I need to get some more details before I can fully answer this. Your best option to get a timely answer is to call the number in the signature during business hours.

I do know that a "hot climate" tune is available for the 3.6 kit that works in conjunction with a 180*F thermostat (including fan adjustments). People over in the Middle East use this option because they deal with 120*F ambient temps. If you have an auto transmission and will be driving hard in a hot climate (racing, sand dunes), then we also recommend an aftermarket trans cooler with dedicated fan.

What I don't know for sure yet is whether we offer the same for the 3.8 kit, and what the guidelines are for deciding whether you should use the "hot climate" tune and t-stat. I will report back when I get more details. It may be overkill if you're not in a hot desert/tropical area.

I hope the rest of your install goes smoothly. Share what you think of the turbo after you put some miles on it.

~Jeff

 

Back with more details...

A 180*F thermostat is now recommended for anyone installing our turbo kits, more so for the 3.6, and becomes more of a requirement if you are in a hot climate (edit: likewise, more unnecessary if you are in a cold climate).

And yes, the adjustments to the tune for the lower temperature are available for both the 3.8 and 3.6.

When sending us your "original backup" tune to get your custom turbo tune, be sure to specify that you have a 180*F thermostat.

~Jeff

 

Thank you for answering my question and educating me more on turbos, it is appreciated.

@ProdigyPerformance my question was based on this... https://www.facebook.com/FortecJeep/...51956731850356
Clarification about how it "works against them" was asked:

At the end of the day I use my jeep for off-roading a lot; at least 15% of my mileage (110k) has been spent off-road. That was before I finished my last phase of my build (axle, control arm swap, lift, & 37's). Now I would estimate that 40% of its mileage will be off-road. I don't trailer my Jeep so getting to my location is important and that's where the additional power comes into play. Once I am off-road I need something that doesn't lurch forward when I am on rocks.
Generally what amount of effort is involved in tuning an EBC like the TBC-1 to get what I want on and off-road?

 

That was actually me asking those questions back when I was trying to decide whether to purchase a turbo for my Jeep

My overall interpretation of Fortec's responses was that the turbo did not give big low RPM torque, and when you do get the RPMs up higher, throttle control is "different" than what you'd be used to with a non-turbo engine, which takes a little getting used to.

After owning the turbo for 2 years, that seems to be a correct interpretation that matches up with my experiences.

The "different" throttle control of the turbo up in the higher RPM range isn't so much something that will cause a sudden "lurch". The turbo really rewards smooth throttle control, rather than sudden "punches" of throttle. If you give a sudden increase in throttle, the turbo will not be able to keep up with the quick demand for power - it takes some amount of time for it to spool. If you "punch" the throttle, the power will ramp up over the course of a short amount of time as the turbo spools (for example, 1/4 to 1/2 second, depending on several factors). If you are not accustomed to this, and are expecting instant naturally-aspirated throttle response, your natural instinct is to immediately feel like you didn't get the response you were expecting. You'll naturally want to continue pushing the throttle more to get the immediate response you want. If you drive like this, you'll overshoot and get more power than you wanted once the turbo spools and "catches up" to your throttle position. My best guess is that this type of situation is what Fortec referred to as "lurching forward".

If you expect the turbo to behave like a big V8 and try to drive it like a big V8, then you will not like it.

If you accept the turbo for what it is, then you can easily get used to it and get smooth/predictable throttle response. If you make smooth transitions in throttle rather than "punching" it, then the turbo can keep up with the change in throttle spread across time, and it feels like there's no lag. And for the times when you do want sudden power, you learn to instinctively over-shoot with the throttle to get more power right now, then ease off the throttle as the turbo spools to keep the power steady.

Please keep in mind that I don't crawl on rocks, or on technical obstacles like out in Moab. My personal experience is limited to easy/moderate trails in the woods, sections of off-road parks that I don't fear major damage to my daily driver Jeep, climbing up steep twisty hills, blasting around on sand dunes, etc.

We do have a customer that went out to Easter Jeep Safari in Moab this year, and the general feedback I heard so far was all positive. I'm going to try contacting them to get some more details, and see if there's any way I could arrange for him to share his experience.


Sorry, I don't have any experience with what it actually takes to properly tune an EBC like that. It would be best to talk to a local performance shop for an estimate on that. But I don't think that's a solution you need...

The short version is that these are the possibilities:
1) You may be happy with the throttle control of the turbo out-of-the-box both on and off road.
2) If the turbo spools a bit too much or too easily in some higher engine load or higher rpm situations off road, then you may be happy with running a lighter wastegate spring. This will give you lower boost to reduce the off-road turbo spooling and power potential across the board. Use a simple manual boost controller to turn the boost back up for street driving fun.
3) You may simply personally hate the throttle control behavior of a turbo in certain off-road conditions that you encounter because you want crisp/instant naturally aspirated throttle response 100% of the time while off road.

A combination of engine speed and engine load will cause the turbo to spool, and the throttle response will not be like stock when that happens. A boost controller cannot prevent a turbo from spooling. Only the wastegate spring allowing the wastegate to open stops the turbo from continuing to spool. And you can only practically go so low with the wastegate spring.

A fancy electronic boost controller will not be able to reduce the boost/power potential for you while off road any better than a simple/inexpensive manual boost controller. It's the wastegate spring that sets that lower limit. Complex EBCs are for fine tuning the boost curve in different transmission gears, how the boost changes in relation to pedal position at different engine speeds, etc. For the simple use case you MIGHT want of simply minimizing the potential of the turbo across the board while off road, an EBC and MBC will both be exactly equally effective.

Hope that helps.

~Jeff

 

This requires a bit more clarification.

When you "punch" the throttle, there is an initial instant component to the throttle response. Simplifying things a bit, you can kind of think of it as the naturally-aspirated portion of the engine's power always being immediately available. So if you "punch" the throttle, you instantly get that portion of power in direct response to the throttle. It's the additional power from the boost that ramps up quickly afterward as the turbo spools. So it's not a complete delayed response to throttle input as you might imagine from some descriptions of turbo lag you might read.

~Jeff

 

In a very rare episode, we give you our production RIPP 3.6L Supercharger system on the best circumstances possible. This means, stock tire size, 6 speed manual transmission and stock gearing. This way, you can see where we stack up against our competitors videos! Thanks for watching.

RIPP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BU0eNis9w8

 

Thank you, great and detailed response. Your response has been very helpful!

 

Awesome! Got the same setup (i.e. 6-speed with stock gears. tires, etc.?) with the 3.8L?

 

My comments on the Youtube video have mysteriously disappeared (conspiracy?), so I'll repeat them here...


A couple problems with your results, claims, and implications.

1) Your stock dyno results stop at 4800 rpm. The stock Pentastar's peak power occurs at redline (6400 rpm). You did not capture peak power of the stock engine. You should have disabled the stock speed limiter to allow a full RPM pull. This can be done by installing the "modified stock" tune from diablosport that does not change the calibration of the tune itself, but allows you to change other settings like the speed limiter, tire size, etc.

2) Because of #1 above, your claimed and implied power gains are incorrect. You did not produce a 72% or 152 hp gain in power.

3) Your stock baseline torque is one of the highest results I've seen. Taking the high baseline number into consideration, and looking at it as a percent gain over stock, that big 367 hp number turns out to not be quite as amazing.


So how big are the gains you show in the video?

Torque is easy, because you did capture the RPM range of peak (or very near peak) torque on the stock engine. Your chart shows about 240 ft-lbs stock and 350 ft-lbs supercharged for a 46% gain in peak torque (remember - it's the percent gain relative to stock baseline that matters; not the absolute numbers, because different dynos configured to do power pulls in different ways can produce very different actual numbers).

Power is a bit harder because, as I pointed out, you failed to capture the peak torque of the stock engine. But we can do a very good job of guesstimating what the peak power would have been if you had been able to record the entire RPM range.


Based on some other dyno results of the stock Pentastar, there is about 90% of peak torque available at 6400 RPM where the engine makes peak power.

Your peak stock torque was 240 ft-lbs.

90% of that is 216 ft-lbs.

power = (torque * rpm) / 5252

(216 * 6400) / 5252 = 263

So we can reasonably guesstimate that you would have recorded a peak of 263 hp at the wheels for the stock Pentastar. That's a REALLY HIGH stock baseline number!

With the supercharger you got 367 hp. That's a 40% gain over 263 hp stock. Not 72% gain.

(BTW: this was a thread about supercharging the 3.8 Wrangler, so this video about the 3.6 supercharger is irrelevant)

 

Another approach to estimate how much power RIPP's dyno should have reported for the stock engine if it had run to redline is to look at it in terms of percent loss compared to crank numbers for the engine.

At the crank, the Pentastar in the Wrangler is rated for 285 hp and 260 ft-lbs torque.

RIPP did capture the peak torque of the stock engine at about 240 ft-lbs, which is 7.7% less than at the crank.

7.7% less than 285 crank hp comes out to 263 hp at the wheels. Wow... that actually matches my previous estimate exactly!

Something seems fishy about seeing only 7.7% drivetrain loss on the dyno for a Wrangler.