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Please share yr thoughts with me...leave it be or do MODS?

Crankme69

Crankme69

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Some discussion here from those of you that possibly have been in my shoes, this discussion is about my 1995 6.5 in my avatar & signature.

I have been gathering parts to help the ole 6.5 breath better but based on my experience primarily with my Harley Davidson(s) money pits I am SKEERD to proceed...leave it alone or dig in???

The truck now has just about 199K on the clock, I roll about 450 miles a week on it. I purchased the truck last Oct with 193K on it from a body shop that repaired some cosmetic damage to the front grille assembly. The previous owner had em repair it after a fender bender & then they got in a dispute over the finished cost, so the owner signed the title over & then I purchased the truck for $3300. The truck is spotless IMO for the miles & appears that it was very well taken care of & does not appear that it was used for any heavy hauling.

I want to pull the intake, rid the thing of the restricted EGR & intake & allow the motor to breath. Install my new gauge set & then possibly after I inspect purchase a new exhaust and then last would be a chip.

Am I asking for trouble with this many miles on the motor & drive train by digging into this thing? My concern here is that the EGR intake may very well be limiting the flow & by clearing it out, who knows what may come from that...?

Will doing these mods promote a head gasket failure, especially if I work the boost up to something more then what it is now. I will not push it over 12 pounds or should I keep it under 10 at this milage?

The thing runs absolutely flawless right now & has ever since I installed new OPS & bumper mounted a new Dtech PMD...BIG IF ???? with that said & if I want to get another 100K out of this 6.5 should I just run it & leave it alone...?

Sorry for the length of the post, but it was the only way I could share my concerns & about what I have in mind for future mods.

I realize that any motor with this many miles can go KaBoom at any time, I just was hoping some of you could provide me yr opinion on what you would do or what experiences you had in similar situations.

TIA 69
 
Definitely open up the intake and get rid of the EGR, a bigger exh. will help too. If you have gauges and get a chip, just drive by the gauges, it should be fine.
 
I have the gauges but have not installed em yet & would like to install them before I do anything...at least that way maybe I could see what differences come from the EGR intake delete & any other mods I do by comparison...

It's sooo fricken cold here right now, that everything is waiting for spring.
 
I to want the longevity and the extra performance so I went ahead and hogged out the intake. Using a pancake compressor the routing it out went slow. The angle grinder and cutting wheel just pulled to much CFM's. Only took about 2 hours for the total remove, hog out and install. Upper plenum gasket is $6 and don't forget the mystery EGR gasket. I forgot and NAPA had to special order. Will be in on Monday. Or get the 45mm freeze plug to install into the lower plenum. As long as the EGR is shut, you shouldn't get and exhaust gases going through. I would prefer to just get a "F" style intake but working with unemployment wages, leaves very little cash for that mod setup. I too, will be upgrading to 4" exhaust, OPS mod and possibly gauges and chip later. Wife prefers new Radio and speakers first and I don't blame her as the stock system sucks. We got around 149200 miles on the Yukon and I believe it's time for glows, injectors and possibly a new block heater as well.
 
I think upping the boost will bring on head gasket failure sooner, assuming they all will fail at about 200K.

Mine made it to 235. I upped the boost at about 230K. Limited to 12. I think it would do you some good before you go crazy to pull the heads, replace the gaskets and check over the heads real well. I wish I would have.
 
Max boost isn't super critical the only time you see it is hard accel or towing. If using as a DD just watch it stay below 10 psi and you'll be fine. Turbomaster style wastegate gives you more boost over the range so you'll notice more pep yet still limit max boost
 
Here's my 2 bits:

-- mods like hogging out the Plenum and better airbox, deleting EGR, mandrel-bent downpipe adn crossover and bigger exhaust allow your engine to flow better. Diesels are big air pumps, and the better they can flow, the better they run.

Under all circumstances. Doing these will not compromise your engine in any way.

-- changing boost levels by adding a turbomaster or an ATT will allow your engine to run cooler as you put in more fuel and put it under load. Neither of these will put your engine under stress unless you over-fuel or over-load things... (disclaimer: don't take this to mean that you can righten up the TM to whatever you want.. use a boost gauge, keep an eye on the boost, and if it starts to get too high, LET UP ON THE PEDAL)

-- adding more fuel (changing the resistor, chip or reflashing) only happens when you stomp on the pedal. If you could somehow DOUBLE the output of your fuel pump, but never stomped on the pedal, your engine would never see that extra fuel.

It only gets stressed when YOU stress it. The mods you mention will have no detrimental effect under daily driving conditions... if anything, your fuel mileage will increase, the truck will run cooler, and things will last longer.

Doing these mods gives you the OPTION to stomp on the pedal and have something happen... if you do it for too long or too often, or under too much load, things will overheat or break.

When I think back on most of the mods I did, I was wanting to make a more reliable truck. I got that. The cool part was, doing them also gave me a bit of a race truck.

Because I didn't spend too much time exploring that aspect of it, I didn't hurt anything.

The best safety feature on your truck is between your ears.
 
Wow. The Canuck Bear speaks another pearl of wisdom. Who wudda thunk?

Seriously. Jim is exactly right. Helping the engine breathe better will improve the reliability and longevity. Opening the intake and exhaust can be done BEFORE you add gauges, but everything else you need gauges to see what's happening.

(Actually, it would be nice to have gauges beforehand (if you can afford the cash) so you can see before/after effects on EGT, boost, etc.

As for me, I can tell you that opening the intake/exhaust on the Tahoe had MAJOR impact on the power and drivability, and although I STILL don't have gauges, I can tell you that the overall coolant temps went WAY down. I think that is testament to a GOOD effect.

Do it!

-Rob :)
 
Hey this is exactly what I was hoping to discuss here...

My reason for asking is being addressed, many thanks for all the feedback.

My other experience with MODS was my 2005 HD bagger...might as well share here what happened. I upped the CU inches from 88 to 95, did heads & cams along with a few other mods, way more then we are discussing here for the 6.5, but the end result 10K miles later was a twisted crank, man was I pissed. I realize thay are way different animals and there is no comparison other then mods in general.

Bottom line the HD cost me about $4K stroked the crank, balanced & blue printed the motor & it's all good now, just a cost that I was not expecting.

I love to tinker & this newly acquired 6.5TD is just a new venture along with meeting all of you here. I enjoy this exchange & doing motor mods just about as much as I enjoy riding my Harley, it's all good & thanks for sharing...if anyone else has anything else to add please chime in.

For the 6.5 today I was able to get out there & pop in a new AC Delco 190 T stat...the old one only had the motor running about 175DegF & that was not helping my MPG or performance any. Nice to see the temp gauge on the dash setting at 190...

Ok I'm done rambling...
 
I agree with the others that have opined that your strategy is exactly right.

Might also want to look at a winter front. I am messing around with one this winter for the first time in 11 winters with the '95. Heat is definitely hotter (duh) but what really has my attention is that I think I am getting about 1.5 mpg more. For my DD tasks that's about 3-4 gallons saved a week. Sweet!
 
ak diesel driver said:
If you can't keep your foot out of it you can always get one of these http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/...duct_6970_200357513_200357513&issearch=157696
Click to expand...
Is that what they are going to put in millions of Toyotas?):h

minisub said:
Might also want to look at a winter front. I am messing around with one this winter for the first time in 11 winters with the '95. Heat is definitely hotter (duh) but what really has my attention is that I think I am getting about 1.5 mpg more. For my DD tasks that's about 3-4 gallons saved a week. Sweet!
Click to expand...
Winter front on my DMax is a full 2mpg better this winter than last when I didn't have it. Extra cab heat is a bonus too. Diesels like to run warm.
 
Well, you could always lay the groundwork for performance. Some of this groundwork is a performance mod in itself.

If i was you, i would do guages, openening of intake and exhaust, and possible addition of a fluidampr, fresh injectors, glows, OPS and LP.

good luck!
 
drocker said:
I to want the longevity and the extra performance so I went ahead and hogged out the intake. Using a pancake compressor the routing it out went slow. The angle grinder and cutting wheel just pulled to much CFM's. Only took about 2 hours for the total remove, hog out and install. Upper plenum gasket is $6 and don't forget the mystery EGR gasket. I forgot and NAPA had to special order. Will be in on Monday. Or get the 45mm freeze plug to install into the lower plenum. As long as the EGR is shut, you shouldn't get and exhaust gases going through. I would prefer to just get a "F" style intake but working with unemployment wages, leaves very little cash for that mod setup. I too, will be upgrading to 4" exhaust, OPS mod and possibly gauges and chip later. Wife prefers new Radio and speakers first and I don't blame her as the stock system sucks. We got around 149200 miles on the Yukon and I believe it's time for glows, injectors and possibly a new block heater as well.
Click to expand...


FYI to others I found it easiest to use a jig saw with a metal cutting blade to cut out extra webbing, that I shortened so that it did not bottom out inside the plenum on the down stroke, low mess no air blowing chips of metal around, and did not take long to cut out, freeze plug is one way of capping off EGR inside the plenum, another way is to put in new "mystery gasket" which is a 1 time use gasket labeled in some catalogs "GASKET-EGR VLV P" The ACDelco part # is 219-167 The GM part # is 10191428

Then put a .050" shim between the base of the EGR valve, and upper intake, which will block flow of EGR and still allow the vacuum system to cycle the actuator on the EGR valve so you don't code a EGR code.
 
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