Two weeks ago, we told you of a potent four-cylinder engine under development by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Now there’s physical proof of the so-called “Hurricane” mill.
Spy photos obtained by TTAC show a cloaked Jeep Wrangler test mule with the hood up and a pile of evidence underneath. The positioning of the oil fill cap points to an inline engine, and air intake ducting routed over the cam cover points to a turbocharger — in this case, a high-mounted one.
Now, will the Hurricane make the nearly 300 horsepower as has been claimed? That’s a wait-and-see thing.
Going by earlier reports, FCA will produce the 2.0-liter turbo four, which features direct injection, alongside the 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 at its Trenton Engine Complex. Given its high output, the engine will likely appear in vehicles across FCA’s portfolio.
FCA needs a fuel-sipping but powerful engine to please environmental regulators when the next-generation Wrangler bows as a 2018 model. The automaker also plans to lighten the Wrangler with some aluminum parts and add a ZF eight-speed automatic as an option, with a possible plug-in hybrid available for electric off-roading.
Recent spy shots of camo-clad test vehicles show subtle styling tweaks, pointing to better aerodynamics.
Expect a diesel engine to show up before the hybrid. Jeep also plans to fling a long-awaited pickup variant into America’s outstretched arms.
[Images: © Spiedbilde/The Truth About Cars]
Chrysler is too slow to adapt to the liberal environmentalist radicalism in our government. Hopefully when the current liberals are annihilated in November by THE DON we can get on the road to a real recovery…
They are basically being forced to develop these pathetic little engines. Otherwise, they could stick with the Pentastar and 8 or 9 speed and be perfectly fine until they can advance to EV or PHEV.
Turbocharging a 4?
How bout you people in the HOW BOUT THAT DEPARTMENT create a SUPERCHARGED 4 CYLINDER and give it a good marketing campaign.
“Three Hundred and 3 Horsepower”
“Four hundred and 4 Horsepower”.
You people are sitting on GOLD and you don’t know what to do with it.
Save money on engine development and spend it in reducing the vehicle mass through more aluminum.
Imagine keeping everything about my JGC SRT the same, but through aluminum shaving 500 – 800 pounds off it.
PHEV too – I wanna see a plug in hybrid Dodge “CHARGER” (get it?)
For a vehicle such as the Wrangle, I believe EV and Diesel work better. These aren’t vehicles designed for driving fast. They are designed for off-roading and need TORQUE.
They’re working hard on something that will run on a hug and a smile, as Peter M. De Lorenzo would say.
Hilarious!
Not wanting to choke on smog is hardly a partisan issue.
Another nonpartisan issue is potholes.
Exactly, all the whining about regulations and not an ounce of thought regarding breathing in clean air. Hilarious, yet down right sad.
He’s talking about larger gas engines, not emission-less diesels or direct injection gas engines. A direct injection turbo 4 Hyundai engine is more dangerous for your health than a 8.1L Vortec by a long shot if the reports of NOX from DI is correct.
no, the reports are about particulates, not NOx.
“A direct injection turbo 4 Hyundai engine is more dangerous for your health than a 8.1L Vortec by a long shot if the reports of NOX from DI is correct.” Talk about living in a bubble. You just defined it!
Oh my bad, I thought I had heard it was NOX.
Either way an 8.1L Vortec is a very clean engine and no more dangerous than a smaller gas engine for the air we breath.
the claims are that because in a GDI engine, there’s a lot shorter amount of time for the fuel to vaporize and mix with the air, there end up being local “rich” zones in the chamber which generate soot. Port injection doesn’t have this problem since the injector starts spraying fuel while the (hot) intake valve is still closed, and the turbulence of the piston pulling the air:fuel charge into the cylinder finishes evaporating and mixing the fuel into the air.
Fuel economy ratings aren’t what make emissions clean enough to not cause choking smog.
FE improvement is about “saving oil” or “CO2 targets”, not air breathability – EGR and cats pretty much handle that just fine.
(The irony being that, as we’ve seen here recently, very economical GDI engines seem to emit *lots and lots* of particulates.
Pick your poison, eh?)
Oh yeah.
More regulations needed.
China, India, Mexico polluting in max fashion.
We re 98 % cleaner than 1965 BUT we got to clamp down MORE.
MORE Now. Global warming. Ice caps melting.
Dont you micro aggression me.
Oh I ll call Johnny Cockroach.
“Imagine keeping everything about my JGC SRT the same, but through aluminum shaving 500 – 800 pounds off it.”
Don’t worry, that turbo-4 is coming to your JGC SRT soon :)
Yeah TORQUE. Capitalized torque. So much torque Internet idiots will think they can go off roading and not even use their transfer case…or learn to know what one is used for.
Very few offroaders are torque limited with a proper transfer case. And Jeep stocks it’s Rock crawler wrangler with a good one, or you can drop in any number of aftermarket ones with more reduction should you want to start breaking stuff with your ham foot
Electric off roader. What could possibly go wrong?
I like the idea actually, there have been a few built. The torque is nice, plus depending on the drive line used you can get away with some of the limitation traditional drive shafts etc cause.
And if you have a small gas or diesel to charge the battery, you don’t have to worry about being stranded.
(What, like electric motors are *more* failure prone?
Especially if you go all-out and put one per wheel, and get rid of the entire legacy drivetrain…)
“What could go wrong”.
Something will always go wrong.
But some must be sacrificed for all to be saved.
It will take many deaths for us to evolve to the point of fully electric vehicles and trucks/transport.
And this is why I will gladly sacrifice some members of future generations while I drive HELLCATS – until such time that the risk- levels connected to EV are reduced considerably.
I almost think that’s got to be a diesel, what with all of that plumbing crammed in there.
I was pondering that too, but FCA doesn’t have a domestically sold diesel four-cylinder, and the EcoDiesel is a V6. This looks to be an inline motor.
But, hey, who knows at this point?
the VM Motori 2.8 (which is the engine Jeep used to put in the Liberty and Wrangler outside of the US) is there, it’s currently only Euro 5 but they should be able to federalize it.
or this is a prototype of an export model.
The 2.8 Duramax is a rebranded version of the 2.8 used in the Jeep Liberty which is compliant with North American emission standards. Perhaps FCA could be using their own version of this engine.
It would be stupid to use in a Wrangler, but the US Promaster offers a 3.0L I4 diesel.
http://www.wranglerjlforum.com/forum/members/wrangler+jl+news-albums-jl+wrangler+news-picture65-wrangler-diesel-2-8-vm-motori.jpg
Also thinking this is a diesel. Whatever it is a big plastic engine cover can fix it just the rest of the FCA engine messes.
Have you seen an engine bay in a challenger, that has to be the cleanest bay on this side of 1960.
Take engine cover off of any FCA 4 or 6 cylinder engines. Spaghetti factory 101.
Ahh, I just remember going to the auto show and that really stuck out at me.
Agreed the v8 FCA engines are very clean. Not as clean as a Ford 5.0 Mustang engine bay. But, very well designed.
It’s depending on application. In the Wrangler it’s a bit “messy”, but in the LX cars not so much.
Coming soon : “Fiat Chrysler Embroiled in Lawsuit Due to Turbo Failures ”
You heard it here first.
All I see is a lot of hoses and wires… A far cry from the engine bay of my 4.0’s
I’d be afraid to even open the hood. That looks like a repair shop nightmare.
Don’t look under the hood of a pickup with the 6.7 Powerstroke. you can’t see the engine at all.
Can you imagine trail-side fixes on THIS mess?
Can you do a real trail-side fix with the 3.7L V6 either?
“Breaking the engine” shouldn’t be much of a real-world concern – and remember that something like 150% of Wranglers never leave pavement.
(I kid. But only a little. Even dirt-road users are not the majority of Wranglers – and actual trails or rock-climbing? Single-digits, and probably more like “<1%".)
Any modern turbo 4 should beat the Pentastar’s 260 lb-ft of torque @4,800 rpm, so why not?
That engine bay looks like a mess. I’m sure it will get cleaned-up before production starts.
I see a ton of thermocouple connectors, so that one is fully instrumented.
Yeah, I was suspecting strongly that there was non-production wiring and at very least non-finalized routing and layout there.
Are the yellow things the thermocouple connectors, or what?
(I was assuming they were some sort of modular plug or the like for replacing wiring bits, but it’s low-res and this is not my area of expertise, just guesswork.
I mean, I’ve used thermocouples, but only for tinkering and hobbyist use, and nothing in that space looks anything like this.)
All I can say is, Hurricane is a great name.
Don’t worry it will be remained Eco-hemi.
Vortec > ecotec
Twin Force > ecoboost
Edit: or ecostar
LOL, probably.
Much better that Skyactiv, though.
any discussion of silly branding must include “Earth Dreams.”
The all time king:
IRON DUKE
I remember when my buddy got his ’82 Camaro as a going-off-to-college present from his folks. Under the hood was…you guessed it…the IRON DUKE. And a 3-speed slushbox. He felt great about the Camaro until I challenged him to a race, and laid waste to it with my old (non-GTI) Rabbit. But he was stylin’ in defeat, at least.
On the other hand, this was probably the perfect college car kid – looked good, but the thing was way too slow to get yourself in trouble with. Thus, safety and no “Dad, I got a ticket…can you help me out” calls. Brilliant!
You’ve given me an idea. I do wonder if anyone has ever tried to get the endorsement of… the Earth.
This is the car Earth would drive!
How could it be refuted?
Or the name granted by the redundancy department: “Quad 4”.
But I gotta admin, Earth Dreams is about the silliest that has ever existed…
“Iron Duke” was AFAIK an unofficial name. it’s *real* marketing name was far, far sadder. how GM had the enormous brass clangers to call that wheezing old lump of cast iron the “Tech 4” is a complete mystery to me.
No, “Iron Duke” was an actual name!!!
http://gafieroclub.org/pics/misc/dukead.jpg
@Willyam,
The name Quad 4 was used because it had four valves and four cylinders. It was quite advanced for its time, with coil-on-plug ignition, dual overhead cams (there was a SOHC version for a short time), SEFI, etc. Pretty high tech stuff for the 1980s. It was the last engine designed solely by the Oldsmobile division.
@hummer – great logic.
“Ecostar” has a great sound to it.
Per Wikipedia: “Iron Dukes were fitted with fuel injection (TBI, via a single injector in the throttle body) in 1982. This version was christened the Tech IV, though Car and Driver later ridiculed it as the low-Tech IV”
Putting “Tech IV” on a fuel injection system in 1982 was … not implausible.
What’s the tank up next to the brake reservoir? Pretty sure I see washer fluid and coolant along the front, so I have no idea what that would be.
IF that is a diesel (I have no idea if it is, but that is what some folks are guessing), that could be a DEF tank.
Ha!!! Whatever it is, I sure hope the production model doesn’t include that fancy custom hole cut in the underside of the hood to accommodate it.
Black with yellow text, kinda darkish fluid?
I don’t think it’s DEF – because those use blue caps, by tradition.
MotorTrend seems to think it’s a second coolant expansion tank, for low-speed offroad heat handling?
It sure LOOKS like it could be an expansion tank.
if it’s a diesel, perhaps the intercooler or EGR cooler has its own circuit.
That engine bay looks like Alien Autopsy.
Doesn’t every Subaru look like that once you pull off the engine cover?