That sucks about your motor issues
Overall, my opinion is that these newer motors are at least fairly well thought out. For an interesting comparison: I like to compare to the venerable old Chevy small blocks. I've built plenty myself. The 'low end' blocks had two-bolt main bearing caps and the 'heavy duty' had four bolt mains. The two bolts were pretty safe up to about 450hp without major issues. The four bolts, about 550 and often much higher. That was also on stock cast connecting rods, too!
These 3.6L engines are SIX bolt mains (the middle caps have additional cross-bolted caps) with four bolt caps on the end of the crank. The connecting rods are FORGED which would have been considered a huge upgrade on those old Chevy blocks I was using for comparison. Also, the crank itself has a lot of technology built into the fillets which greatly reduce stress risers. The pistons have oil squirters directly cooling the pistons. This all amounts to tech that 15 years ago was only done on high perf motors that would readily see 550+ HP on modified engines. And now its all in our motors from the factory!
Jeep and Chrysler don't want to have to do warranty repairs. The automakers, IMO, have learned that warranty service is really expensive and have finally started realizing that strong, intelligently designed blocks save them money in the long run. And they have started integrating into their stock designs techniques that the aftermarket historically developed to fix OEM problems. Examples? My wife's Toyota Sequoia has an all stainless exhaust including tubular shorty headers! From the factory! 10 years ago this would have been unheard of. So they never have to deal with cracked iron manifolds or rotted exhausts. We have oil coolers and transmission coolers as standard equipment on our vehicles. We have coolant formulated to go 150k with no signif corrosive effects. We have more efficient aluminum radiators that we always dreamed of installing on our old muscle cars and old off road rigs. I feel that finally, the automakers have realized that quality initially in engine design saves them hugely in the long run.
So...I have a feeling that our six-bolt main, forged connecting rodded, high tech cranked, piston-squirter cooled 3.6L probably is a lot more stout than we think. These features would have been on a nice upgrade list for a race motor small block V8 not too long ago. Just my thoughts... I guess time will tell for these motors in the long run but this supercharger is on my list in the very near future with no hesitation. Just do your research well and be confident in your own conclusions! :thumb:
