Stefan
Stefan MegaDork
11/22/17 8:35 p.m.
minivan_racer
minivan_racer UberDork
11/23/17 4:55 p.m.

If the rampage guy gets back to you and you buy them, let me know.  Might as well make my wife mad too.

Ashyukun
Ashyukun UltraDork
11/25/17 6:13 p.m.

Well, the guy with the Rampages got back to me, and said he wanted $1000 for both and the turbo motor. I would hope I could get that down a hundred or two... but the question would be if I could sell the titled one for that much to zero the purchase out. And if SWMBO would not kill me for buying them- she’s not too keen on the idea, to quote “Explain to me again when buying two more piece of sh!t cars is a good idea when most of the ones we currently have can’t even be driven?”

Pete Gossett
Pete Gossett MegaDork
11/25/17 7:30 p.m.

In reply to Ashyukun :

Pretty sure my wife has uttered that exact phrase more than once. 

dropstep
dropstep SuperDork
11/25/17 8:54 p.m.

Im glad i dont have that rule, as long as the wifes car is up and running she leaves me alone. I like making stupid decisions!

Vigo
Vigo UltimaDork
11/25/17 11:42 p.m.

I once bought 5 rampages (not all from the same person either!) for a guy in Michigan (where they were all gone) and he brought down two trucks and trailers and towed 3 back and cut the other ones up for non-rusty body repair parts. I even fronted all the money for all 5 cars and got them all to my house for him. Granted, that was a transaction between two EXTREME DORK LEVEL enthusiasts, but i guess what i'm trying to say is there are SOME people who highly value the concept of a non-rusty Rampage. 

Ashyukun
Ashyukun UltraDork
11/26/17 11:19 a.m.

Oh, I’ve explained my logic at length to SWMBO, and she does to some extent understand that the point would be to make mine less-run-down-looking for essentially no money- but the idea of 2 more 30-year-old beaters in the garage/driveway doesn’t make her very happy. The car limit isn’t without its logic- much more than that and our place would look rather trashy. Were we out in the country more with more land it wouldn’t be an issue (or less of one at least). 

Anyway, I’m going to wait and see what happens with the Rampages- I may be heading up that way on my day off Friday, so if he still has them may swing by to look at them and see if I can argue the price down. 

Ashyukun
Ashyukun UltraDork
12/5/17 7:41 a.m.

Didn't exactly have the best of mornings with the Rampage. While I'd really have liked to have been able to ride my recently repaired and upgraded bicycle this morning, it's pouring rain so driving it was.

Got into the Rampage and immediately noticed that a poster for SWMBO's upcoming show that I had left on the floor on the passenger side (the passenger seat is out, so it was where the seat would be) was clearly quite wet- despite being in the middle of the car. Some looking and feeling around yielded the discovery that the top of the windshield of leaking rather badly, so water was dripping down from there onto everything below. Greaaaat. But, not much to do about that on the short term, so fired it up and headed out.

Didn't make it 2 blocks away before the linkage for the passenger side wiper apparently popped off from the wiper itself, meaning the driver's wiper was still working (but the linkage would occasionally bang around) but the passenger side one was just sitting there. I'd have been in a bit more of a pickle had the driver's side one stopped working instead, but was able to get to work and parked in the garage without incident.

I'll try and hook the wiper linkage back up after work (when the body of the car is hopefully much drier), but the leaking windshield will be a much more challenging fix I imagine. Best case I guess I pull off the chrome trim and apply silicone liberally, worst case (rusted through around the edge of the windshield- which I know is the case at the bottom of it by the doors/hood) I'll have to have the windshield pulled, repair the metal, and have it reinstalled. Hopefully if it comes to that I can get it considered budget exempt...

Ashyukun
Ashyukun UltraDork
12/5/17 2:20 p.m.

Well, darn. The post with the two Rampages and the turbo engine isn't up any more. Don't know if they were sold or what... I still have the seller's contact info from when I contacted him earlier, so if the Jeep sells I can reach out and see if they're still actually available or not (emailed him last week about trying to get out to see them when I was in the area Friday, but never heard back...).

Don't know whether them potentially being sold counts as a net plus or minus... cheeky

Ashyukun
Ashyukun UltraDork
12/7/17 1:29 p.m.

Hmmm. Well, that makes things a bit more interesting... since I've found a few other interesting vehicles that I could buy as DD's when the Jeep sells, I got curious and emailed the guy who had the Rampages to confirm that he'd sold them. He emailed me back and said, "No I just got tired of answering questions people emailed and nobody buying them."

So... it sounds like they may not be out of the running just yet. So if the Jeep sells anytime remotely soon I may try offering $750 for everything and debate whether I hope he says 'OK' or not...

EDIT: Getting ahead of myself as usual, but when I emailed the guy back asked if he'd take $750 for them, and he said yes...

Ashyukun (Robert)
Ashyukun (Robert) UltraDork
12/11/17 7:50 a.m.

So, things learned over the weekend...

  1. I'm really not used to having a car with a fair amount of torque, especially one as light as the Rampage is. Went to pull out onto a busy road and needed to move fast to take advantage of a break and when I punched the throttle pretty much instantly spun the tires and didn't go anywhere. I've never had a vehicle that would do that before- the RX-7 was the sportiest I've owned, but it didn't put out much low-end torque and while it would scream up to full power quickly wouldn't spin the tires right away. Surprisingly the 500cc Caddy-powered Fiero didn't either- I think that had more to do with the gearing in the El Dorado transmission.
  2. Part of the problem in 1. may have been having the older, less-grippy tires on the front, something I learned from KYAllroad (who, in an amusing coincidence, originally had the wheels & tires on the Rampage now on his former Miata).
  3. With the wrong tires on the front, the Rampage did NOT like driving on the slick roads we had Saturday when it snowed. Its tires had a harder time hooking up than I did when I started dating again after my divorce. If we're going to have a winter with any amount of snow, I'm seriously looking at picking up a set of winter tires for it as well.

I also had a frank discussion about the state of our vehicles and what potential paths there were forward once the Jeep sells (it had originally started as my trying to get approval to violate the vehicle limit to get another one before the Jeep sells, but that unsurprisingly didn't fly) with SWMBO, and following that (and with some more info from the seller from our last email exchange) I've pretty much decided that I'm not going to be pursuing the two Rampages and the 2.2 turbo engine. While there is a lot of potential gain from deal, it would also be a MASSIVE amount of work with no remote guarantee of things going well and being able to make the titled one sellable and get enough out of selling it (or simply being able to sell it...) for enough to be able to use the parts from the other one and the engine on my Rampage.

There's also the time issue and that I would have to be working on getting the titled Rampage into good shape and sellable while driving my own- which still badly needs the heater core replaced, and with the weather staying colder having to add antifreeze every other day is getting even less fun.

So- once the Jeep sells, I'll likely be picking up something that I can use as a DD over the winter while I work on the Rampage. If I can just get the Jeep to sell quickly, I already have something that should work well lined up- as long as it doesn't sell before I have the open slot for it...

Vigo
Vigo UltimaDork
12/12/17 11:13 p.m.

The good thing is you already have most of what you need for the Rampage. I don't know if you feel that way but since i've seen it move under it's own power and the engine doesn't seem to have any broken pistons i feel like you're 85% of the way there already. 

Ashyukun (Robert)
Ashyukun (Robert) UltraDork
12/13/17 7:48 a.m.

In reply to Vigo :

You're of course right- honestly what I need most to do is to get the intercooler worked out and spend the time behind the wheel on the track and strip figuring out what does and doesn't work. If I do have a good solid winter DD then it's more likely that I'd do something like pulling the head and seeing what can be done in the way of polishing/porting. It would be ideal to have a spare head & manifolds to be able to do this on such that I don't have to worry that I'll screw up the ones I have already, but I also wouldn't likely be looking to do anything too radical with it.

Vigo
Vigo UltimaDork
12/13/17 1:23 p.m.

This is just my personal opinion (formulated over years and years of observing other people's projects and dyno/drag performances) but i would WAY rather see someone modify an intake manifold than a cylinder head on one of these cars. The main reasons turbo dodges don't make huge HP numbers is because they make their power at too low of an rpm. You can change the powerband to some extent through the stock intake manifold but you will always be more limited by its long skinny runners, tiny plenum, and crap runner entry than you are by the ports or valves in the cyl head. 

Congratulations, you've inspired me to upload a bunch of images of modified intake manifolds to my imgur account so i can start putting ideas in your head. I dont know of anyone in the TM community who has publicly posted such a collection, lol. I dont even know if anyone knows i have it so that makes me a bad contributor and i should feel bad about it. Anyway, a lot of the pics will be tough to parse for value without some context, but the main idea is bigger plenum followed by shorter runners followed by larger (cross sectional area) runners followed by finally modifying the head to suit. That's my interpretation of priority. Throttle body size is basically no concern other than not being incongruous with the charge piping feeding it.  You can flow a huge amount of HP worth of air through a 2" pipe (stock tb i.d., roughly).  

So take a look at all these pics and you will see pics showing what's inside your stock mani and what others have done to improve it. 

Manifolds

Also, full disclosure: You could get your truck into the 11s through a stock intake manifold if you really tried. I'm only espousing this course of action as a better alternative to messing with the cyl head. 

Robbie
Robbie PowerDork
12/13/17 2:11 p.m.

In reply to Vigo :

That is awesome. This one is my favorite:

Ashyukun (Robert)
Ashyukun (Robert) UltraDork
12/13/17 2:31 p.m.

Quite an interesting collection of pictures. If I could source a spare set of manifolds for cheap enough I'd be wanting to work on the manifolds as well- heck, even if I work just on the ones I have the manifolds would be the first place I'd be looking to improve things since I'm far less scared of messing them up than heads. I wish it weren't so far to the nearest junkyard that actually had one (Knoxville, at last count if they still have it...).

Stefan
Stefan MegaDork
12/13/17 3:21 p.m.

I disagree that the motors don't make good HP numbers, I'd say 300hp from a 2.2L using a non-crossflow head and fairly agricultural engine architecture is pretty impressive and that was from the factory engineers.  The enthusiasts have made more power with different part combinations (mostly larger and more efficient turbochargers).

The dwell time for the 2.5L limits the HP numbers due to how low revving it is, it can make a ton of torque though.  Its like a 383 versus a 350 or a 302.  You can make similar HP numbers with them all, but the torque numbers and curves will be quite different.

Anyway, I have the manifolds you need, including the more desired 2-piece intake, spare exhaust manifolds and a couple of heads.

Let me box them up as a Christmas present for you.  PM me your address.  Seriously.

BTW, you can get a DCOE intake for the 2.2L, this could allow more flexibility in building your own intake, with the drawback that you'd have to add your own injector ports.

That said, the future for making any real power output is to drop the 8V head and convert to the 16V.

Ashyukun (Robert)
Ashyukun (Robert) UltraDork
12/14/17 7:51 a.m.

In reply to Stefan :

Thanks, I definitely appreciate it!

I'm probably not going to worry about going fast enough to be worth the 16V conversion... I don't have the time, knowledge, or skill to pull off getting the Rampage say to the level of the ScAries (which is what got me interested in TD's in the first place), especially since I want to keep it streetable with most of the interior as well.

Vigo
Vigo UltimaDork
12/23/17 12:43 a.m.

There are also dyno charts of 2.5L bottom ends doing 600+ whp and timeslips of a 2.5 8v sohc running a 9.9 second 1/4 mile.  There was another 8v in the 9s many moons ago but i can't remember if it was a 2.2 or 2.5, and another 2.2 8v that has run 10.0@144. So yeah, there is potential there  with the 8v to go so fast that you'd have to put thousands of dollars of safety equipment in the car just to make a legal pass down the dragstrip. 

 

I was going to offer you a free 1pc mani or two to cut up, but Stefan's offer is MUCH more generous.. a 2pc intake is well into the 3-digit dollar figures if you had to pay for it. wink

People have made quite a bit of power through a stock 2pc. The other huge benefit of the 2pc is that it's much easier to modify it by bolting on a larger plenum and removing a couple inches of runner since it already has a conveniently oriented flange right in the middle of it. yes

Ashyukun (Robert)
Ashyukun (Robert) UltraDork
2/22/18 7:35 a.m.

Unfortunately I've essentially done nothing on the Rampage since getting the Infiniti and not having to drive the Rampage. However now that the things that the Infiniti needed done sooner than later are done, I can turn my attention back to the Rampage. The next few days are supposed to be rainy but unseasonably warm (not the 70s that we saw early in the week, but in th 50s is still comfortable to work in the garage) so I'm hoping to get back out and start tackling some of the issues with the Rampage.

Ashyukun (Robert)
Ashyukun (Robert) UltraDork
2/28/18 4:16 p.m.

Well, in checking things over to replace the front brake lines it's apparent that the bushings that hold the front sway bar to the LCA are pretty much as hard as rocks... now I need to dig out my calipers to see if it's going to be a $2 set of bushings or a $10 set...

Vigo
Vigo UltimaDork
2/28/18 10:37 p.m.

Usually the inners are much worse than the outers because the inners have to suffer through being exposed to every leak in the engine bay while the outers stay 'dry'.  Glad you are back on this project!

Ashyukun (Robert)
Ashyukun (Robert) UltraDork
3/1/18 10:54 a.m.

I'm planning on replacing the inners too, figure I may as well. I need to at least get what I had started done since there is a few days worth (due to curing time) of work on the Infiniti and potentially several weeks' worth of work on the Mariner (if I'm correct that the engine needs rebuilt and we decide doing so is the best course of action), and I can't do either with the Rampage immobile in the garage.

Once those things are taken care of the Rampage will go back in for the rest of the work on it (body work, prep, and painting will be the real kickers time-wise) before the summer when I hope to have the mechanical work finished so I can be autocrossing it to dial in the handling and take it out for a few runs down the drag strip.

Ashyukun (Robert)
Ashyukun (Robert) UltraDork
3/2/18 7:14 a.m.

Since at the moment the only thing still on the front subframe is the steering rack, it's really tempting to unbolt and tie up the rack and drop the subframe to pressure wash all the crap off of it and paint it. I really wish it were possible to use the pressure washer in the garage without making an absolute mess of things, I'd love to do the same with the fender wells while everything is pulled off of the front end as well.

Ashyukun (Robert)
Ashyukun (Robert) UltraDork
3/5/18 7:23 a.m.

Got absolutely nothing done on the Rampage over the weekend. -_-; I can somewhat claim it was because I couldn't really do much until the new bushings come in, but there were things that I could have been doing, I just slept too late Saturday to do much and SWMBO wanted to just chill on the couch most of Sunday. New sway bar bushings should arrive today or tomorrow, so I'll get to putting everything back together.

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