thanks for keeping us up to date on this all very good info. I do find it very interesting that the 3.5 sits further forward than the 3.0 in the sport line, i've only been apart of swapping the 3.5 into a gen 1 and this wasn't the case he had to use some hammer action on the fire wall but like i said thats on a gen 1.
No problem.
If someone would have told me this I would have argued but the tech that did the swap is the one that pointed it out to me during and we compared it to a customer 3.5L that was next bay. Weird. I don't see how it's possible. All we did was cut the 3.5L block plate off the mounts and weld that to the 3.0L base plates - in the exact same location as the original plates were mounted. Even matched up with the old weld spots.
The 3.5L is out of a 2002 Montero Sport Limited. They double checked with the seller half a dozen times. The only ones that I've heard of having different mount locations on the blocks are some cars and minivans. ???
Do you think hood louvers would help your cooling issues, if i understand correctly a proper placement can help pull air thru the rad at hiway speed i would think this would also work well with your electric fan setup. Then again maybe just better off cutting and moving back the whole drive train a couple inches rather than trying to work around the issue.
No, I don't think it'd actually help. I'm at the point where additional air flow or coolant system capacity doesn't get me anything.
I have two problems caused by too much timing. The first problem is igniting the mixture too early in the stroke. That just causes excess heat due to the stress caused by the engine fighting against combustion in the cylinder. That you can throw cooling at - up to a point.
The second problem is detonation caused by the first problem, which no amount of cooling will fix unless its very, very, very minor.
The first I've mitigated with the monster radiator, SAS (no sub-frame assembly therefore better heat exhaustion from the bay), removing the lights for better airflow and tweaking the electric fans to provide more airflow during which this is a problem. THIS I pretty much have licked. All the aforementioned and decreasing the timing overall with the F/IC.
The second - there's no way to fix that with cooling. Lots of people think they can dump in tons of timing and then do things like pull the thermostat or put in a monster radiator and lower the temps to where it doesn't detonate. Most of the time where people claim this works, it really doesn't. They're just eliminating the worst of the problem and masking what's left. Turbo/supercharger guys are great for this. They get rid of the worst of the problem so they think they're good and then can't understand what happened the second or third time they stand on it and blow the crank out the bottom of the engine.
The first I'm good with. Its not efficient. It creates a little more stress on the engine and burns a little more gas, but otherwise its liveable. The second is just bad. No mater how you try to look at it and that ultimately needs to be resolved the correct way - by pulling out timing.
Like I said, I think I've got it at my altitude but I'm on the hairy edge. The other reason I don't want to consider more cooling is that even before the 3.0L/3.5L swap, with the SAS it takes a long time to get to operating temperatures. When it starts dropping into the very low teens and single digits, on the highway ECT will drop below 190. Full closed on the thermostat is low 190s, so besides not much coming out of the heater, this is not a good thing for gas mileage.
Edward
