MRydder

I'm driving a 93 f150 with a 4.9 EFI I6 300 engine! I have a buddy at work who told me that he used to own an older one and said that he had put a turbo on his. Told me it drove like there was a rocket strapped to his *****! He was saying the turbo was only putting out about 6psi of boost but he was literally running a completely stock setup. So I'm just curious if anyone knows anything about the subject to give me some advice on the matter. I'm really interested in doing this to my truck and would love to hear some people's experience with supercharging/turbocharging this engine and how they went about it, how it changed the ride, and what they thought of the change! I'm willing to go as far as upgrading and modifying interals but would also know how things could go with just the stock setup.

Thanks!

Warlockk

Your biggest problem with old style turbos is heat. The turbo and exhaust tubes make so much heat it deteriorates the whole engine. I just spent this week at the ford training center learning about all they did to make the new systems work so well. It's a serious feat of design. For ease of installation and reliability I would go with a belt drive charger.

Loford2

I wold personally rather turbo than supercharge any day. The heat won't deteriorate the engine any worse than it would any other ****tily (like that spelling?) tuned turbo or forced induction application. The key to it is lots of fuel, to keep everything cool, so you don't burn holes in pistons. You would have to build a manifold, because I"m sure nobody makes one. Then you would have to plumb an intercooler. You could get bigger injectors and a fuel pump, but then who would tune it, and with what program? The old saying goes, "going fast costs money, how fast you wanna go?"

Warlockk

The interior heat isn't the problem. It's the engine bay heat. Factory equipped tubo cars were notorious for loosing belts, hoses, burned exhaust, plug wires, starters alternators etc. A supercharger has none of these issues.

dr_bowtie

the problem is the 300-6 wont handle more than 6-8psi boost because of the fuel...

Turbos are a lot of work but can be worth the effort... If I was going to turbo a truck it would be an Under the Truck turbo like for the lightning where the heat is wisked away with under body air flow....

another issue on the 300-6 is the clutch is weak and needs to be upgraded if you have a manual transmission... it will slip under boost.

MRydder

As for fuel pressure. I'm already planning on upgrading my injectors and building an adjustable fuel regulator so that I can up the fuel going into the mix.

As for the manifolds, that is also going to be a custom build but won't be anything too crazy.

Would just like to add that I'm asking for people experience with doing this. Feel free to add in any problems that might occur during the process. Things I could upgrade in order to add high psi for more boost, and approximate horsepower/torque/MPG's gains that would be assumed from different amounts of boost and fuel pressure and additional upgrades.

Also, does anyone know of any companies that make a turbo kit specifically for this truck? Or is there a universal turbo that works well with this engine? Or even a turbo from a different vehicle that works similarly? Any info helps really.

Would love to hear other people stories and proceedures with turboing their 4.9l trucks! Or even supercharging (because that interests me aswell). Thanks for any input!

Fordboy9

I've been looking in to this for a while, theres a few videos on YouTube and a couple builds on other sites. I haven't found much else. I'm vey interested to see how yours goes!

dr_bowtie

Fuel pressure isn't the issue... the fuel itself is...

Because of the way the 300-6 is built it is not a fast Rating engine... for this fact if you force it to be it will Detonate very easy even on premium 94 octane fuel...it has a long stroke and a long rod and the added pressure along with the Cylinder temps create the issue...

To bypass this you'll need to switch to E85 fuel... then you can run over 8psi boost...

You can do this on a STOCK engine just by changing the fuel... pressure is more than fine.

if you dont plan to convert to E85 then you will have to rebuild the lower end for light weight crank (custom) and lightweight rods and pistons... those 3 things will set you back about 3k-4k alone...

Then because you have a kick *** bottom end now you are stuck with the nose plugged head...

EngineQuest carries a Thicker head for the 300-6 that can handle more porting and is tons better than the stock head...

but for optimum efficiency you will need to change the fuel type or you'll break the engine...


research that guy... he uses a STOCK 300-6 with changed fuel and a fair amount of boost and runs 10 seconds in the 1/4'r mile....

Just call me Sean

iTrader: (1)

You said your buddies was older. How much older? Like, carbureted older? Because that would be easier to turbo. I think, I'm no turbo expert at all. I think they use the older single exhaust manifold to turbo as opposed to the fuel injected two separate manifolds.

Monty88

this guy uses ice water for his intercooler pretty sure thatd get annoying everytime you want to drive. ford trucks with fuel injection and an inline 6 come stock with 14 lb/hr injectors. if your just running 6 psi you can get away with 19 pounders from a stock ford v8, but the 24lb/hr ones from a 460 might be better.