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Savanna Camper Project

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SplitSsss

SplitSsss

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Location
Northern KY
Hello,
I'm an experienced wrench but have very little diesel experience. I bought a 2000 Savana 3500 box truck originally gas powered. I also bought a 2001 Savana 6.5 diesel ambulance with no box. I have removed it's cab, removed engine, fuel system, HD 8 leaf rear end and most importantly it's wire harness.

The plan: The box truck's box was modified by the last owner. Insulated, windows added and tinted and a 120V a/c for camping. It came with one loading ramp and I picked up another one so I can drive my "Toys" into it and go camping! I'll post pics soon.

The box van has the box removed, fuel system removed, no drive train and I have swapped the rear end and all suspension components. I am currently putting in the diesel fuel tank. I plan on upgrading the lift pump and harness. I am considering the LEROY kit w/ Carter pump and harness to include the wait to start option.
I would like to make my own harness as $120 seems a bit high for relay plugs switches etc. I need a good diagram if anyone has one,BTW.

Planning on a Duramax clutch fan, 185 thermostat, high flow waterpump, all new injectors and glows. PMD was already relocated. Planning on a 40HP computer upgrade with some additional gauges. Basically the typical bomb proof stuff I see on the net. This truck will haul a good deal of weight in hot climbs.

So I have some questions.

1: The plastic fuel lines are too short and are labled do not repair. Should I just go with metal and rubber fuel lines? Thats what I was planning. if so any recomendations would be helpful.
2: Eliminate the vacuum pump or not? If I eliminate it what is the best way to control the waste gate? Anyone got pics?

Feel free to suggest other helpful mods. Keep in mind cross country towing with heavy loads in the box.

Thanks
Mike
 
You will need vaccum for the hvac controls. The dmax vans use a nice little electric vacuum pump. I would probably ditch the hard plastic fuel lines, but there is barbed fittings made for them.
 
You already have a high flow water pump. Run stock stats, cooler stats have been proven to not help overheating and reduce mpg's. And it sounds like you're looking at ssdiesel for tuning as he's about the only one who puts hp numbers on them. If so, DON'T. There's some good tuners out there, but ss isn't one of them. Do stock injectors while everything is apart and accessible. You'll need the vacuum pump unless you want to build a custom turbo setup as I don't know of anybody with a van alternative.
 
THEFERMANATOR said:
You already have a high flow water pump. Run stock stats, cooler stats have been proven to not help overheating and reduce mpg's. And it sounds like you're looking at ssdiesel for tuning as he's about the only one who puts hp numbers on them. If so, DON'T. There's some good tuners out there, but ss isn't one of them. Do stock injectors while everything is apart and accessible. You'll need the vacuum pump unless you want to build a custom turbo setup as I don't know of anybody with a van alternative.
Click to expand...
You are a good detective! I was looking at the SS Diesel for the tuner. Which tuner would you recommend for heavy loads and towing?
Also why Stock injectors? I though Marine injectors were better? As for the turbo setup I would build one since I love to fab up stuff but I have no idea what I'd be trying to accomplish. IE when and how much boost to achieve. I think once I understand the how and why I can make a custom setup. Till then I will use the pump. If I do build it I can be the first to post a solution. That would be cool.
 
SplitSsss said:
You are a good detective! I was looking at the SS Diesel for the tuner. Which tuner would you recommend for heavy loads and towing?
Also why Stock injectors? I though Marine injectors were better? As for the turbo setup I would build one since I love to fab up stuff but I have no idea what I'd be trying to accomplish. IE when and how much boost to achieve. I think once I understand the how and why I can make a custom setup. Till then I will use the pump. If I do build it I can be the first to post a solution. That would be cool.
Click to expand...
6.2 turbo said:
You will need vaccum for the hvac controls. The dmax vans use a nice little electric vacuum pump. I would probably ditch the hard plastic fuel lines, but there is barbed fittings made for them.
Click to expand...

"I already have a high flow water pump"? I thought they were like 85gph and the high flow ones put out 130ghp. I read somewhere that these helped when pulling a long hot mountain. ???
 
SplitSsss said:
Hello,
I'm an experienced wrench but have very little diesel experience. I bought a 2000 Savana 3500 box truck originally gas powered. I also bought a 2001 Savana 6.5 diesel ambulance with no box. Strong engine, fleet maintained with 113K miles.
I have removed it's cab, removed engine, fuel system, HD 8 leaf rear end and most importantly it's wire harness.

The plan: The box truck's box was modified by the last owner. Insulated, windows added and tinted and a 120V a/c for camping. It came with one loading ramp and I picked up another one so I can drive my "Toys" into it and go camping! I'll post pics soon.

The box van has the box removed, fuel system removed, no drive train and I have swapped the rear end and all suspension components. I am currently putting in the diesel fuel tank. I plan on upgrading the lift pump and harness. I am considering the LEROY kit w/ Carter pump and harness to include the wait to start option.
I would like to make my own harness as $120 seems a bit high for relay plugs switches etc. I need a good diagram if anyone has one,BTW.

Planning on a Duramax clutch fan, 185 thermostat, high flow waterpump, all new injectors and glows. PMD was already relocated. Planning on a 40HP computer upgrade with some additional gauges. Basically the typical bomb proof stuff I see on the net. This truck will haul a good deal of weight in hot climbs.

So I have some questions.

1: The plastic fuel lines are too short and are labled do not repair. Should I just go with metal and rubber fuel lines? Thats what I was planning. if so any recomendations would be helpful.
2: Eliminate the vacuum pump or not? If I eliminate it what is the best way to control the waste gate? Anyone got pics?

Feel free to suggest other helpful mods. Keep in mind cross country towing with heavy loads in the box.

Thanks
Mike
Click to expand...

"If you HAVE to wear cloths.....then it's too damn COLD" o_O
Cold and Snow are the 4 letter words that I find offensive.;)
Author: Me!
 
Engine has 113k miles. Fleet maintained. Duel alternators, duel heat and ac. Note the snow chains with pneumatic deploy for traction and the heavier spring and sway bar setup.

Send me ideas!!! What Engine and tranny mods whould you do?IMG_4223.PNGIMG_4188.PNGIMG_4529.JPGIMG_4539.JPGIMG_4201.PNG
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The 2001 should have a thread on fan clutch. If it does then you have the best water pump already.
 
The thread on fan clutch water pump and steel 9 blade fan is what alot of people upgrade to. You should be set on the coolant system except I would get the Leroy Diesel BRF (bypass restricter fitting) it’ll let more coolant go through the radiator and helps keep the ECT in check better especially when you are loaded.
 
Welcome!
You have gotten rock solid input so far. The 6.5 td in your van is the same used in 1996-2004 Hummers with the center mounted turbo. If you look into it you will find there is a turbo called the “super 77” that hummer owners pay painfully for. It is the stock turbo with a “wickedwheel2”, you can easily buy and install this yourself for a lot less money. It helps some but not a ton. Depending on your use, there are better turbos for the 6.5, way better than the stocknone with the WW2 installed, but actually fitting it in the Engine bay, and custom exhaust work to it, as well as plumbing from it to the intake is needed. What axle gearing, what top speed do you drive at, over all weight, and bottom end acceleration vs freeway use is the questions to see what would suit best.

The tune you get depends on the turbo you use.

You want 4” exhaust, not sure how big you can fit coming off the turbo in your application, hopefully 4” all the way.

Harmonic balancer needs replacement every 100,000 miles if AC Delco, every 500,000 miles if fluidampr. Do not waste your time or money on the cheap ones, many of them fail in 30,000 miles. Failure means broken crankshaft/block.

Make sure the front of the starter has a brace that attatches to the block, block failure will result without it.

Hopefully you didn’t buy the “ss insta heat and fail” glow plugs. Avoid ss diesel- amazing advertisers, crap product and warranty- many of us learned the hard way. Only use AC Delco 60G or Bosch 80034 glow plugs. Install them now while easy to get to imo. Use a little antisieze on the threads when installing. Those 2 are the only self limiting plugs available to this engine. All others are much more prone to swelling and possibly breaking off in the cylinder destroying engine. When you unscrew them, if they dont slide out easily they have swollen up and a special tool is needed to remove them. The wollen part can break off inside, if that happens you have to remove the injector to fish out the piece. Way sucky, but so much easier before the engine is buried in the rig. You might leave them out until after engine is in for easier bleeding of fuel System which allows cranking engine super fast without the compression until the fuel mist comes out, then install the new ones. How hard they are to reach inplace is the question.

Buy from any hardware store a 6” long piece of clear tubing 1/4” ID. Replace the fuel line coming out the front of the ip (injector pump) in an upsidedown ‘U’ shape. Use screw style hose clamps instead of the squeeze clamps for this.

I strongly suggest a fuel pressure gauge a 9-14 psi desired pressure- so buy gauge accordingly you dont want something reading 100 because it will be hard to see the smaller range easily unless it is digital output. Tap the pressure reading just before the ip inlet. The way I am doing my next set up is electronic gauge and I will install a sensor at the ip inlet, and another at the fuel filter inlet. Then a switch to choose between the two that feeds the gauge. Then I can see when the fuel filter is restricted needing replacement, added convienence. The REAL reason for the pressure gauge is when the LP (lift pump) fails, the ip will suck fuel past it. The ip sucking fuel all the way from the tank wears out the ip much faster and those suckers are expensive as heck, plus hard to change in a van.

The duramax plastic fan BLADE is the part people look for. Other than that you dont want the dmax fan clutch. The best fanclutch is only available from Kennedy Diesel, as he has them custom made to come on sooner, faster, and at highest lock up available. Do NOT put electric fans on. They restrict air flow at freeway speeds and can start all kinds of havoc. There is a thread here by AK DieselDriver about installing an electric controlled fan clutch that is nice because you can set parameters when to turn on and off. fanclutches on these engines need replacement at 5 years regardless of miles.

If your rig takes a different radiator than the one Chris @ Twisted Steel sells, a other great option is having your rebuilt using dimple cores, (more expensive but the best there is for heat rejection) but then send it to Chris for the coating. The coating improves output by 1/3!! My entire stack- radiator, oil cooler, trans cooler, a/c condensor and it i add one turbo cooler will all get the coatings on them. Definitely worth it.

I live in the southwest, Vegas basically. The one thing I disagree with from THEFERMANATOR is the thermostats. IF AND ONLY IF you do the radiator and coatings, THEN you push it as hard as you can and can not get the temps to 210f- then yes get the mpg (maybe*) and use 195 stats. If you can get it to hit 210 in anyway- 180 stats. When these engines over heat they do it in a minute. Every minute you drive at 210, you are taking years off the engine. If you are at 220, you better be on your way to the hospital, because you are on your way to a new engine. The center mounted turbo engines fail in the head much easier than the truck heads from the turbo upppipes. Also the blocks are easier to crack at #8 from it. So much so almost the entire Hummer community has a panic called “#8 /at risk block”. Dont fall into all the misinformation, but some of it is accurate.
* the mpg penalty exists in pickups, not hummers- Areodynamics. No clue about your van wether you would loose mpg. But in trucks, normal vans, and hummers in the southwest using 180 stats keeps the engine at 180/185 depending on various things. That extra 10-15 degrees is room for error when things heat up. The loss of a little mpg in pickups here is well worth the safety factor imo.

Read all the stickies here. There is a ton of things to learn that will save you money, time, and aggravation.
 
There is a thread on make your own LP relay harness, but I suck at searches otherwise I would post a link. Maybe in the stickies?

The 180 stats will mess with your tune btw. My opinion on the 180 stats is a bandaid not acceptable by most.
 
Jaryd said:
The thread on fan clutch water pump and steel 9 blade fan is what alot of people upgrade to. You should be set on the coolant system except I would get the Leroy Diesel BRF (bypass restricter fitting) it’ll let more coolant go through the radiator and helps keep the ECT in check better especially when you are loaded.
Click to expand...
I’ll do that. Love this site!
Jaryd said:
Sounds like you are going to have a fun, stout rig when you get done with it
Click to expand...

I’ve built all kinds of stuff over the years. This however is my first diesel project. I’m pumped about it.
 
Will L. said:
Welcome!
You have gotten rock solid input so far. The 6.5 td in your van is the same used in 1996-2004 Hummers with the center mounted turbo. If you look into it you will find there is a turbo called the “super 77” that hummer owners pay painfully for. It is the stock turbo with a “wickedwheel2”, you can easily buy and install this yourself for a lot less money. It helps some but not a ton. Depending on your use, there are better turbos for the 6.5, way better than the stocknone with the WW2 installed, but actually fitting it in the Engine bay, and custom exhaust work to it, as well as plumbing from it to the intake is needed. What axle gearing, what top speed do you drive at, over all weight, and bottom end acceleration vs freeway use is the questions to see what would suit best.

The tune you get depends on the turbo you use.

You want 4” exhaust, not sure how big you can fit coming off the turbo in your application, hopefully 4” all the way.

Harmonic balancer needs replacement every 100,000 miles if AC Delco, every 500,000 miles if fluidampr. Do not waste your time or money on the cheap ones, many of them fail in 30,000 miles. Failure means broken crankshaft/block.

Make sure the front of the starter has a brace that attatches to the block, block failure will result without it.

Hopefully you didn’t buy the “ss insta heat and fail” glow plugs. Avoid ss diesel- amazing advertisers, crap product and warranty- many of us learned the hard way. Only use AC Delco 60G or Bosch 80034 glow plugs. Install them now while easy to get to imo. Use a little antisieze on the threads when installing. Those 2 are the only self limiting plugs available to this engine. All others are much more prone to swelling and possibly breaking off in the cylinder destroying engine. When you unscrew them, if they dont slide out easily they have swollen up and a special tool is needed to remove them. The wollen part can break off inside, if that happens you have to remove the injector to fish out the piece. Way sucky, but so much easier before the engine is buried in the rig. You might leave them out until after engine is in for easier bleeding of fuel System which allows cranking engine super fast without the compression until the fuel mist comes out, then install the new ones. How hard they are to reach inplace is the question.

Buy from any hardware store a 6” long piece of clear tubing 1/4” ID. Replace the fuel line coming out the front of the ip (injector pump) in an upsidedown ‘U’ shape. Use screw style hose clamps instead of the squeeze clamps for this.

I strongly suggest a fuel pressure gauge a 9-14 psi desired pressure- so buy gauge accordingly you dont want something reading 100 because it will be hard to see the smaller range easily unless it is digital output. Tap the pressure reading just before the ip inlet. The way I am doing my next set up is electronic gauge and I will install a sensor at the ip inlet, and another at the fuel filter inlet. Then a switch to choose between the two that feeds the gauge. Then I can see when the fuel filter is restricted needing replacement, added convienence. The REAL reason for the pressure gauge is when the LP (lift pump) fails, the ip will suck fuel past it. The ip sucking fuel all the way from the tank wears out the ip much faster and those suckers are expensive as heck, plus hard to change in a van.

The duramax plastic fan BLADE is the part people look for. Other than that you dont want the dmax fan clutch. The best fanclutch is only available from Kennedy Diesel, as he has them custom made to come on sooner, faster, and at highest lock up available. Do NOT put electric fans on. They restrict air flow at freeway speeds and can start all kinds of havoc. There is a thread here by AK DieselDriver about installing an electric controlled fan clutch that is nice because you can set parameters when to turn on and off. fanclutches on these engines need replacement at 5 years regardless of miles.

If your rig takes a different radiator than the one Chris @ Twisted Steel sells, a other great option is having your rebuilt using dimple cores, (more expensive but the best there is for heat rejection) but then send it to Chris for the coating. The coating improves output by 1/3!! My entire stack- radiator, oil cooler, trans cooler, a/c condensor and it i add one turbo cooler will all get the coatings on them. Definitely worth it.

I live in the southwest, Vegas basically. The one thing I disagree with from THEFERMANATOR is the thermostats. IF AND ONLY IF you do the radiator and coatings, THEN you push it as hard as you can and can not get the temps to 210f- then yes get the mpg (maybe*) and use 195 stats. If you can get it to hit 210 in anyway- 180 stats. When these engines over heat they do it in a minute. Every minute you drive at 210, you are taking years off the engine. If you are at 220, you better be on your way to the hospital, because you are on your way to a new engine. The center mounted turbo engines fail in the head much easier than the truck heads from the turbo upppipes. Also the blocks are easier to crack at #8 from it. So much so almost the entire Hummer community has a panic called “#8 /at risk block”. Dont fall into all the misinformation, but some of it is accurate.
* the mpg penalty exists in pickups, not hummers- Areodynamics. No clue about your van wether you would loose mpg. But in trucks, normal vans, and hummers in the southwest using 180 stats keeps the engine at 180/185 depending on various things. That extra 10-15 degrees is room for error when things heat up. The loss of a little mpg in pickups here is well worth the safety factor imo.

Read all the stickies here. There is a ton of things to learn that will save you money, time, and aggravation.
Click to expand...

What a great post! So much to digest! Since this engine has 113k miles and the original harmonic balancer, I better replace it!
Water pump appears to be original as well, so I'm assuming it's time. If I read these posts correctly the stock wp is high flow and should be fine. Stock AC Delco OK ?? or should I go with something different? Fan clutch is over 5 years old so I guess I'll get the Kennedy setup.
Glow plugs came out easily. Whew! Which injectors should I get? I have read the marine injectors are a good bet. What is your opinion?
The Leroy BRF seem to make sense.

This Rig will basicly be heading west and south from Kentucky in the winters. Lots of hot weather destinations. I'd like to Especially your neck of the woods. I'll be hauling my 1986 Suzuki Samurai, and a polaris 400 4 wheeler, motorcycle and camping gear etc. We are gonna sleep in the Rig and see how that works. It has an 110V AC unit in the roof. Air mattress's and 3 German Shepherds! Maybe someday tow a 20' camper if she doesn't like sleeping in the box! So we're looking at 3-4k pounds in the Rig. I'd like to be able to cruise at 75-80 on the flats. Might be a tall order though.
Please keep the suggestions coming. I'll start a shopping list and you guys can weigh in before I buy..
Thanks,
MikeIMG_0001.JPGIMG_4121.JPGIMG_3713.JPG
 
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