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Hello again it's been a while

Turbine Doc

Turbine Doc

Just Another Diesel Guy
Messages
6,278
Reaction score
279
Location
Gautier, Ms./Anywhere Southern USA
First I want to apologize for derailing your thread WECSOG I haven't been here since about 2013 and some of the "old hands" popped in asking questions.

For the rest of you, I got away from all forums for a while I needed to decompress a lot of things happening in past few years, I've missed my 6.5 family and figured I'd stop in a lurk a bit to see what has changed and say hello. In 2014 I left the power generation steam and heavy duty gas turbine field service work being gone for 6 mos at at time, & returned to putting turbines in ships working most days 10 minutes from the office covering US Navy, USCG, built in MS and AL, as well as some International navy, and some commercial ferry work in Argentina. The ferry is way cool (2) 30Kshp turbines driving water-jets, 58Kts with 150 cars and 1000 passengers onboard.

I still dabble in the "dark arts" of performance diesel and stock diesel, the "project engine" was completed and installed in July 2013 with stops and starts it "only took" about 4 years more like 2 years the 1st time, I stored it but not prep it for long term storage and some light rust occurred so discretion being better part of valor I tore it down and cleaned up the corrosion.

I wound up with a 6.5 using a surplus Jasper CKO block, Scat crank, Program Engineering splayed mains, stock 21:1 CR, balanced & blueprinted all rotating mass, HT-4 cam that might have been a mistake, Fluid damper, & I eventually went with Dennis's tune for ATT after never getting what I wanted for a tune with a Heath program & ATT setup, I have about 50K on it now since installing, the HT-4 makes for hard smoky starts on cold mornings < about 60F lots of unburnt fuel I have to run3 or so full glow cycles to get all cycls to fully lite off or let it lope/smoke until full flame in each cylinder, after that it runs well, not as spray as it was with the factory GM cam but plenty of grunt when towing and what I was after to begin with.

My 98 C1500 Burb is still mostly stock ATT,4" exhaust, mild tune, and dual oil filter bypass filter setup.

April 2018 I picked up a (06) 199K miles 24V 5.9 Cummins wrapped in a Dodge 4x4 3500 crew cab dually whole new learning curve on this one, as I have said for a long time a Cummins in the GM body from factory would have been the ticket, not so enamored with the Dodge as a truck, but to be fair I think I'm 3rd owner and it was 13 years old when I bought it so who knows what life it led with prior owners.

Any way enuff about me

Oh BTW what is this "reaction score" that's new since I was last here?
 
Both my brothers own dodges. They're OK but certainly have their issues. My brothers 07 rotted of the factory exhaust and rust is starting other places and he's already been into the front end. He bought it new and has babied it too.
 
denata said:
solder HTS-528
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Turbine Doc said:
Good to see some new names and many familiar ones, it looks like a lot of the tech info went into cyberspace with dead links, and 404 error codes, a LOT of work went into those :(
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yeah, I remember reading some of those and thinking they explained in a paragraph what takes me 2 pages. Then later trying to show new 6.5 owners that and it was gone. Sad.
 
Most trucks are worn pretty hard at 2X their design life at 200K miles. Drop the Cummins engine in a 6.5 truck already... Regardless good parts are getting hard to find for our old antique trucks. Bill Heath selling out is an example of this. After getting 2X burned out engines in a row and a history of shit other parts, esp the R4 compressors, I gave up on mine.

We are borrowing a 1993 Chevy 2500 with a gutless 454. It's had a "new" light switch failure, New water pump failure (and AC Delco stands for "All Communist" China made now as a AC Delco Water pump is made in China.), the front end is shot, oil filter adaptor is leaking again, and the new R4 compressor is squealing the belt... Good parts are hard to get.

Now with all the work you and others have done for the 6.5TD and these exact things are not required for the Dodge RAM Cummins... Yeah: Turbo, cooling system. Front end shot on a used GM truck is almost a given. Most here know I blew a Cumapart 2x on my 2003 Dodge and I still like that engine over the throw away 6.5TD. The aftermarket started up a lot sooner to address the problems on the Dodge trucks. Dodge has aggravations rather than hot oily engine parts stuck in the pavement.

You might be better off with a *GASP!* New truck for retirement. Avoid the CP4 Time Bomb if a gas rig won't do. Point of fact: I have replaced 1 tire for a defect, aligned 3x, replaced the fuel filters, and 2X free oil changes on my 2018 3500 RAM. I have only popped the hood to check the oil myself as everything else was dealer service. 1 year 2 months and 15K miles. It's MPG with all the emissions crap is better (16-18) than the 6.5 or LLY ever got (10-14). Only the NV5600 on the 2003 did better (16 up to 21 MPG).
 
On the above mentioned AC Delco water pumps- they used to be the go to brand for water pump - a guy on the Hummer forum had 2 new ones fail in short order back to back. He started a thread there asking which brand to go to. Just sad. When did they go chinese on the waterpumps? Mexico does lower labor costs and many things being built there now are turning out good quality. Wish they had moved there instead if they weren’t gonna stay here. I love to buy stuff made in neighboring Canada or Mexico over china any day. Nothing against the people- just the gubmint and the low quality stuff. Heck there is most of South America too. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, etc, all countries that don’t want to defeat our cause.
 
ak diesel driver said:
Both my brothers own dodges. They're OK but certainly have their issues. My brothers 07 rotted of the factory exhaust and rust is starting other places and he's already been into the front end. He bought it new and has babied it too.
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My Ram Cummins 3500 became a rust bucket not long after we had Cummins rebuild the diesel cost of living on the salty coast.
 
Husker6.5 said:
So glad you're back now, @Turbine Doc ! I really did enjoy reading your technical posts. From my understanding, a lot of the links went bad when they changed/updated forum software a couple of 3 or 4 years back. I agree, lost institutional knowledge is a tragedy.
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I would read his postings (like a bible) long before I joined the stop..........
 
Husker6.5 said:
So glad you're back now, @Turbine Doc ! I really did enjoy reading your technical posts. From my understanding, a lot of the links went bad when they changed/updated forum software a couple of 3 or 4 years back. I agree, lost institutional knowledge is a tragedy.
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Now that I'm on road less we just mite have to resurrect some of that dead information, and create avenues for the new material to be added, I hung out a bit on FB groups for the 6.5 got discouraged with same question over and over again and no ability to post something meaningful on FB that was/is easily accessible.
 
Will L. said:
On the above mentioned AC Delco water pumps- they used to be the go to brand for water pump - a guy on the Hummer forum had 2 new ones fail in short order back to back. He started a thread there asking which brand to go to. Just sad. When did they go chinese on the waterpumps? Mexico does lower labor costs and many things being built there now are turning out good quality. Wish they had moved there instead if they weren’t gonna stay here. I love to buy stuff made in neighboring Canada or Mexico over china any day. Nothing against the people- just the gubmint and the low quality stuff. Heck there is most of South America too. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, etc, all countries that don’t want to defeat our cause.
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Well I've been working for a major player in industry since 1986 one of the original founders of Dow Jones down graded & removed from the Dow in 2018 significant shifts to overseas manufacture and engineering and then is when my field support went from if a customer had issues it was most likely a customer install issue or care & protection issue, these days not so much>

I'm saddened/ashamed to say they are now Good Enough, but we don't suck as bad as the other guys.

Systematically Industries wide , business being run on "margin sheet" only; by "bean counters" with 0 as in ZERO clue how to make products that last and people willing to pay premium for OEM "name brand" quality.

Alas...that is not what is in those "branded" boxes any longer, sad to see appliances and a host of other things that used tobe actual USA products/technology sold with the well known logo, but not built or touched in any way by Americans, except by the hands in the retail stores.

I'm Soo ready to retire.
 
DieselSlug said:
I needed to look up the definition for that word. I dont think it will exist by the time I get there.
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I've had 58 of my peers that hired in around same time as me in 1986 that were"voluntold" it was time to retire, last one left June 30, using CV-19 cash flow woes as the reason for down-sizing our businesses globally the 1st cut was we will "allow" 15% of workforce turning 60 by June this year to retire early now (then April) with 1 week pay for every year of service bonus and start drawing pension early as well, then when they didn't hit the desired # they upped another 10% participation for 25% total reduction and changed to eligibility of 60 by Dec. 2020. Those that wanted to stay were told to rethink that because if numbers were not met the coming RIF would impact them and they would not qualify then for the incentive bonus. :(

RATZ I'll just turn 59 this year, and I doubt the offer will apply for me in 2021 when I'll be zeroing in on 60, pension participation freezing this Dec. no more additions by self or company allowed, or additions to salary increase after then so 401K only. I had planned to semi-retire at 55 the visit by hurricane Katrina me at ground zero for that visit in 2005, and market "bump" in 2008 had me thinking of staying until age 65 for a little better pension....well with the freeze now to stay at current pension accumulation pot, not much incentive for me to want to stay any longer than I have to.

Plus with all the vacated experience and me being "the last guy" with any experience how to make the final delivered product work my work just picked up SIGNIFICANTLY>

Training all the new folks left behind to try to recover all the lost tribal knowledge when 58 of our most experienced engineers, techs, and customer service managers supporting 33 navies and commercial turbine powered ships pulling an "Elvis has left the building departure" at the same time, I never thought I'd be one of the "old guys" with the info, but accepted that over last few years along with the other "old guys".

Never in my wildest imagination would I have ever considered the possibility that I would be "THE LAST OLD GUY" turn out the lights when you leave guy, that I was not/am not ready for. :arghh::arghh::arghh::arghh:
 
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