I realize that this is an old thread, and the V10 could probably be considered as an "orphan" engine now, but I am in the process of converting the V10 in my '95 2500 4x4 to Megasquirt. If anyone is interested in this sort of thing perhaps we can keep this thread going or start a new one. Whatever works to keep the V10 interest alive.

Robert

Can you share some more about the rest of the engine and truck? Other engine mods? Thanks.

Ryan at flyin ryan performance has tuned a few of these. He does a lot more than raising the limiter by 1,000

Who was that? Sean hasn't been the best for quite some time. He failed to advance his skills and give the customer what he wants.

I'll try to keep it brief.
I like the V10. It suits my style. It has more torque and power than the Cummins turbo diesel of the same year, but it burns twice as much fuel doing it. Nothing is perfect.
I also like the Gen1 trucks. 2500 4x4, extended cab, long box to be specific. I don't like automatic transmissions. A couple of years ago I went looking for such a truck with the V10 and the NV4500 5 speed. Turns out they are extremely rare, at least in this part of the world. I finally found a ’95, it has severe body rust, but I bought it for the drive train thinking I’ll look for a truck with a good body and do the swap. I found a very nice ’01 a few months ago with a 360 and automatic. The conversion won’t be easy but at least I’ll end up with what I want.
The V10 is an orphan engine. Parts are getting hard to come by and are expensive, if available at all. The crank and cam sensors are no longer available from any source. If one goes bad, you have to get creative.
I am a big fan of Megasquirt and have converted several engines to MS. MS3 is now reported to support the V10. There are a few documented examples of MS3 on Vipers, but I can find nothing where anyone has used it on a truck engine. This all adds to the appeal.
The engine runs well enough now. It has good compression and decent oil pressure. No bad noises. But it burns oil on decel. Lots of it. I suspect it is valve seals and/or oil control rings, so the engine will need freshening up before I do the transfer. Before I pull it though, I want to get it running well on MS. I don’t want to have to do the tuning process on a fresh engine.
The engine will remain completely stock internally. The factory has done a very good job of building it for what I want to do. I’m hoping that with programmable EFI, I may be able to get a bit better mileage at part load, but if it doesn’t happen, it won’t break my heart.
At this point I have MS3 assembled and bench tested. I have the wiring diagrams made up to interface MS3 into the ’95 harness. I am waiting for some PCBs that I designed for the ignition drivers. They are long overdue and are probably lost in the mail so I have re-ordered from another board house. When they eventually get here I’ll be able to get it all connected and start tuning
So, there you have it, for what it’s worth.

Robert

Sounds like a cool project! I'm interested to see how much extra power you can get from the optimized tuning on a stock engine. How are you going to interact with the 01 dash? What transmission? Or are you converting everything to '95?

It looks like the stock timing map is very conservative at full load. I'm not sure why Chrysler did this. I may experiment with that but I'm not prepared to spend a lot of time and money on dyno time. It will be road tuning only so I am not expecting much if any difference in the power department. It would be nice if I could squeak out a bit better economy though.
As I mentioned, the transmission will be the NV4500 manual, but interfacing with the '01 dash will be a challenge. I'm going to have to figure a way I can fool the stock PCM into thinking it is still running the engine in order for the dash to work. I have the factory manuals for both the '95 and '01 but they don't give out much in the way of theory of operation so there will be a lot of experimenting going on.

I think you should consider the FiTech power adder system:

Website

These things are getting a lot of attention lately because it's simple.

And, of course, I say the power adder system because you are going to take my suggestion above and run a turbo......right?

Interesting, but no thanks. I have about 12 years experience with MS so I'll stick with what I'm comfortable with. As for a turbo, I really don't want to find out where the weak link in the chain is on a daily driver that will probably get some heavy work outs.

Robert

I'd think the factory thinking about the V10 was it would be used in a lot of heavy pulling duty. So the WOT settings would be very conservative, both in timing and in A/F ratio. The Chevy trucks of those same years went quite rich at WOT to keep exhaust temperatures down. Tuners found there was MPG and power to be had by cutting things a little closer.

R.

Makes sense to me.

Robert

That's probably because there are no shared components between the Viper and the truck engine so everything would have to be fabricated for a low performance engine.
I actually think a twin rear turbo kit would really get a large truck moving. You have all the room for plumbing and won't add as much underhood heat.

The only short bed 2500 Rams were on "club" and then "quad" cab chassis.
Back in the late '90s there was a guy in the Pensacola Fl. area who took a nearly new short bed,std. cab V6 Ram and swapped in the drivetrain from a wrecked V10 2500!
Very cool truck! I think he added some stripes, wish I'd taken some pics.