It’s Roadkill meets Engine Masters
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00:00 This time it's engine masters meets road kill
00:02 because we've got the Ratson's Turbo 5.0L Ford
00:06 and we're gonna find out how good
00:08 that Power Stroke diesel turbo really is.
00:11 (engine revving)
00:15 (upbeat music)
00:27 (engine revving)
00:30 Welcome back to West Tech Performance
00:34 in Mira Loma, California for another episode
00:37 of Engine Masters presented by AMSOIL.
00:40 Now today we're gonna be taking
00:41 a Junkyard Power Stroke diesel turbo
00:44 and using it to boost a bone stock
00:48 5.0L Ford Mustang engine.
00:50 If you're aware of our road kill show
00:53 that I do with Mike Finnegan,
00:54 you know that we've got this '71 Datsun 240Z
00:57 that's called the Ratson.
00:58 And in a recent episode,
01:00 we installed this motor and the turbo in that car.
01:03 We took this out of a 1987 Mustang.
01:07 This engine is very similar to what you would find
01:09 in the Junkyard from any of those Mustangs
01:11 from 1985 to mid 1992.
01:15 That's when they had factory roller cams
01:17 and they had forged pistons in them.
01:19 The compression ratio varied just a tiny bit year to year.
01:22 This being an 87, it's 9.1 to one.
01:25 And I'm really hoping that the ring end gaps
01:28 are worn out enough that they don't butt together
01:30 and give us a problem once we put the turbo on this thing.
01:32 'Cause honestly, we didn't even hose this off.
01:35 It is bone stock from the valve covers down.
01:37 All we got here is a Holley 750 carb
01:40 that we're gonna baseline it with
01:41 before we change it to turbo.
01:43 We have a big Edelbrock Victor Jr.
01:45 single plane intake manifold,
01:47 just because that's gonna be way happier
01:49 with the turbo program than if we put a dual plane on it,
01:51 which would be more appropriate for this engine
01:53 and its current configuration.
01:54 'Cause eventually we're gonna cram some boost
01:56 through this thing, but first we gotta hang it in there
01:59 and find out what this pooch makes naturally aspirated.
02:02 Normally when we're doing stupid things with boost,
02:05 Amsoil recommends that we run their 60 weight oil.
02:08 This time though, I'm really concerned that thick oil
02:10 and heavy oil pressure is gonna break the distributor shaft
02:14 in this Ford, it can happen.
02:15 So I'm gonna run the Dominator oil,
02:17 which is a 10/30 instead of the 60.
02:20 Dominator again has got that really good film strength
02:22 so that you don't bounce a bearing directly
02:24 off the crankshaft while we're boosting this thing.
02:26 I think it's gonna be okay.
02:28 Now, let me show you the only proven method
02:31 to prevent me from spilling oil all over the engine.
02:34 Better do it the right way.
02:40 These blocks are famous for literally splitting in half
02:50 at 500 horsepower.
02:51 Those five liter 302 blocks,
02:53 not small block Fords in general,
02:54 but these in particular, literally.
02:56 - They go right from the main cap
02:57 into the cam, don't they?
03:01 - I'm pretty sure it's gonna run right immediately.
03:03 - Did this thing vibrate in the car?
03:05 - Is it shaking?
03:06 - No, I'm asking that because I dug a pound of dirt
03:09 out of the balancer.
03:10 - Oh really?
03:11 (laughing)
03:14 - I looked and you couldn't see any bolts.
03:16 It was just like smooth and centrifugal force
03:18 and mud and water had just kind of made it
03:20 like this nice smooth cup.
03:22 - Looked like pottery.
03:23 - It evened out.
03:24 That's how a fluid damper works.
03:25 It's fine.
03:26 - Exactly.
03:27 - I've run these stock five liters a bunch
03:29 and they make 260, 280.
03:32 - What?
03:33 - No.
03:36 - What, no?
03:36 - That was a definite snicker.
03:37 - It was.
03:38 - I wanna know what that was.
03:39 - That was ridicule.
03:40 - Yeah.
03:41 - No, not at all.
03:42 - You're gonna get the root of that snicker.
03:43 - Why?
03:44 - You've seen these.
03:45 So it's just like unfair.
03:47 I don't even have.
03:48 - You got nothing?
03:49 - I got nothing.
03:50 - You've run these.
03:51 If I've run them, you've run them.
03:52 - But never with this much dirt and grease on them.
03:55 - And never with like a Victor Jr. on it.
03:58 - Any guesses?
03:59 - 265.
04:00 - 285.
04:02 - 279.
04:03 - Price is right.
04:04 (laughing)
04:07 (dramatic music)
04:09 (engine roaring)
04:18 (engine roaring)
04:21 - It's not bad.
04:29 - So close.
04:30 - So close.
04:31 - Yeah, you almost called it.
04:33 - Almost.
04:34 - That was way off.
04:35 - Looks like we got 312.6 pound feet of torque at 3,800 RPM
04:40 and 277.9 horsepower at 5,400 RPM.
04:45 So exactly what we expected.
04:47 - Look how nice that thing runs though.
04:49 - The factory motors are actually engineered really good.
04:52 - How many miles were on this thing
04:53 when you yanked it out of the car?
04:55 - I have no idea.
04:55 - Really?
04:56 - It's well over a hundred.
04:57 I just look at it.
04:58 It's gotta have 130 or 40 or 50,000 on it.
05:02 I'm just judging that by the depth of grease and dirt.
05:06 - Despite all the filth on the outside,
05:08 I didn't see blow by or smoke out of the exhaust.
05:11 - Especially since we've driven it in the rots
05:13 and with that turbo on it.
05:15 A lot of kind of the classic car engine guys
05:18 look for motors like this.
05:19 - Oh yeah.
05:20 - Covered in oil because then they at least know
05:21 it's not a rusty piece of junk.
05:23 - Yeah, or hasn't been rebuilt or something.
05:25 - Yeah.
05:27 - So I'm happy with that baseline.
05:28 You ready to go put turbo on it?
05:29 - That's what we're here for.
05:30 That's what the fun's for.
05:32 - Wow, is this a mess?
05:33 That's because it's pure road kill.
05:36 We had all of this stuff on that 302
05:38 running and driving in the rots and man, is it fast.
05:42 That car weighs like 2,500 pounds.
05:44 It is just killer.
05:45 But we're about to find out exactly how much power
05:47 it takes to make that thing so scary.
05:49 Here's what we've got.
05:51 This turbocharger is directly off
05:53 of a Ford Power Stroke diesel.
05:56 It's totally wrong for the application, but it makes power.
06:00 We do have a Banks exhaust housing on it.
06:03 And that was really to help us kill some lag
06:06 when we had this thing on a 4.3 Chevy V6.
06:10 And it helped a little bit, but it was still kind of a mess.
06:13 However, on the 302, this thing has throttle response.
06:17 It's really good, actually.
06:19 This isn't just a dyno test.
06:21 We've driven this in the real world and it works.
06:23 We had to change around our exhaust side.
06:26 The hot side is a big hater pipe on the rots,
06:29 but we had to modify this just for the dyno
06:31 so that we weren't burning the ceiling.
06:33 Then there's the key to making this whole thing
06:35 really dirt cheap, which is the fact we were able
06:38 to reuse the five liter Mustang exhaust manifolds,
06:41 which look a lot like a shorty header,
06:43 but with much worse bends in them.
06:45 We were able to take this thing and flip it upside down
06:48 to mount the turbo, as you'll see on the dyno.
06:50 Now, normally on a small block Ford,
06:52 you wouldn't be able to do that
06:54 because if you look carefully,
06:55 you can see that the bolt pattern on the header
06:59 is not perfectly centered in the tube.
07:01 So if you had a good opening on the header,
07:03 and if you had a really good cylinder head on it
07:05 with a larger port, when you flipped it over,
07:07 you would have a massive exhaust leak.
07:09 But fortunately, all of this stuff in the stock program
07:12 is small enough that you don't have a problem with it.
07:15 And so it works out perfectly.
07:18 We have a teal wastegate on it,
07:20 which is really more valuable
07:22 than all of the rest of this stuff combined,
07:24 except for maybe the carburetor.
07:26 Yep, we're running this thing
07:27 in a blow through configuration.
07:29 This is a 650 CFM unit from QFT,
07:32 which does make off the shelf
07:34 blow through intended carburetors.
07:37 You can see we've got our hat over here,
07:38 and we also have a blow off valve.
07:40 So the thing's pretty functional,
07:42 except for the fact that it smokes bad.
07:45 It burns so much oil through the turbo.
07:47 I haven't even broken this to Brulé yet,
07:49 but he's gonna have oil spatter all over the room.
07:51 But we mitigate that a little bit with this pump.
07:56 Even with the drain going straight down on this turbo,
07:58 it just doesn't evacuate the oil like it should,
08:01 which is why it smokes so bad.
08:03 But when we hook up this pump,
08:05 it actively sucks the oil out of the turbo,
08:08 and it helps a lot.
08:10 Speaking of actively sucking,
08:12 let's go bolt this stuff to that 302
08:14 and find out what happens.
08:15 (upbeat music)
08:18 It didn't take long to get all this stuff
08:27 hung on the engine.
08:28 I mean, Finnegan and I had all of this in the car,
08:31 so it went pretty quick, even though it's super ugly.
08:34 Let me tell you about this whole science experiment
08:36 and how it works.
08:38 First of all, you saw that we flipped
08:39 the exhaust manifolds over,
08:41 and so we've got the exhaust here, both sides,
08:44 feeding into the exhaust housing on the turbocharger.
08:47 So what happens is that the expanding gases
08:49 of the heat of the exhaust spin the wheel inside the turbo.
08:53 The exhaust that is then vented out of the turbo
08:57 comes here through the pipe
08:58 that in the car was sticking straight up.
09:00 We have our oxygen sensor plugged into the pipe
09:02 so that we can test our air-fuel ratio
09:05 when running to make sure that it's safe.
09:07 This oxygen sensor's a little close to the end of the pipe.
09:10 If I was running in a car,
09:11 I would worry about it backfeeding
09:12 and giving some bogus readings,
09:14 but at wide open throttle, it'll be fine.
09:17 So we're spinning the wheel inside the turbocharger,
09:20 which in turn spins the impeller,
09:22 which is sucking air through this hole,
09:24 and discharging it all the way through here
09:27 to our carburetor hat.
09:29 On our carburetor hat, we've got a blow-off valve,
09:32 which is connected here to manifold vacuum
09:35 so that when the thing is idling,
09:37 it'll bypass some air so that it idles more easily.
09:39 Also, just like a centrifugal supercharger
09:43 that I described in a previous episode,
09:45 the blow-off valve works so that
09:46 when you're at wide open throttle at zero vacuum
09:48 and then let off the throttle
09:50 and you've still got some boost happening,
09:52 you don't back that boost up into the intake track.
09:54 It actually just bypasses it.
09:56 There is the hose that goes to the bypass valve.
09:59 It is also going to our data logger on the dyno
10:03 so that we can look at what our manifold boost is.
10:06 We have a secondary data channel
10:07 that is going to the boost inside the hat
10:09 so that we can look at the pressure drop
10:11 from the hat to the manifold through the carburetor.
10:15 We also have lines on the hat
10:16 that are connected to a boost-referenced fuel system,
10:19 which is really important.
10:21 Because we've got boost going into the carburetor fuel bowls
10:26 that means that if you have seven pounds
10:27 of fuel pressure going this way,
10:29 seven pounds of boost going that way,
10:30 you have no fuel flow.
10:32 So the boost-referenced fuel regulators
10:35 make sure that fuel pressure increases
10:37 in conjunction with boost
10:38 so that you continue flowing fuel through the carburetor.
10:42 Up here, we have got our wastegate
10:45 that we're gonna use to control our peak boost.
10:47 'Cause if you go all the way back here,
10:49 we have a little rudimentary organized leak
10:52 that is in fact a boost controller.
10:55 It adjusts how much manifold pressure
10:57 is going on the backside of the diaphragm in the wastegate
11:00 so that we can adjust how that spring works
11:03 so that we control how much total boost
11:05 is gonna make it into the engine.
11:07 It also has a top port in it.
11:08 You can run a sophisticated boost controller
11:10 that goes on both sides of this
11:12 that can control both sides of the diaphragm
11:14 and really keep a nice boost curve.
11:16 This one is once again as sketchy as the rest of the program
11:20 but you know what, it is gonna work wicked.
11:23 Watch this.
11:24 I'm kind of frightened about the high torque.
11:27 Yeah, but that's a lot.
11:30 Steve and I were not liking
11:31 that ugly looking dyno curve though
11:33 so we're considering just parking it.
11:36 - Yeah. - Go for it.
11:37 (engine revving)
11:41 - Wow.
11:50 (engine revving)
11:53 - Perfection.
11:59 - There we go. - Did you hear it?
12:01 - Yeah. - Wow, that's awesome.
12:02 - It won't break.
12:03 - And let's look at the graph.
12:04 - Look at the torque though.
12:05 - Oh, the torque is brutal.
12:07 Wow.
12:08 We made 617.8 pound feet of torque,
12:13 more than two pound feet per cubic inch
12:15 and 550.8 horsepower.
12:17 - Wow. - But that's not
12:18 the whole story.
12:19 Pull up the naturally aspirated curve.
12:21 This is with no turbo.
12:23 This is with turbo.
12:24 I have to do the math.
12:26 How much did we gain here?
12:27 We essentially gained 305 pound feet of torque.
12:31 - Just a little bit.
12:32 - And we picked up 270 horsepower,
12:36 nearly doubled the horsepower,
12:38 which actually the math works.
12:39 We're making 14, 15 pounds of boost.
12:42 That's one atmosphere
12:43 and it almost doubled the horsepower.
12:45 - Turbo's the most efficient forced induction there is.
12:48 - Absolutely.
12:49 - Cool. - It's cool.
12:50 - And it held together.
12:51 - The 302 beat us.
12:53 - I know and you were so dying to see it splatter.
12:55 - I started growing a fondness for it.
12:57 (laughing)
12:58 - He got attached to it this time.
13:00 - I got attached.
13:01 It's pretty cool though,
13:02 especially considering the hack job
13:04 that we did putting it together.
13:05 - See if it just would have fallen apart
13:06 like all the rumors,
13:07 it would have been like, yeah, okay,
13:08 that's what we expected from a piece of junk.
13:10 But no, it just stood in there and it fought it.
13:12 You know, it just said, no, I'm not giving up.
13:14 And it just made more and more and more power.
13:16 God, what fun.
13:17 - I know, that was great.
13:18 - You know what the most amazing thing
13:20 about this actually is?
13:22 - I'm waiting for you to tell me.
13:23 - This motor came out of the Roadkill Rotson
13:25 and it failed to fail.
13:27 Normally the Rotson breaks everything all the time,
13:29 but this thing did good.
13:31 - I know, for a total turkey of a five liter Ford,
13:34 that made it great.
13:36 - It was magic.
13:37 You know, often in our conclusions,
13:39 I like to go through sort of my takeaway
13:41 because I'm always thinking about it,
13:43 often like a magazine editor.
13:44 You know when you do a dyno test
13:45 and you have to go home and write the story
13:47 and you're like, you know,
13:48 what's really like the deep inner meaning of this?
13:50 And the thing is, this is junk parts,
13:53 but I think this is a combination anyone can do
13:57 that's actually advisable.
13:59 - Yeah, yeah.
13:59 It's that the Powerstroke diesel turbo, you can get them.
14:03 You can get them from rebuilders.
14:04 It's a good deal.
14:05 Banks easy, mail order the exhaust housing.
14:08 These Mustang engines are still available everywhere
14:12 or you can get a rebuilt one.
14:14 It's not that big of a deal.
14:15 Just forged piston short block.
14:17 It's really very practical.
14:19 - Plus I want to say,
14:21 you do not have to take this thing all the way
14:23 to 16 or 18 pounds of boost.
14:25 I mean, even on 10 or 12 or eight,
14:27 it would be a riot of power.
14:29 And live forever at that power level,
14:32 or you can throw one 18 fuel in it
14:33 and take it to the track.
14:34 And you know, I don't feel like this thing
14:37 is just about to barf its guts all over the ground.
14:40 There's that whole, the block breaks in half deal,
14:42 but so far this has survived.
14:45 But I think the, once again,
14:47 the takeaway is pull a few pounds out of the thing.
14:50 Don't make that much power
14:51 and just have a blast for dirt cheap money.
14:54 Anyone can do it.
14:55 - It looks super fun.
14:56 - I know it.
14:57 - Man, you guys are going to have a ball
14:58 when you get this back in the car.
14:59 - We need to do a real turbo next time.
15:01 - Yeah.
15:02 - Like actual good precision turbo
15:04 on like a 572 big block Chevy.
15:07 - I'm game.
15:08 - Yeah.
15:09 - Yeah.
15:09 - We're boost guys now.
15:10 And we'll be for now and forever more
15:12 on Engine Masters, which is presented by Amsoil
15:15 and supported by our friends at Mr. Gasket
15:17 and Earl's Vapor Guard Hose.
15:19 - So did you think I was going to get the flow B haircut?
15:23 - Dolce, it was like the ultimate flow B.
15:25 Your hair was getting pulled into the turbo.
15:28 - You were afraid also we're going to watch your head
15:29 get sucked up.
15:30 - I know, and it'll start boring a hole through your brain.
15:33 - Oh no.
15:33 (whooshing)