Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Forced induction mini-truck roundup
After that last post, I decided just for fun to track down a method of putting forced induction on at least one mini-truck from every major manufacturer that sold minitrucks in the United States. I'm afraid I don't have many details on most of these, but this may get you a few ideas.
- Many Nissan Hardbody trucks used the same KE24E motor as in the '89-90 240SX. You can adapt one a turbo kit meant for a 240.
- Toyota built a handful of their trucks from '85-'87 with the 22RTE turbo motor. TRD makes a supercharger kit for some of their later Tacomas, too.
- It's possible, as I mentioned before, to put a Mitsubishi 4G63 motor into a Mighty Max or a Dodge Ram D50.
- Some Dodge Dakotas came with the Chrysler 2.5. It's possible to put a 2.2/2.5 Turbo from a K-car into one of these. Note that some others came with the AMC/Jeep 2.5, and you can't swap those.
- You can swap the old 2.3 straight four in '80s and '90s Ford Rangers for the 2.3 Turbo used RWD Ford performance cars.
- On '80s era Mazdas, you can swap in a F2T motor from a Probe or MX-6. Or go with a turbo FE3 - while this motor wasn't turbocharged from the factory, evidently the F2T's turbo hardware bolts on.
- With Chevy, GMC, and late model Isuzu minitrucks, there's an off the shelf supercharger kit.
- There's a number of supercharger kits out there for the Jeep 4.0 inline six. One made for a Cherokee ought to fit their Comanche pickup.
I've also heard of turbo versions of the car-based pickups - VW trucks with a 1.8 Turbo, force-fed Dodge Rampages, even El Caminos with Grand National power.
