Junkyard Treasure: T-bird Turbo Coupe

[kevm14]

http://autoweek.com/article/junkyard-tr ... dailydrive

As I have said before, a neighbor down the street where I grew up had a black one of these (the only color?). It was sweet.

Ford put together some interesting vehicles using a turbocharged version of the SOHC 2300 "Pinto engine" back in the 1980s. There was the Merkur XR4Ti and the SVO Mustang and even the non-SVO Mustang GT Turbo, and of course there was the 1983-1988 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. These cars have become quite rare, but I found this one in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service wrecking yard last week.

Aka the Lima engine. Aka the lame-ass engine in my Ranger.

[Adam]

The version in your Ranger has extra spark plugs. For performance?

[kevm14]

There's so much fuel and air mixture and so much displacement that two spark plugs are required to light off that power-packed mixture.

[Fast_Ed]

But seriously... Do you know why that is?

Were spark plugs only sold in packages of 8 back then?

[Fast_Ed]

It's a 90's truck, so I guess a yahoo Answer is appropriate:

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/inde ... 111AAkamJa

Short answer.... Emissions. Yeah, boring. But this is interesting:

On a 1996 Ranger it is a 2.5L 4 cylinder engine. All of the Ranger 2.5's had 8 spark plugs for a more complete burn to reduce emissions. This also worked to increase torque (you need torque in a truck to move weight when towing or carrying things). Over the years, there have been many engines like this.

Incidentally, the newer Dodge 5.7L Hemi has 16 spark plugs for the same reasons... Imagine having to replace 16 platinum plugs, parts and labor at a dealership! This also means it is not a true 'hemi' because a true Hemi had a hemisperical combustion chamber with the spark in the center of the 'hemisphere', but they can't put two sparks in the dead center.

At least it's not an obsolete concept...

[kevm14]

KA24 in the Nissan pickups used dual plugs IIRC.

Ah, no it didn't. The old Z24 engine did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Z_engine#Z24