2.3L crank swap 7 bolt

[duluth218mn]

im not new to the forums but havent had to post anything ### like everyone else says majority of newbi first response posts "have you done searches", thats why i havent posted till now . my question right now to confirm is im planning this fall for my 2G to do a 2.3 stroker budget build ### its my everyday driver and i have to deal with emissions where i live. i have done searches for the last couple weeks. my 2G is obviously a 7 bolt block and i have a 7 bolt crank from a 97 galant sohc 4g64. from my understandings and all the other forums i have read that any 6 bolt to 6 bolt and 7 bolt to 7 bolt crank with swap just fine unless your doing a 7 bolt to 6 bolt or vice versa then theres machining to be done.

So now that im done babbling, will my '97 galant 7 bolt crank bolt right into my 2G block with no issues or is there machining to the main caps or anything?

And yes i and getting new rods and sroker pistons for 2.3, both 4g63 7 bolt application specific. also getting dsmlink in june. so please dont give posts about tuning and monitoring ### all of that will be done before build.

Thanks for the input and advice dsm fam.

 

[Clever Gs-t]

The crank will bolt in without machining. But depending on what rods you use, they may come in contact with the lower section of the cylinder. You will also have to modify the oil squirters due to the piston traveling lower in cylinder.

Good luck with the build!!

 

[duluth218mn]

to clever gst,

they will be 4g63 h-beam oem length and width, and all specs. im going by the specs that brian crower and eagle use but probly going with manley rods or cxracing rods and manley stroker pistons. so as for you saying rods come in contact with cylinder you are meaning the rod cap correct? and what do you mean by modify the oil squirters?

K i found a thread on here saying you have to grind the rod caps a little is thats what your meaning Clever Gs-T but still havent found anything on the oil squirter thing

Now i found this thread

http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/stroker-tech/395338-6-bolt-oil-squirters-2-3-a.html

But its for a 6 bolt block on the oil squirters so im assuming its the same for the 7 bolt and i also came across alot of people either fixing/bending the original squirters, upgrading to the evo squirters, or removing them ### forged rods provide enough oil to the piston with the solid wrist pin instead of two piece wrist pin or they run an oil cooler when removing the squirters

So now wth do i do with the squirters (keep in mind this will be a daily driver stroker)

 

[ed1380]

You're going to have to clearance the main girdle to clear the rods (not alot) and part of the block on the 3rd cylinder.

The crank just drops in. No machining required. You will need stroker pistons.

You can keep the squirters or have them blocked off. You can block them off unless you're going to be autocrossing or anything similar for extended periods of time.

 

[duluth218mn]

To ed1380
Ive been reading alot of guys with 7 bolts just block them off. Im thing just welding them shut ### the rods im lookn at have two oil holes on top for the wrist pin, the only real hard driving would be the strip every once in a while or for you saying autocross would be me only goin on 6 hr road trips at 90mph to see my father, other than that just driving normal everyday use, i know i need stroker pistons for sure

To mitsubishiown

Ive been doin hard research for the last month everywhere on the net and on this forum hard for the last couple weeks, im just tryn to get conformation on crank swapfrom what else ive read and any other helpfull little hints because i will only have about 3 days to pull the motor, do all the work and put it back in and be good to drive, thats why i said i hardly post either is ### this site is very helpfull with every question

 

[ed1380]

I would personally keep them especially in a hot environment. I would take them out if it was a 1/4 mile car only or if the engine has a history of spun bearings. The bearing glitter has been known to freeze the squirters in the open position, dumping all the oil pressure for the bearings.

What power levels are you looking for?

 

[duluth218mn]

I looking to get around 450 whp, i will be putting in acl bearings and the crank will be getting knife edged and balanced, i will also be getting arp main and rod bolts

 

[ed1380]

Do not knife edge the crank. The 2.4 cranks are already weaker than the 2.0 cranks. Balancing is up to you. I personally wouldn't do it as the pistons and rods are already within .2 grams of each other.

Also if its not too late get some king aluminum bearings and have them coated with the money you save over the trimetal ones. The aluminum ones will easily hold up that power but will be more forgiving to the crank if something ever contaminates the oil. Mine are even uncoated and I'm not worried.

Just scrolled up and saw you mention cxracing. Please use eagle rods before you use those. Cxracing is an ebay brand, and eagle rods have proven themselves several times over.

And about the oil nozzles. You could honestly go either way and it'll be fine. Keeping the pistons cool always helps, but with forged pistons it's not as necessary. If you eliminate them, tap the hole and block it with a plug. I wouldnt weld cast. And just have the ptw set on the looser side.

 

[WES_393]

Do not knife edge the crank. The 2.4 cranks are already weaker than the 2.0 cranks.

I don't buy that. They go through more stresses due to the the extra leverage, but there is no proof that a 2.4 crank is more likely to break. In fact, the 7-bolt 4g64 cranks have had little to no reports of crankwalk which could prove they are better machined from the factory than the 2.0.

However, I do agree that Eagle rods would be a much better choice than CX racing. The H-Beams can handle more than most people ever get out of their engine.

 

[duluth218mn]

to ed1380

as for what your saying just tap and plug the oil squirters. what if i tap and thread them to fit the evo 8/9 oil squirters so i dont have to plug them and can have the better squirters? since the lovely 7 bolts are push in and the 6 bolts are threaded

 

[gofer]

I'm not an engine builder but doing the research for my own 7-bolt stroker build I've read/learned a lot by poking my nose in every 2.3 build I could and getting advise from others that have done it, most from Tim Z. (twicks69) and JAM who is a vendor on here.

First things first, the 7-bolt blocks DO NOT use oil squirters so get that out of your head, its an oil JET and its entirely different. Most recommend, including Tim Z. who has a 800+hp 2.3, punching and plugging the 7-bolt oil jets since the pistons are forged and don't require additional cooling. I sent my motor to be built/assy. at JAM (Jackson Auto) and they recommend punching/plugging the 7-bolt oil jets and then drilling/tapping the block to accept the Evo oil squirters on a car that is DD'd and tracked. If you punch and plug your oil jets the piston skirt clearance is not an issue however, if you decide to drill/tap the block to run 1g/Evo squirters then you'll need to clearance them. ---> 6-bolt/Evo squirters and clearance

Oil jet in a 7-bolt

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Oil squirter in a 6-bolt

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Quoted directly from Tim Z when getting advice for my build, hopefully he doesn't mind since its great gouge.

I would strongly recommend upgrading the rod bolts to the better material, along with running the thick-wall tool steel wrist pins, they should be like .220-.240" thick depending on manufacturer, and you would need it in the 22mm flavor for diameter since you are running a 2g rod/bushing diameter. Run with wire locks also.

Be sure to clearance the block and give some extra room for thermal expansion. You will likely need to do some webbing grinding, and maybe a bit at the bottom of the cylinder wall and main oil galley. Thankfully it shouldn't take too much since you are running a small rod, if you were running aluminums I would tell you to run steel rods or get a lot of time and a good machinist to get it done properly in a 2g motor. Also, plug the oil squirters or weld them shut.

When you do run the BSEK, change the stock 2g oil pump gears to 1990 straight cut gears in the 2g oil pump case assembly and debur/detail the gears.

As well, I would strongly recommend installing a Kiggly HLA restrictor and a quality oil pressure gauge off of the oil filter housing with an isolated -4an line as the pressure sender or map sensor will last a lot longer.

Tim Zimmer

I run aluminum Mitsubishi mains with ACL coated rod bearings. My old steel rod 2.3L ran Mitsubishi/clevite rod and they pounded themselves apart above the 700awhp mark where it was fine in the 600-650whp range. Personally, I would go with a soft bearing like a Mitsubishi or ACL coated bearing on a steel rod stroker, as there is a lot of thrust loading put onto the bearings. I would also only run a 15w50-20w50 oil in it. Brad Penn, Schaeffer's, Rotella T, Lubrication Engineering, or Valvoline synthetic racing high zinc (blue color oil), or CAM2 oil. All are high zinc and the Lubrication Engineering has a parrafin base which requires a bit more cooldown so it doesn't coke the bearings, but its film protection is outstanding.

I will respond more tomorrow.

Tim Zimmer via Evo Phone

I didn't shot-peen my rods; but I used an H-beam design instead of an I-beam as it has shown better structural rigidity on a high rod angle motor such as the 2.3L. I simply used off-the-shelf Eagle H-beam's with no issues up to 766AWHP/713TQ on the GT4088R on a 0.94A/R divided T4 housing.

As for the butchered crank, I saw jump-roping (crank deflection/bending) when we started running above 650AWHP and 35psi of boost up to 8600rpm. Funny enough, I was running the regular thin-wall wrist pins that come with the pistons instead of the upgraded ones. If I was to do it again, I would have upgraded the rod bolts and the wrist pins to the thicker wall tool steel pins and wire locks as those things seemed to be the weakest link in the setup other than the heavily cut down crank. Currently, I am simply running a stock crank with a micropolish and that's it. No issues up to 835+AWHP and as high as 55psi boost on the 74mm BW turbo. If you are running an uncut crank, I don't think you will see an issue with crank deflection. As for bearings, the Tri-Metal's from Clevite looked like shit very quickly once the crank bent (0.015" out of straight ), and the outer bearings looked great, the inner mains and thrust was smoked, the side washers were fine though, just the main journal bearing was smoked. It was also taking out crank angle sensors when it got to this point, as well as it threw the OEM crank harmonic balancer pulley counterweight twice in a short period of time (pulley seperated).

The oil pump gears you linked are the proper straight-cut 1990 gears that I use with a Mitsu stub shaft. I did not port the oil relief. Guys on NABR discussed in the past of porting the oil drain back passsageways on the head and block to get more oil back into the pan quicker since our oil pumps are so high capacity and you would shit out a pump if you sucked air instead of oil. I always ran around 5 quarts in my motor and if I did it again, I would shroud the oil pump pickup screen like Kiggly did along with a HLA restrictor.

As for block clearancing, yes, you will require some clearancing, but nothing near the amount of an aluminum rod motor. I needed to clearance the girdle, main oil galley, block webbing, and bottoms of the cylinder walls to clear the aluminum rods as well as give extra space for thermal expansion. I also had to filers cut the rods at the big end curvature and balance the entire rotating assembly, and then the pistons and pins were custom, skirt coatings, .240" wall H11? Tool steel wrist pins, 7/16" ARP custom age fasteners, etc. I went a bit overboard. I have some pictures of this work when the block was assembled from my cell phone, however I cannot find the old pictures I took of the old engine bearings showing the jump rope effect on them, but it is self explanatory.

Also, from what I've learned by doing this and footing the bill for it to be built to last. There is really no such thing as a "budget" stroker build IMO, there's expensive and then there's MORE expensive.

 

[2slow4now]

They evo/6 bolt squirters are installed from the pan side and the 7 bolt squirters are installed from the cylinder side. So different locations. I have heard of guys plugging the 7 bolt squirter as mentioned and then paying to have the block machined to accept 6 bolt squirters. I wouldn't worry about it with forged pistons. Plug and forget.

Gofers pics show the difference. Didn't those come from the Magnus crankwalk theory?

 

[gofer]

Didn't those come from the Magnus crankwalk theory?

Yes sir!

 

[ed1380]

Oil quirter, nozzle, jet same thing :thumb
Btw 2g nozzles are pressed in from the bearing side.

I agree with everything said by twicks69. But don't forget his car is pretty much track only and he doesn't live in the desert.
Just for simplicity I'd keep them and if you ever spin a bearing and rebuild then eliminate them.

The evo nozzles wont work for him unless he has the block machined for them.

 

[19Eclipse90]

...
First things first, the *7-bolt blocks DO NOT use oil squirters so get that out of your head, its an oil JET and its entirely different.
...

Using this terminology...

*2G 7-bolt blocks

Small fix.

As an aside and hopefully for some clarity for future reference, I also consider jets/squirters as interchangeable terms. If we adopt this terminology, the styles of the jets/squirters definitely differ between 1G and 2G, but all 1G jets/squirters are similar.

 

[gofer]

Ack, my bad. Thanks Brian.

 

[duluth218mn]

Thanks for everyones input so far, i have a lot of diff choices on what to do, now time to start ordering parts over the next couple months then out comes the motor to be stroked, hehehe cant wait

 

[goodbye]

Another nice little trick but not totally necessary is to debur the oil passages on the block under the front cover. I noticed JAM did that on a EVO stroker I pulled apart, I liked it so I'll be doing it on my future builds as well. Helping the oil along it's path never hurts.