I did the 3.6 Grand Caravan engine swap by myself. It took around 20 hrs until I got motor pulled and everything changed over to fit in Jeep. I'm not sure exactly what happened but this 2012 Wrangler Sport is off the chart. It has unbelievable power and speed. Checked gear it has 373 gears with 6 speed manual. Did the 0-60 1 time even missed 3rd but still got 5.8 seconds. Would have been closer to 5 if I didn't mess up. I'm going to try it again after I get my clutch to grab sooner. It is almost all the way out before it grabs and messes me up on shifting. I will try to get a video to post. Thanks for reading
Grand Caravan 3.6 Swap
- Thread starter Whoppy1968
- Start date
The pre-2016 block and internals are the same - the differences in power outputs are related to the ECM tuning and intake designs. It can be problematic in early years but generally, the Pentastar 3.6L is a decent little option.
Did you mean 6.8 seconds? Because this is what Motortrend was able to get (6.7 seconds actually) at a track with a 2-door, manual trans, 3.6L JK. The 2016+ JK and JL's have allegedly gotten down to ~6.2 seconds thanks to the VVT, higher compression, and a redesigned intake manifold. There's really no way on earth you put down a 5.8 second 0-60 time, especially with a missed shift, unless you were going downhill
There's a snowball's chance in hell that you're anywhere close to 5.0 seconds flat with a good 2-3 shift (I mean, the 392 Rubicons with a near-instantaneous shifting 8HP90 are in the ~4.2-4.4 second mark).
Glad you got your Jeep back up and running though
Did you mean 6.8 seconds? Because this is what Motortrend was able to get (6.7 seconds actually) at a track with a 2-door, manual trans, 3.6L JK. The 2016+ JK and JL's have allegedly gotten down to ~6.2 seconds thanks to the VVT, higher compression, and a redesigned intake manifold. There's really no way on earth you put down a 5.8 second 0-60 time, especially with a missed shift, unless you were going downhill
There's a snowball's chance in hell that you're anywhere close to 5.0 seconds flat with a good 2-3 shift (I mean, the 392 Rubicons with a near-instantaneous shifting 8HP90 are in the ~4.2-4.4 second mark).
Glad you got your Jeep back up and running though
Agree! Just for fun I'll expand a little...
Wranglers have respectable power/weight with the 2Dr and the 3.6L. 285Hp and 4000lbs puts it at .07 power/weight. Expressed as a percentage for the graph below (from Reddit using data from 37k vehicles) it would be 7%
The trend line at this point is slightly higher than 5s. The two things, however, that hurt a Wrangler are tires and aero. For 0-60 aero starts to play a part in the latter half of the acceleration - north of ~45/50mph. Tires represent the more significant detriment, even with the right gearing. Traction and rotational inertia both hamper max accel. Now, put a set of smaller diameter (lighter) summer compound tires on like this and I bet it will hit mid 5s:
If we expanded the conversation to 1/4mi, aero will start to play a much larger role.
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Hmmm… perhaps, but I am having a have a hard time believing that you’re going to shave nearly a full second off 0-60 time with some tires. Having driven a few stock JK’s, the OEM street tires aren’t traction limited, so any gains in time would only come from inertial/mass differences. A second is a lot of time to shave off, but maybe that needs to be my next project - a strip oriented JK
but maybe that needs to be my next project - a strip oriented JK
Not a JK, but here's some inspiration for you:
That thing is sweet!!
I do already have my next two projects lined up though, so make this #3 haha
I was thinking more like .5s - from your 6.2s to something like 5.7s. I'm totally pulling #s from the air here though. Like I said, just a fun discussion. The tires I grabbed for the example above probably represent about a 25lb save per corner. That's not insignificant for rotating, unsprung mass.
There are various rules of thumb for what this is worth vs. sprung weight (4:1, 5:1) and weight to acceleration (100lbs =.1s). Of course there are diminishing gains for both metrics similar to the asymptotic curve in the graph above.
So using 25lbs/tire, the 5:1 ratio, and .1s per 100lbs would produce a net gain of .5s (25x4x5x.001)
An easy check here would be to test your own JK, add 500lbs of extra weight (people, etc) and test again.
Anecdotally, I once knew a guy who like to drag race. He had a pretty typical 5.0L Fox Mustang. He was going for efficiency actions and making the most off what he already had vs. the brute force method of adding parts more power. He got the car into the real low 12s (something like 12.03, 12.04) but couldn't quite crack that 11s threshold. He finally went on a diet himself and dropped ~50lbs over the course of a year. The next season he was consistently hitting 11.9x with no other changes. Weight matters.
For sure, I love this stuff - especially in the cold months of winter
The tires you grabbed were a good representative. I did a back-of-napkin look around and average. You're probably close on the ~25# per tire savings, which indeed is considerable in the track world. Back in my old muscle car days, the rule of thumb was always 100# = 0.1s faster 1/4-mile time (and 0-60 time).
Give the benefit of the doubt that the OP can hit all his shifts, with great traction, the issue though is that the first generation JK's ran to 60 in ~6.7 seconds. It was the 2016+ VVT-equipped 3.6L JK's (both manual trans) that was down in the ~6.2 range. These were both "track times", not "end of the cul-de-sac" times, though as noted previously, I don't think even the later year JK's are traction limited on OEM tires.
12's is a respectably quick car. My '66 Coupe was mid-12's, always traction limited (terrible 60-ft times, even after the mini-tub and "wide" 245's!).
I miss E-Town
I absolutely will once the Hemi swap is done
