didnt receive any help from them but here's the thread if your interested in reading about it: 2.5l to gm 3.4l swap advice - Jeep Wrangler Forum

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Planning previously, turbocharging an engine is not so hard as it might appear. But it's better to do it right and do everything (including the installation of an intercooler) once instead of being always fixing some incorrect setup or working around to make room for some part that wasn't originally intended to be used.

[js335]

Originally Posted by Miller88

I think if you really want to do a turbo on this, it's going to need some sort of I4. The 3.8s are packed in there REALLY tight. I think adding a turbo would make the heat problem worse with the 3.8. You'd be replacing head gaskets weekly!

I plan on relocating the battery to the rear, actually a bank of batteries to do an alternator delete, also the air box will go, that should free up a lot of room under the hood over the trans. should I decide to put the front turbo there, There is a ton of room underneath behind the subframe, it would be a short exhaust run for the rear turbo and a slightly longer one for the front if it goes there, seeing what the guys with rear mounted turbos get away with, shouldn't cause too much lag, especially if I exhaust wrap the pipes. I could be mistaken, but I believe the 3.0 vulcan engine is the one with the headgasket issues, either way as long as normal operating temp is not exceeded, shouldn't be a problem. Head gaskets are piece of cake on these engines anyway. Its pretty packed in there, but you should see how packed the engine is that those turbos came from.

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

A 3-cyl out of a Chevy Metro would be pretty insane, even with a turbo it would still be overkill into a Windstar

But there would be so much room in the engine bay!

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

The Duratec 2.3 out of a Fusion could be a good option, already bolted to an automatic transmission if your wife wouldn't drive with a manual transmission.

A small Diesel would be the best option, if you could get a wrecked Passat TDI already fitted with an automatic. Or if you could mess with the electronics and the torque converter of the stock transmission, a Kubota V-2203 can be had for cheap, retrofitted with a random small turbocharger and still provide decent performance with fuel savings. The ability to run on some alternative fuels such as waste vegetable oil is also a good reason to get a Diesel

I'm a (small)diesel guy and I would love to put an ALH tdi in there, she even wants me to do that, but like I said before on this thread, finding one of those is like finding gold around here. Me, my father and sister all have ALH tdi's that came with blown motors(now running) that I snagged off craigslist because I was the first to call within minutes. For future reference, I'm deffinitaly looking into the kubota thing. Running a trans with a different engine/computer is usually easy, you just leave the old TCM or PCM in place and feed it what it needs to shift, most of the time its just rpm signal and TPS, some cars use mass air flow as a load signal and that can get complicated but still do-able. I have a semi DIY greasecar kit on my TDI, havent used it in awhile due to time involved and supply issues after everyone jumped on the WVO bandwagon and started stealing it back when gas prices went nuts a few years back.