Jeep Liberty TDI Conversion

They won't ship the radiator, or do you just want to confirm it will fit?

When is the estimated maiden voyage?

LukeWilson said:

They won't ship the radiator, or do you just want to confirm it will fit?

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I know it will fit. Costs about $70 to ship a rad. With a used one where I'm not sure it isn't going to leak, I'd like to buy it somewhere where it is easy to return it.

LukeWilson said:

When is the estimated maiden voyage?

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Depends on when I get the rad. I'm hopeing to test drive it before Christmas, but once I have it running, I want to do the timing belt and water pump before I start driving it regularly. It will still need a safety and plates too, and I got a notice the upper ball joints are on recall from Chrysler so I want to get that done too. So for those of you waiting, fuel economy numbers are a ways off still...

Reddok said:

So for those of you waiting, fuel economy numbers are a ways off still...

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Nah, it will be 25-36. You can quote me on that.

manual_tranny said:

Nah, it will be 25-36. You can quote me on that.

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Well I definately won't be happy with 25. I'd like to be in the 35+ range. I can't see being able to hit 40 in a lifted almost 4000lb Jeep but I'm going to try.

It runs!

Lots of little things still left to do before a test drive but at least the wiring is good.

Saweeet! I know exactly what it feels like and its great. Now you get to spend hours finishing of the small things that take forever......

Reddok said:

It runs!

Lots of little things still left to do before a test drive but at least the wiring is good.

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can you post a short video?

ya, a short video of you torquin over some boulders!

yatzee said:

can you post a short video?

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this has been like the progression of a great story!

jek said:

this has been like the progression of a great story!

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Haha, the story is still continuing. I got my rad today. It was the last one available at any Chrysler dealer in Canada - possibly the US too the guy said. They were back ordered and had no ETA when they would be getting more. Had to pay a premium for it too. $502 after tax. The other option was to drive 600+kms to a wrecker, but I don't have the time to do that any time soon. Or I could have ordered one from the UK. It would have cost $120 + $120 shipping and probably taken several weeks to get here (xmas time shipping sucks).

So I bit the bullet and drove an hour away and picked this one up. At least if I have any issues it's got a warrany. And this was definately the right one. The intercooler bolted right up to it - there is no way anything else would have worked - it's quite the intertwined package.

It looks like the 3.7 gas electric fan will fit up to the rad nicely too - the bottom locating tabs and the shroud fit with just a little trimming. The top will require some custom mounts - but at least I will have an electric fan - not a mechanical fan like the 2.8 CRD.

The rad:



Intercooler on the left rad on the right:



And finally:



I don't think I will have to worry about overheating or high IATs...

I'll try and take a video next time I fire it up. I have to finalize some wiring and I'd like to have the coolant lines hooked up. Even though I'm replacing the water pump soon I don't like to spin it without any lubrication. But now that I have the rad in, I can do all the lines and the intercooler plumbing, so I may just get that done before I fire it up again.

Reddok said:

And finally:

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It's... so.... beautiful... I just shed exactly one tear.

manual_tranny said:

It's... so.... beautiful... I just shed exactly one tear.

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LMAO!! ...your tear is not alone my friend

so reddok, why was this rad so particular? I have placed all kinds of different rads in different makes and models. Just as long as it keeps her cool. Me and a buddy actually placed a chevy 350 rad in a cummins in order to get the temps up to 190-200 for better fuel econ. Works great in the winter, not too much idle after long drive in summer though :/ just thought I would use this extreme example. Cant wait for the ending! This is by far the best build I have seen thus far!

jek said:

so reddok, why was this rad so particular?

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It wasn't just the rad, it was the rad/intercooler combo. The intercooler fits in front of the rad and the outlets have to squeeze around it. I could have done something different, but the space in the frount of the Jeep for rads is a unusual size, it's a 24x24" square. I might have got away with a little tiny Honda rad and a TDI intercooler beside that, but that would have been pretty small. I just couldn't find a better rad/intercooler combo than the stock Liberty diesel setup. It's too bad they are so rare and expensive. Cost $800 for the rad and intercooler - that really ups the total cost of this install.

jek said:

Cant wait for the ending! This is by far the best build I have seen thus far!

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Wow, thanks! Although I'm not sure it's the best... I've seen some really detailed work from some of the other members. Anyway, off to the parts store for some supplies...

So I finally remembered to snap a picture of my remote mount oil heat exchanger. I had to move the heat exchanger as the Jeeps starter is on the drivers side and is right where the heat exchanger goes. The sandwich plate I used is about 1.5" thinner than the heat exchanger - not much, but that was all I needed. I also added a zerostart heater to the setup as I had to delete the coolant heating glowplugs and the egr heat exchanger.



And by popular request, the start up video:



Tested the throttle a little bit too.

Awsome! lets see some driving!

Also, what are you running for an instrument cluster? Are all the gauges working?

Did you test the clutch when you started it?

EDIT - backing up a little bit - two of the critical components - the flywheel adapter and the bellhousing adapter - how did you measure those in order to get the tanny centered just right on the engine? Did you have access to a leser measuring system or some really accurate measuring trammels?

cant wait! like a school girl........

Windex said:

Awsome! lets see some driving!

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Still a ways off on that.

Windex said:

Also, what are you running for an instrument cluster? Are all the gauges working?

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I'm running the stock Liberty instrument cluster. The gauges are not working. Like the TDI, the Libertys gauges are driven through the ECUs bus. The TDI uses a CAN bus to communicate and the Jeep uses a J1850 PCI bus. I thought there might have been a gateway module that would allow the CAN ECU to talk to the J1850 ECU as Jeep used a EDC15 ECU in their export Libertys with the VM2.5 diesel but it turns out they made the Bosch ECU output J1850.

The 2005/6 CRD Libertys used an EDC16 ECU and a gateway module to tie the CAN bus ECU to the J1850 bus, but trying to use one of those to attempt to bridge my VW ECU to the Jeep cluster would probably turn in to a nightmare.

So as it sits, the Jeep gasser ECU needs to remain in the vehicle anyway as it controls the fuel gauge, so I will end up tying the sensors into the Jeep ECU to drive the gauges. The tach signal is going to pose the biggest challenge. I'm still trying to find information on each CPK sensor. The Jeep uses a 5V input and is a hall effect type sensor. Not sure about the TDI CPK.

Windex said:

Did you test the clutch when you started it?

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No, but after I read that I ran out and tested it. Works exactly the same as with the 3.7 in front of it.

Windex said:

EDIT - backing up a little bit - two of the critical components - the flywheel adapter and the bellhousing adapter - how did you measure those in order to get the tanny centered just right on the engine? Did you have access to a leser measuring system or some really accurate measuring trammels?

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I did have access to a CMM, but my work would probably have frowned upon me trying to drag an engine block in to work. The information for the bellhousing pattern and flywheel pattern for the TDI is available on the web. I managed to find information on the Chrysler small block pattern as well (Same as the 3.7 Powertech engine). Having those measurements, I just drew up the pattern in autocad, aligned the crank centerlines of each and then rotated the engine pattern to the angle I required.

Same thing for the crank adapter, the crank measurement for the Jeep was harder to find, and I had to do some measuring with a caliper to verify the info I had was correct. I used the caliper again to measure how thick my crank adapter needed to be.

me
want!!!

Looking good, Reddok.

Can you answer some 42RLE questions for me? When you pulled the old trans out, how much would you estimate it weighed? Also, if you still have it around, can you get a measurement from the bellhousing to the tcase mounting flange?

mcneil said:

Looking good, Reddok.

Can you answer some 42RLE questions for me?

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Couldn't help you there. The Libertys use a 45RFE.

Reddok said:

Couldn't help you there. The Libertys use a 45RFE.

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Actually, I could use size & weight for the 45RFE too. I'm considering an trans swap for a TJ, and I'm trying to figure out what my options are.

mcneil said:

Actually, I could use size & weight for the 45RFE too. I'm considering an trans swap for a TJ, and I'm trying to figure out what my options are.

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I tossed out the 45RFE, but you won't have any luck putting anything from a Liberty into a TJ. The TJ has the CPK to be mounted in the transmission bellhousing and the Liberty has it located in the side of the engine block.

Check out Dakota Digital for their speedometer and tachometer signal converters; I used these to get the gauges in my Saturn TDI to work with the TDI VSS and tach signal output.

CFM said:

Check out Dakota Digital for their speedometer and tachometer signal converters; I used these to get the gauges in my Saturn TDI to work with the TDI VSS and tach signal output.

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Unfortunately these won't work. Unlike your engine, the ALH motors do not expose a tach signal on the ECU lines. All the information is sent over the bus to the cluster.

I am working on a solution though. I have to retain the 3.7 Liberty ECU as it drives the fuel gauge. So I am going to end up converting the VW signals into something the Jeep ECU can understand. Unfortunately, the Liberty CPK and the ALH CPK are nothing alike. The Jeep CPK is a hall-effect device that puts out a 0-5V signal with 24 pulses per revolution. The ALH engine speed sensor puts out an AC signal of about 2v peak to peak riding on a DC voltage of about 2.5 with 56 pulses per revolution.

I used a simple circuit using a 555 timer to generate a 600hz square wave signal and fed it in to the CPK line on the Jeep ECU. When I first tried it the fuel pump continued to run but I didn't get a tach signal. Turns out, the ECU needs a valid pulse on the CMK before it will start triggering ignition events and therefore driving the tach. I pulsed 5v down the CMK line a few times and the tach sprang to life and continued to run.

Now I need to determine a suitable microcontroller to use that will do A/D conversion of the TDI crank signal, trigger a properly timed falling edge on the CMK signal and output an approprate frequency square wave for the Jeep.

I may need to do some scaling of the coolant temperature sensor and/or the oil pressure gauge/switch too, but I haven't really looked into that yet.

I picked up one of the Princess Auto Autel Maxtrip scangauges which gives me the ECT and RPM, but the refresh rate is about 1hz so it doesn't seem to be adequate for a tach for shifting purposes.

All my parts from Brian at Roseland Technical Services arrived a couple of days ago, so I'm probably going to be doing my timing belt before anything else. I'm glad I kicked the project car out of the garage so I have a warm place to work on the Jeep. Lots of work to do.

Merry Christmas to everyone at TDIClub!

Just curious if there is an update here?

Sorry about the lack of updates. I've been pretty busy lately, but I have had some time to work on the Jeep. Mostly electrical work lately. I decided to remove the TDI fan control module and use the Jeep ECU to control the cooling fan and A/C. This simplified the wiring greatly and allowed me to thin out the wiring that was running behind the motor. I have very little clearance between the back of the motor and the firewall and was concerned about the wiring rubbing. I also shortened the harness and removed some connectors. This has cleaned up the engine bay considerably.

I now have a glow plug light. The stock Jeep dash had a provision for the glowplug light as the export market versions came with diesels.



But, when I opened up the cluster, I discovered the spot for the lamp was not populated on the PCB. I decided to 'borrow' the lamp and current limiting resistor for the O/D lamp as I won't be needing that anymore.



Installed in the glowplug spot:



Had to cut the trace on the PCB and solder a flywire on. Connected that to the PCM pin for the glowplug light:



And the final result:

I also got my timing belt and water pump kit from Brian at Roseland Techinical and installed it. Very easy to do the belt now. Not so easy with no TDC mark. I had to rotate the cam to drop a valve down, rotate the crank until the piston made contact with the valve, raise up the valve, rotate the crank, then drop the valve and rotate the crank back the other way until it made contact with the valve again - both times marking the location on the flywheel where the piston made contact. Split the difference and you have TDC. Just like using a piston stop on a gas engine. Engine fires up and idles nicely. I just have to get the cooling system connected so I can warm it up and set the timing.

I started working on my intercooler piping as well. I'll just say this: aluminum welding with a spool gun is nothing like MIG welding steel. I'll post pics once I clean up my crappy weld job.

I also decided that I liked the idea of using the factory air box because it was designed to draw cold air from over the top of the rad support and would be much better if I ever ended up driving through a mudhole while 4wheeling. The problem being, the seam of the factory airbox was right where the TDI intake was and the Jeep lid didn't point in a useful direction:



So I decided to hack it up and try some plastic welding:



Started welding - I was surprised at how easy it was and how well it worked - even for repairing the crack I created while cutting the airbox:



I ended up taking about 2" out of the height. The Jeep top is still not very useful in this picture:



And the Jeep top with a TDI top grafted on to it:



Not exactly show quality, but it works!

I still have to finish securing the wiring, figure out how to adapt the elephant hose to the turbo inlet, finish connecting the cooling system, connect all the vacuum lines and fab up a power steering pressure line.

Still quite a bit to do, but the list is getting shorter!

I dig the glow fix....can't wait to see how you surmount the tach/speedo issue...love this stage of a swap!!

jimbote said:

I dig the glow fix....can't wait to see how you surmount the tach/speedo issue...love this stage of a swap!!

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The speedo won't be an issue. The Jeep VSS is located in the rear differential and will function the same. The tach is a different story. I've been able to spoof a CPK signal using a 555 timer circuit which will keep my fuel pump running but wouldn't trigger ignition events hence drive the tach. By pulsing a signal down the CMK line I got it to sync which started triggering ignition events and gave me a steady tach signal. This also enabled the Jeep ecu controlled cooling fan and allows me to eliminate the TDI fan module and a lot of redundant wiring. Now I just need to replace the 555 circuit with something that will translate the TDI CPK sensor to something the Jeep can understand. It's probably going to end up being a ATTiny microcontroller or something similar - I just don't have any experience programming them so it's going to be a bit of a learning curve.

I've also discovered I'm going to have to use my glow plug style fix for the charge light as well. Apparently the TDI alternator needs the light in the circuit in order to excite the field in the alternator and start charging. The Jeeps charge light is on the PCI bus so I will have to cut the trace and run a fly wire to the alternator.