Thought I was going to kill the Burb today.

[bfourman]

Coming home from a camping trip through rolling hills that had the Burb working hard on the way there, and got into a 20-30mph headwind. It was all she would do towing that sail to maintain 50-55 mph on the hills, sustaining 215*F ECT, 220* spikes (reported via ScanGauge), sustained EGTs of 975, highest spike of 1020 (probe in driver's side of crossover!). We had to pull over a couple times to idle down the ECT, finally decided to reroute. I was expecting a cloud of white smoke at any time, but the ol' Burb took it all handily, even with 217k on the clock. I'm sure I shortened the lifespan of the engine, but for the time being everything is working fine. No coolant usage, normal oil usage.

Definitely going to invest in a new fan clutch, complete cooling system flush, tune and 4" exhaust before next camping season. If she acted like this with an outside temp in the 70s, there's no telling what will happen when it's 90-100s. I hosed out the radiator last week, but apparently I need to remove it and flush inside and out. The PO put a Kennedy clutch on it, but I don't think it was working properly. I never heard it lock in when the temps went up.

 

[Turbine Doc]

If all PO did was the clutch mod, then limited improvement, DEEP exterior & AC condenser external core cleaning is required , about a 3 hr process, external cleaning been my experience is propably most you need to do provided PO took care to manage coolant health properly.

If you didn't hear the Kennedy clutch kick in, possibly something wrong there, as that was my 1 complaint about the Kennedy 1, it kicked in you heard & felt it when it locked up, but it rearely disengaged once locked in, robbing mpg & power when extra cooling is needed.

Any idea of age on the injectors ? What was IAT showing on the scan gauge? I tow BIG on occasion 18K when hooked to my backhoe/GN trailer in additon to mods you propose, consider a deep pan, a reflash that has better TCC lockup, and a remote mounted additional trans cooler, I chose the Deralle kit with electric fan that kicks on when trans fluid return temp to trans is 180F.

Perfect for stop/go traffic as it is independent of cross flow thru rad/ac core stack, also reduces the heat load on rad mounted trans coolers, less for heat load for the coolant in rad to manage.

Might want to have a look at the stats as well, if wrong type of stats are in there flow will be incorrect.

 

[bfourman]

Injectors are brand new, I replaced them a few days before the trip. IATs were 220+ when the TC unlocked IIRC. I'll check the stats as well, I know they were replaced at one point, but PO didn't know with what. They're 195s as shown by the normal operating temp, but unsure on brand.

The mod list is certainly long, just have to wait for the wallet to catch up! More than likely that was our last trip for the year so I have a few months before I'm asking the Burb to work hard again.

Edit: I'll say this though, on the way there we didn't have any problems minus the last hill into the campground, which was a long steep ride at low speed. Even then ECT and EGT were just over normal range. The trip home was plagued by the headwind, causing the issues.