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The "restification" of a 98 6.5 TD...

No time for wiring today, but here's a quick snap of the brake controller install so far:

DSC03888.jpg


Why no time today?

Well, something followed me home after work:

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100 bucks!

Isn't it purdy?

:)
 
So, I've been having troubles with teh dogs in the bed with the cap and fogging.

I started a thread here:

http://www.thetruckstop.us/forum/sh...topper-What-do-you-do-about-quot-fogging-quot

But I think I'll be carring it on here in the trucks original thread.

The plans I currently have are:

1. Controlled from the cab
2. Heater and blower motor mounted to the truck cap
3. Ducting fibreglassed into the cap itself to move the heated air to the windows for defogging and general heating puposes.

The wiring will be simple enough, no problems for a guy like me.

Ducting is also going to be easy. I work in fibreglass like an artist works in clay.

Finding the proper heater/blower/12v unit will be the trick. It will need to output enough air to cover a lot of ducting and produce a significant amount of heat. It will have to be 12V and fairly small, as it will be mounted to the truck cap and the intent is for it to remove with it after disconnecting a weatherpac connector.

Should be an interesting creation...

:)
 
Well.

I knew it was coming:

Time for a slow down on the truck, money has run out for a while and need to pay down the visa before continuing.

I'll be messing with the tuning with tunercats II (finally cleared customs and I can pick it up tomorrow) which is no more cost to me, and finishing up the Dodge towing mirrors that are already on the way.

Then, finish up FTB ver 2.0 and maybe scrape together a little cash to finish up the racor/raptor install with the parts already on the shelf since I've got all the "big parts" already.

The intercooler project will have to sit on the shelf for a while. Same with the centrifuge.

Gotta lay low for the next couple months though and pay down some bills before having at 'er again.....so postings in the thread will also slow down.

Once the bank account is back up to strength, I think I'll start up again with a fluidampr....
 
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Tunercat II /RTOBDII showed up today.

Sheesh, there's a lot of switches and variables in this 6.5 CAL file!

Spark, fuel, trans, diagnostics, lockup options, torque management (holy crap there's a lot of values and switches just in that!), boost tables.....

You name it, westers VDF has it! It's a very well spent 100 bucks! Worth every penny. Once I get some cash flow again, I'll be buying the whole 6.5 OBDII set and all the LB7 VDF's/.cal files. Another 5-600 bucks will finish the set off and be well worth the price!

And because I know buddy will ask, here's a couple screen grabs of some stuff:

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3-1.jpg


Untitled-1-1.jpg


It's going to take a bit of lernin' before I'm ready to do any significant changes. Back to my old notes when I was tuning OBDI 427 PCM's.

And just to make the deal all the more sweet, my order came with the original unlocked/unrestricted "Tunercat II" interface cable:

DSC03919.jpg


The best part of getting my grubby paws on this (now almost unobtainable) cable is that I can tune as many vehicles/PCM's/VIN's as I want without having to buy additional "BS" licenses from jet, efilive or anyone.

Just buy the VDF and then tune as many PCM's as I want......life is gooooood........:)
 
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Ultimate coolness thread now. Much thanks for sharing all of this!

What under Spark Tables?

Sparktables.jpg


From another option window:

pump-constants.jpg


There's a couple more areas where timing can be "tweaked".

My head is spinning a little bit right now trying to drink it all in. I should have a decent handle on the program and where everything is in a couple weeks.....
 
Well. Had a few recent revelations about the 96-2000 6.5 PCM after trying a few basic things in Tunercat:

It seems you can't read the cal off the flash memory chip, but you can re-flash it with a new cal. A few emails to a couple guys who know more about this than I do confirms this.

Since you can't pull the stock cal from the PCM, you need to buy the cal from somewhere, then alter it, then flash it all back
into your PCM.

That's pretty damn "whack".

Also, the OBDI ECM's have the capacity for dual flashes (maybe more) but the OBDII PCM's architecture doesn't have enough available memory space for any additional data (IE:dual flash)....

How much of a "bastard child" are these PCM's?

The OBDI trucks are looking waaaay more user freindly for tuners the more I dig into this. Seems the aftermarket has largely ignored teh 96-2000 OBDII diesel trucks for good reason.

That LB7 swap is sounding better all the time.....
 
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Yes, I like playing with the OBD1, although it looks like the OBDII has more features in the software to play with. It is like 50% larger program.

There is no simple way to do much with the PCMs.
 
would there be a easy way to install more memory

Nope.

Crack open an OBDII 6.5 PCM and you'll see why.

Surface mount flash chip. It's got legs on all four sides which make sit very difficult for joe average to do nything with it.

Even if you could get it off without ruining the board, they're pretty much obsolete now. The PSOP44 surface mount chip (IE: LB7, etc) took over after that point.

Yes, I like playing with the OBD1, although it looks like the OBDII has more features in the software to play with. It is like 50% larger program.

There is no simple way to do much with the PCMs.

Hense, no room for dual flash...:(
 
Ooooooo.....

Quite by accident, I think I found a way to read my PCM's stock bin!

If it works, all I'll have to do is figure out how to convert it to a .cal file for TC.

Have to try it out on the weekend.

I also need to see if I can get off work early today for a trip to the scrap yard. Need an ECm plug and an OBDII plug to build a bench harness.



Stay tuned for more info..........
 
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Well, flashed a few of my own "tunes" today.

Messed with "spark" tables, lots of room for improvement there.

Messed with a few other engine tables too. Lots of room for improvement in a lot of areas.

Just a light haze of smoke with a few tweaks in fuel, timing and boost tables. Truck has noticeably more get up and go (seat of pants assesment only).

Lockup is super easy to control if you know where to look. Slowly learning the 4l80e program. I've messed with a few 4l60e's before, but I need to slow time it as I'm not as experienced tweaking transmissions.

I tweaked up just a bit much at one point and got second gear rubber. :eek:

Yipe!

No way is that any good shifting that hard on a 400,000 km trans! Back to the stock that parameter went, and right away too (sitting on the side of the road and uploading a new flash as soon as it hit second that hard).

No idea how any of it affects fuel mileage as I have a second PCM I'm swapping in and out for runs/flashes and I'm just playing around learning right now.

This is all with the truck empty, no towing.

Towing tune will come later, and probably mean another PCM to swap in and out.

I will say that being able to flash the PCM on the bench harness I built is the cats meow though.....:)

If only my "real time" tuning experiment works..........that will be cats ass!

Still waiting for a couple custom parts to show up and I need more money......need more money.................:(
 
Well, after a couple successful hours of "test and tune" it was time to hit the garage again for a cleaning.

I've been putting it off for a while so it's got sh......errr.......stuff every where.

I started running across my towing stuff here and there and decided this wouldn't do. I've got a lot of cash tied up in this stuff, not being able to find it was not cool.

So, an hour with some scrap bits and the table saw netted me a nice little holder for all my towing stuff:

DSC03971.jpg


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Ahhhh, much better!

I'll skip down to Home depot tomorrow and grab some casters for it and it'll be all done.

Still have to clean up the garage though..............:(
 
Finished up the "tow caddy" and slid it into it's home, which the wife has now officially named "The Towing Center" in the garage:


DSC03974.jpg


A few final modifications were a small rack to hold the clips and pins, as well as a pocket to hold warranty paperwork and instruction manuals:

DSC03973.jpg


Heck, I may even throw a coat of paint on it sometime......:)
 
Just adding this here because there's no doubt in my mind someone will crap all over the original post:

And I,ve had some recollection that iat,s reported to actually drop if boost is increased, using a tm ,from stock, up to 12 lbs or so before increasing? Something to do with getting more cool air into cylinder ?

Depends.

More air into the cylinder (higher boost or more air mass) at the same fueling rate means the engine goes "leaner" compared to lower boost.

Diesels are the opposite of gas engines in the regards to lean/rich and hot/cold.

A "lean" diesel is actually a cooler running diesel and a rich one is hotter. (IOW - more fuel -richer mix - hotter egts)

Crank the boost up without adding fuel and it "leans out" the enigne, which makes it run cooler.

Well, until the turbo moves out into the ineffecient part of the turbo map and increases IAT unacceptably or creates a big enough restriction in the exhaust that a thermocouple sees higher egt's.

Diesels can be seen to run anywhere from 3:1 to 40:1 airfuel ratios. 40:1-ish being idle (little fuel, little heat, little power) and 3:1 being "coal rolling" smokescreens (lots of fuel, lots of heat, lots of smoke and lots of power).

I've seen a few figures for "optimum" burning bounced around in discussions I've had "off forum", but the most common one seems to be 14.54:1 A/F ratio for diesel.

However, real world experience (after talking to a couple "dyno guys") seems to indicate that somewhere around 18:1 gives the best balance between power and "smoking" in most diesels they've run/tuned.

My results after playing around with Tunercat II and tuning my 6.5 so far seem to bear this out. Although I have no way of measuring the A/F ratio right now. I'd pop a wideband sensor into my diesel's exhaust, but I think the soot would kill it in short order....
 
Next up is some striaght 30W non detergent oil in place of the 2 stroke I've been running.

Curiousoty has me wondering if there's any difference.

Have to burn off the full tank of 2 stroke mix I have in the truck first though.....:)
 
I'm pretty sure I've figured out how my warning panel is going to go:

DSC03840tp.jpg


Egt - self explanatory, triggered from Auber EGT guage
BST - Boost upper limit reached, triggered by Auber Boost guage
WIF - water in fuel for my Racor pre-filter, built in sensor
LPP - Lift pump low press limit reached, triggered off Auber press gauge.
WML - Water Meth Level, low level in tank, when I finally add WMI that is.
4HI - Stupid factory lights are in switches and hidden by steering wheel, so this is a repeater light.
TrT - Transmission temperature upper limit, triggered off and Auber temp gauge
TrP - Transmission pressure lower limit, triggered off and Auber press gauge
4LO - same as 4 HI except, well.....it's 4Lo :hihi:

Oh yeah, the high idle switch is going to be named "PTO".

Just makes sense to me that way.....
 
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Did a bit more work on the warning panel today.

Made the LED's flush with the trim, made up the board to hold the resistors, and installed a couple connectors to make the panel easily removable.

I'll just throw up some pics as it's all very basic electrical work with a soldering iron:

DSC03983.jpg


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:)

Just have to make some labels now.

Then it's into the truck to start monitoring EGT and Boost. The Auber gauges I have in the truck already have an "aux" control to activate the lights and the Racor WIF detector will be going in soon.

Then it's just a matter of installing more of those groovy Auber digital gauges.

:fing02:
 
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