AMC Straight-4 engine

The American Motors Corporation straight-4 engine was used by a number of AMC, Jeep, and Dodge vehicles from 1984-2002.

• For an outline of all engines used by AMC see

Development

American Motors devoted three years to the development of a new four-cylinder engine. According to Jeep's chief engineer, Roy Lunn, "unlike most engines available today was not designed for passenger cars and then adapted for trucks. We specifically developed it with our Jeep vehicles and Eagle in mind. That's the reason that performance and durability were of such prime consideration from the very beginning." Although some of components were interchangeable between the AMC 258 cubic inch six-cylinder and the new engine, the four-cylinder was not a cut down version of the big six. Noted Roy Lunn, "There is some common competency, but the 4-cylinder includes many unique items such as its own electronics systems. It also has a shorter stroke and larger bore. The valves are larger and the pistons are new." Roy Lunn recalled: "We wanted as much displacement - for power and torque - as possible within the confines of bore centers of the tooling. The only parameter we could influence substantially was stroke. So we picked the largest bore and stroke in order to get 2.5 Liters."

The AMC 150/2.5 L engine

The 2.5 L inline-4...
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