Curated Content Editor

5 Best Motors to Swap into a Wrangler
By Bryan Wood

No401(J)K

Eco boost swap would be pretty damn cool

Mike H.

My work truck has the 3.5L ecco boost. Very smooth power plant and tons of grunt right from idle. It'll scoot rather briskly at part throttle while shifting at a lazy 2500rpm. No need to rev these things up, they just plain make a tonne of low end go. My combined mileage is mid 19's... full size long bed heavy/half. When I was doing a lot of highway driving, my mileage was routinely low/mid 21mpg's... at 85mph. The new ecco boost is making 470tq in regular guise, and a butt load more in the Raptor and GT.
Surprising not more people are using this as a swap.

sa29560

I can think of a one or two.

Hemi, obviously.
LS, obvious as well.
Cummins ISF
VW turbo 4
Wasn't there a something floating around about the baby duramax?

CSM19Z5M

Thought long and hard about a Cummins in my JK but after lots of research chose a LS3 crate motor with 6L80E transmission. Glad I did. There are many others out there that will "work" but when you compare over all cost, ease and speed of conversion, added weight, power out-put, dependability, drive-ability, easy availability of parts, and required body modifications the LS engine is at the top of the list. The Cummins has a lot going for it but it doesn't compare to the LS in my opinion. That's my nickels worth.

cedarraider

I want the 8.1 Chevy from the trucks. Found a motorhome with one but it was too pricy.

dmwil

I'll take the Ford 3.5 Ecoboost. I've got a Ford Transit 15 passenger behemoth van, and that little engine throws it around like a rag doll. It makes gobs of torque right off the line and pulls hard all the way to red line. That van does 0-60 in 7 seconds flat, which is just unreal for that size a machine. It embarassed my brother's 5.3 Silverado in a country road drag race! There is no turbo lag, whatsoever. It also gets 20mpg on the highway with 12 people in it. Amazing!

The big drawback is that I'd bet this engine would be expensive.

ScottW

I agree the 3.5 eco boost would probably be a great engine. The hard part is getting all the electronics to work together if you want to keep factory gauges etc. I have a 6.0 LS in mine from Motech and it's great plus all the gauges etc work and could pass emissions if I had to deal with that.

It's too bad Chrysler won't build a jeep with the kind of power plant we want.

caryt

Best 5:
5.3 ls Gen4
7.0 LS7
6.2 ls """"""
5.3 ls Gen5
6.2 ls """""

OverKill

Early Avalanche got that engine also