My motor upgrade is starting!!
Here is a little background so you can see what I've been up against:
When I had a few thousand miles on my truck, I bent a rod from a bad injector. The dealer fixed it under warranty and sent me on my way. I could not get the truck to run properly after the new rod was installed. The truck would begin to miss under load or over 70% throttle. I had the truck into the dealer for reflashes and updates about 5 times. Truck had all stock parts on the motor including the cat. I ended up installing a EGR blocker plate to help with the issues, but it was not 100% fixed. I had to load a predator 40hp tune with the EGR blocked to get it to run right. Fast forward about a year....
EFI was released and I began to do my own tuning last winter. My truck never smoked at idle or missed a beat...as long as it was tuned. In October 06 I noticed as the weather got colder, my truck had a haze of smoke at idle. I bought and installed twin turbos soon after this because I had been waiting for them. Once they showed up, I could not help but put them on. The smoke at idle stayed the same, but the cold weather caused some hard starting issues. In early November, I installed my ATS twin CP3 kit. I paid the dealer to do a compression test on the truck and it came back fine before the CP3 install. The weather got very cold and the starting issue was bothering me. I decided to do my own compression test. It looked fine. I had my buddies helping me work on the truck and we were all wondering what could be the issue. I used spare parts off my buddy's LLY to test on my truck. Nothing seemed to fix the issues. Stock tuning was not helping me any since I knew it didn't run right when it left the dealer. I used the 40hp Predator tune and it still wasn't running right. About this time, I got in contact with an injector specialist, Don from F1 Diesel. He agreed to test my injectors and make them flow better for me. I installed the injectors hoping that would fix the issue, but it was still the same. Knowing the mods on my truck, its potential, and not being able to drive it for the past 4 months because I was scared it was going to blow up took its toll on my wife, my friends that helped me build this truck, and myself. With some help from my friends, I decided to take it to Merchant Automotive(MA) in Holland, MI (thanks for the tow, Eric S.) and have Merchant and his team fix it. MA had Volker from MDE make some changes to the tuning to get rid of the smoke, but that did not tell us if there was an internal issue. I finally decided to have the motor gone through and have some upgrades done to be sure this don't happen in the future.
Today:
Merchant pulled my motor. It should be taken apart sometime in the next couple days. I'll keep you all tuned in as to what he finds.
Planned upgrades for now:
Merchant is installing head studs. He is also installing a set of connecting rods I bought from Huckstorf Diesel. The rods come from TTS. Merchant has a great team and one of the techs in his shop worked in a machine shop for several years running all sorts of equipment. Merchant bought the equipment that is needed to do most of the engine build in house. He can now key cam's, cranks, custom fab most any part, and do valve clearances and piston modifications. I am having my pistons decked to lower the compression to 15:1. Merchant is blueprinting my motor to insure all the tolerances from GM are improved upon in this build. I'm having the crank and the cam keyed to improve on that design flaw also. I'm going to be running the thickest gaskets available from GM and the ARP headstuds should keep things nice and tight. I am not doing any upgrades to the heads or cam at this time. The only part of the motor build that is not being done in house is the balancing. This is done at a local machine shop. My goal is 700RWHP in a daily driver that is as dependable as a stock truck. I'm hoping the lower compression does not hurt my fuel economy too much, but I'll report back on that after I put some miles on it.
Check back for updates:
The goal is to have my truck up and running by next Friday, the 23rd of Feb. If the motor tear down don't bring up any surprises, Merchant is confident that the build should be complete by then. My rods were shipped out today. They should be at MA on Monday or Tuesday pending any weather related delays. I'll keep you updated and wish us some luck! Thanks to everyone who has helped me along the way. I should have a good running truck we can go play with as soon as this is all taken care of! I might even post some pics of the progress if Eric has time to take some. Stay tuned !!!
THANK YOU ERIC AND THE MA CREW!!!
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