I have a 2001 Dodge 4.7 V-8, if I feed the wood gas into the intake can/will the computer in the EFi lean out the gasoline enough for me or do I have to manually turn turn off the injectors and/or fuel. I know the modern EFI has a lot of control over mixture and timing but does it have enough?
I am running a 98 5.2 318 Dakota and if I try to run both gas and wood it will flood out my motor. I have a reostat on my fuel pump wire at the relay panel to regulate the gasoline on and off in small incroments. I do start out on gasoline and as the woodgas gets stronger I start leaning out the gasoline. It does not take long to be all woodgas. If your model has a distributor you will have to move it a little to run good on woodgas.I know Wayne’s V10 has no distributor to move and it runs fine.
Ah! Ha!
This 4.7 SOHC and the 3.7 SOHC are engines I actually know quite a bit on hands about. These were introduced earliest on the Jeep Grand Cherokees in 1999, and then Liberties when I worked for a Chrysler/Jeep dealer. They had early camshaft breakage problems worked out mostly by the time they were put into the Dodges. 2000-02 in the Dakota’s and 2001-02 in the Ram 1500’s.
Welcome John Andrus
This engine has no distributor but has an individual coil over the spark plug system. Mr Waynes Dodge V-10 is distributor-less also with a multi-coil pac. He says it does an OK job adjusting the ignition timing itself. You would probably be OK there.
But this is a long three chain overhead camshaft design. It has LESS displacement the the earlier 5.2 (318) and 5.9 (360) push rod valve engines. These later smaller displacement engines just like the smaller Ford over head cam V-8 are getting their “equivalent” power when on gasoline fuel with advanced variable driven cams/compression/timing/fuel injection fine tuning for the newest thight spec grade gasoline fuels. This helped the manufacturers meet tighter and tighter emissions and fuel economy standards. Saved money on less materials and the change from machined metals to precision molded plastics. Gave their sales and marketing people wizz, bang, new to talk about.
These late model overhead chain driven style in a Ford/Mazda and Ford SOHC engines being woodgas done and driven here by “Woody” and Sean French now sucessfully.
They both say they would go back to the earlier larger displacement push-rod valve V-8’s in a heartbeat.
Problems are expensive chain and chain guide wear. Significant worry that ANY valve sticking WILL cause major damage (Broken camshafts almost always had valves breaking off and then into the piston embedding). And most frustrating of all they say is the newer non-metal “cold” plastic intake manifolds are woodgas soot clogging and cannot be Kieth style burnt out clean like the earlier metal intakes.
So sure anything can be done, but . . . . much better safer engines to select from in each product line Dodoge, Ford and GM.
But someone has to be the first at anything.
Pretty sure that’s been one of the latest Dodge add phrases, “Better to lead than follow!”
Regards
Steve Unruh