Jeep TFI Team Rush Upgrade

The first upgrade I made was the Nutter Bypass. ( I have a little section about the Nutter Bypass on this page that provides a few good links for you to look at.)

The second upgrade I made on my Jeep 258 ignition set up is known as a TFI, Team Rush, aka JuiceBox upgrade. That is what this page is about.

Last but not least, I put in a MC (Motorcraft) 2100 carburetor. I am going to make a page on that as well. When I do, I will add a link to it here.

Ask anyone who has had to deal with a Jeep YJ, and, they will tell you that these old Jeeps need all the help they can get. I can tell you that my Jeep YJ is a very finicky little beast. If there was a "Drama Queen" of the road, it would be my YJ.

From the Carter BBD carburetor, to the endless miles of vacuum hoses, wires, and sensors that can go bad at any moment. These old YJ's can pitch a fit and leave you stranded on the side of the road for any number of reasons.

But that is not the half of it. If your at all like me, you spend many a late night on the web searching for the solution to whatever is ailing your Jeep this time. Not to mention the time, effort, and money spent on all those repairs and upgrades.

Do not even get me started on the looks I get from my wife every time I tell her I am going to the garage to work on the Jeep. Her eye's roll faster than my 33's..

As they say, It's a Jeep Thing. It is sort of like a gambling addiction. "All I need to do is fix this one thing and then I'll be done." But it is never just that one thing.

The best way I have heard it put was, "When I got my Jeep it was everything I ever wanted and I haven't stopped changing it sense."

It isn't all bad. Matter of fact, most of the time, it is a heck of a lot of fun. Like they say , 'if your gonna play, you gotta pay.'

Anyhow, if your Jeep is basically stock, and you want to mitigate or remove some of the common culprits that cause these issues, there are a few things you can do...

1st is the Nutter By-Pass

2ND would be the TFI Upgrade. The Team Rush Up-Grade aka The Juice Box

and the 3rd upgrade is to get rid of that sorry Carter carb, and replace it with the MC (MotorCraft) 2100 Carburetor.

Before you get too deep into this write up, I just want to make it clear that I am not a mechanic and the things I tell you about on this page are the things that I did to my Jeep.

They may not be needed or appropriate mods and/or upgrades for yours...

So if you attempt, or perform, any of the following mods or upgrades, You Do So At Your Own Risk.

The Nutter Bypass

+++ I do not recommend that you perform this modification unless you are sure that your Jeep could benefit from it. +++


This Modification May Not Be Legal in Your State or Region! Before altering your emissions system, be sure to check your local Laws and Regulations regarding such matters and abide by them.

The very first internal modification/upgrade that I made to my Jeep YJ is called the Nutter Bypass.

The Nutter Bypass "removes" the emissions control system by bypassing the ECM aka emission control module. It basically does this by "eliminating" the computer found under the dashboard. It also negates the electronically controlled step motor in the Carter carburetor and converts the Carter carb to a "basic" carburetor. It will no longer be computer controlled.


This ECM bypass negates most of the vacuum hoses and emission control garbage found under the hood, and has been reported to return power and response to your 258 engine.

The reason I performed the Nutter bypass first was for a few very good reasons. First, the Nutter is the cheapest and easiest upgrade you can perform on your Jeep. Second... It is possible that this upgrade could correct poor idle, stalling, and other issues well enough that you may not have to perform any of the other modifications. And third... If your going to replace the carb, as I did, you may need to do the Nutter bypass anyhow.

Seeing as there are a ton of write-ups on the Nutter Bypass on the web, I am not going to do one on this page. But I am going to list a few of the links that helped me with mine.

Nutter Bypass Complete Instructions and Diagram.
Nutter Bypass Images
nutter bypass vacuum lines

I would like to add that you may wish to consider adding an EXTRA ground wire to the ignition circuit while your doing the Nutter Bypass. You have the wire exposed during the Nutter bypass and the extra ground will be required for the the Team Rush Upgrade.

More on the EXTRA GROUND in the Team Rush Upgrade portion of this page...

The TFI Team Rush Up-Grade, also known as the The JuiceBox, was the second internal upgrade that I performed on my little YJ. You may find this TFI parts list helpful.

The TFI TeamRush upgrade is like giving your Jeep a mega tune up.

While using your existing distributor, you replace/change the distributor spacer and cap, rotor, coil, and plug wires with larger, better quality, Motorcraft parts. It may be a good idea to replace your spark plugs too when you perform a TFI upgrade. Your going to need to pull them out to re-gap them. So what the heck...

This upgrade will allow the ignition system to work more efficiently. It will also allow your spark plugs to put out a "hotter" spark. Thus burn fuel more efficiently and increase response.

Parts You Will Need For TFI - Team Rush - Juicebox Upgrade. TFI Team Rush Parts List

1. Rotor
Borg Warner D219 Rotor
Standard Motor Products Ignition Rotor

2. Cap
Borg Warner C193
Standard Motor Products Ignition Cap

3. Cap Adapter
Borg Warner C193A
Standard Motor Products Adapter

4. Ignition ECoil: You will need to fab a bracket and buy a connector (#6).
Borg Warner E92 or the MSD coil 8227. (Within four months of doing this TFI upgrade I had to replace two stock Ford E-Coils. I broke down and put in one of these MSD coil 8227 performance coils. I'll let you know how it does. So Far so good.)
Standard Motor Products Ignition Coil

5. Ignition Wires
Borg Warner CH857
Standard Motor Products Ignition Wire Set

6. Coil Connector
Borg Warner PT753 Ignition Coil Connector

You May need to add a Ballast Resistor to your Jeep.

After I did the TFI upgrade on my little Jeep YJ, it ran like a top. It fired up in a heart beat and had a very noticeable improvement in power. But once a month, just like clock work, she would burn up that new E-Coil. It got so bad that I had to keep a spare ignition coil in the glove box in case it would burn up while I was away from civilization.

After I burnt up three cheap Ford E-Coils, I upgraded to the MSD and kept a Ford coil for a spare. The MSD Coil seemed to be holding but I knowticed that the rubber stuff at the top of the coil was melting. Not a good sign.

After a bit of research, I found out that the coil is only to receive about 8 volts while the Jeep is running. When I checked the power going to my ignition coil, I found that it was getting a constant 15 volts. That would be a good indication as to why I was burning up coils so fast.

Why it was getting 15 volts instead of 8, I do no know. It may be due to the Nutter Bypass that I did, but it really didn't matter. It just needed to be fixed.

To fix it, a ballast resistor was recommended. Thus, if you are dealing with the same issue of burning up coils, I recommend that you place a ballast resistor inline to the positive feed of the coil to prevent premature coil burn out.

After I put mine in, and fired up the Jeep, the voltage to the MSD coil read 8.5 volts. Not as low as I wanted, but much better than what it was.

Warning!!! The ballast resistor gets pretty HOT... And whatever chemical they put on it at the factory will burn off. You will see and smell Smoke. Do not freak out. After a few runs, the smell and smoke will go away.

If you want to go ahead and get one, here is a great place to get a Ballast Resistor

The TFI/TeamRush upgrade is a great install. Not only is it a fairly cheap upgrade, it is also very easy to do.

I know this to be true, because I was able to do it. As I was saying before, I am not a mechanic. So if I was able to do this, pretty much, anyone can.

Now the first thing you need to do is disconnect the negative cable from the battery. It is very important to do this first step. I made the mistake of not disconnecting the battery when I was tracing a simple wire issue and ended up catching some wires on fire. No kidding. The inside of my motor compartment was lit up like the sun. Fortunately, I was able to disconnect the negative battery cable before it caught the whole thing on fire.

Before you start pulling things apart, locate and then make note of where the number one wire is located on your distributor cap. If you take a close look at the image above, you will see that my number one wire connects to my distributor at about the four o-clock position.
So when you get to the point where you place your new spark plug wires back on, you will know the general area where your number one spark plug wire should go. For me, it was about the 4 o-clock position. By the way, your number one spark plug wire is connected to the number one spark plug. The number one spark plug is at the front of your engine closest to the big fan. (Just in case.)

Now let's get to work. We will start by pulling off the coil wire from the center of the distributor cap.

Then we can go ahead and unscrew the two small screws on the side of the distributor cap and pull it off with the rest of the spark plug wires.

Your new cap spacer should have come with some new screws to use with it, but just in case it didn't, you should keep those two screws

Once you have the old cap off, you can go ahead and pull out the old rotor from the distributor.

Do not worry. These rotors only go on one way, so when you get to the point where you put on the new one, it will go on just fine.

Note that my rotor is pointing at about the 11 o-clock position. That is not where the number one wire will be going. Top Dead Center was at about the 4 o-clock. Wasn't it? Shake your head "yes". Good . Moving right along...

We are just now getting to the fun stuff. It's time to install that new spacer. But before I did that, I took a picture of the old distributor cap next to the new one.

As you can see, the new distributor is much larger than the old one. This larger size should eliminate arcing and crossfire inside the cap and insure that the spark hits the one intended point and that point only.

When you go to install that new spacer you will see that the screws are now installed on the inside of the cap.

This new spacer only goes on one way and one way only. So go ahead and put it on and install the screws. Make sure that you put it on tight, but do not over tighten it. It is pretty easy to crack one of these caps and though they do not cost all that much, I am sure that you do not want to buy a new one just because you cracked the first one.

Once you have the distributor adapter/spacer on good and tight, go ahead and slap that new rotor in. This is a picture of the old, smaller rotor, next to the larger new one.

Again, the rotor only goes on one way, so you can not get this wrong. Just keep in mind that when you go to install the spark plug wires, your number one spark plug wire may not go on the point where the rotor is pointing.

After you put the rotor in, you can go ahead and place the distributor cap on and pull the clips up to secure it. We are not going to start hooking up the wires yet. You still need to do a few things before you do that.

It is now time to remove the old oil filled cannister coil from the Jeep. Mine was mounted to the block just to the rear and left of the distributor.

Once you have the old cannister coil in hand, go ahead and cut the two wires going into the coil connector. Cut them as close to the connector as you can. Depending on where you mount your new E-coil, you want to have enough wire to reach it.

As for the new Ecoil... One of the easiest ways to mount this bad boy is to find four long screws that fit through the factory holes. Then use a bunch of lock washers and twelve or so nuts to secure the E-coil and mount it to the fender well.

There is no need to fabricate a bracket or rack your brain on some elaborate mounting system. Just drill a few wholes in the fender well and stick it to it.

As you can see, the coil connector has three wires coming out of it. You only need two. The one that has the two green wires coming out, only needs to have one. So cut the other. If one of the wires is thicker than the other, leave the thicker of the two.

The wires on my new set up are red and green, but the wires that where connected to the old coil connector are green and yellow. I took an educated guess and hooked up the green to green and yellow to the red. It seems to have worked.

Every site I found that spoke about these two wires said to match up the two colors. But the colors didn't match. So I guess that my guess was correct. It was a 50-50 chance. I got lucky.

If you made it this far, you are pretty much done with the "hard" part. You only have a few more things to do and we will get to that right after this blatant advertising break...

OK Time to get back to work. So far we have our new distributor spacer, cap, and e-coil in place. It is now time to re-gap the old spark plugs or install the new ones. So pull off all the old wires and chuck them. Then remove the spark plugs.

With the new ecoil and distributor you're going to get a lot more juice going to your engine. Hence the name "Juice Box" for this particular upgrade.

Anyhow.... From what I have been told, the old system put out about 18,000 volts. You are now going to be getting around 35,000. This means that you're fuel is going to burn a lot better.

To get the best ark for your buck, it is recommended that you now gap your spark plugs at .045. So go ahead. Get busy. You only have 6. Shouldn't take long.

After you have all your spark plugs gapped to .045 I recommend that you put some anti-seize on the treads before you put them back in. Once you have them in, it is time to install the new coil wire and spark plug wires.

This task is not as hard as it looks. Especially if you have a picture diagram of the firing order like the one you see here.

Make sure you add a dab of Dielectric Tune-Up Grease in each of the new wire boots. Just put a small amount on the end of a q-tip and dab it down into each end of your new wires.

As you can see, the engine cylinder order runs from 1 to 6, from front to back. But the Jeep 6 cylinder distributor cap firing order hops all over the place. Going in a clock wise direction it goes 1, 5, 3, 6, 2, 4.

In the picture you can see that they have the number 1 point at the 6 o'clock position. If your number one spark plug wire was at the 6 o'clock position before you took the old stuff off, go ahead and put your first spark plug wire there. Mine was closer to the 4 o'clock position. So that is where I put my number one spark plug wire.

As for the TFI Team Rush Up-Grade aka The Juice Box, you are pretty much done. But before you fire up your Jeep, may I make one more suggestion? Add an Extra Direct Ground to your Ignition Module.

>The instructions I had did not tell me to add an extra ground. When I got done with all the steps listed on my TFI upgrade page, I thought that I was done.

So I hooked up my negative battery cable and fired it up. It ran like a dream.

Unfortunately, one of my old wires could not deal with all the new juice going through it. It got very hot, started burning off it's rubber coating, and created a lot of smoke. That is not a good thing to have happen.

I was not sure what to do now. So in a calm voice, (not true) I told my wife about it.

She spent about fifteen minutes on the web searching for a solution as I went back outside and tried to trace the wire that was burning. This is also when I just about burnt up the rest of the wires because I forgot to disconnect the battery.

I didn't have any luck, but she did. She found a forum page that said that an extra ground was needed from the Ignition Module to the engine block and then over to the negative lead of the battery.

Seeing as I did not have a better plan, I figured that this extra ground could not hurt. So I removed the overflow bottle on the driver side again, located the BLACK wire coming out of the ignition module that is mounted on the drive side fender well.

I then took about an inch of the rubber coating off of a section of it (the black wire) and then added an extra wire to the exposed section. I then ran the new wire up and over the engine and grounded it to the block using one of the bolts from the old coil. From there I ran it over to the negative lead on the battery.

It may help to have a wire terminal kit to do this with.

When I fired it up again, it ran just fine and the wire that was cooking did not even get hot.

Now you should be able to fire up your jeep with no problems.

Now if it starts but runs rough, check your timing with a timing light.

If it doesn't start at all, you can adjust your distributor up and down till it starts. If that doesn't work, you may need to find TDC (Top Dead Center) and rearrange your plugs.