Recent content by ravenholm

Some nice new brake flex lines from StopTech, and the u-bolts and painted plates in place. Heading the other direction we have the engine with the sequential turbos in place. All hard pipe with needed flex thanks to vanjay clamps (not installed.) I'm still deciding how I feel about the...

Top view of the tank installed, with the retention cable I thought up to keep the tank tight. Next up air-bag mounts. These were a huge pita. I put the bags on the truck to stabilize the roll when towing, and they worked so well I ended up liking them a lot for road-driving. Really cuts down...

Final pic of trans in position from above. I have chosen to off-center the engine / trans about 1 inch towards the drivers side. This creates better clearance for the merc engine fan against the frame, better clearance for the oil pan/front diff, and more room for the ridonculous turbo octopus...

So here is the aforementioned adapter plate, with the dial caliper in place to center it. I didn't do this the first time. Don't be like me. Dial caliper's aren't expensive and the measuring process isn't hard. By the time I was done, I was +- .003. The trans mounts to this via tight pins, so...

Ok, update time! First up is transmission time. Here's the output end of the NV4500 with fifth gear nut upgrade. This is an Advance Adapters GM transmission. I head a leak between the trans and the adapter at this surface, and this time around I wanted to do it right, so it's been ubercleaned...

Thanks Travis - exactly the type of info I was looking for. Cheers. In go the Longfields, then.

So here is a question: I have a set of TrailGear 'Longfields' (I know there is some debate as to the awesomeness of these post TrailGear's acquisition....). I bought them to have as a backup on a lengthy offroad trip in the sierras. My front axle is fully apart. My current axles are stock...

Many thanks! Good to see you again, too. Our efforts with these trucks have many life parallels and lessons buried in the grease and swearing......

Mocking up the oil-filter relocation. I just couldn't build a model of this that a liked, so I had to position it the old-fashioned way. That's all for today.

The intercooler rear heat exchanger frame, brackets, burly SPAL fan.

Holy goddess stripping down the axles was a filthy job.

Here is the frame primed and painted. Felt so good to finally get a new coating on there! I went with a nice Pantone 425C for the frame rather than the traditional black, because I wanted to be able to see grease/oil indicating a leak or other issue, while still being a sensible 'frame' sort of...

Here is some of the modeling work showing the fuel, cooling, oil, intake, turbo systems mostly finalized. I need to update the model to reflect the final slider geometry I went with, and the new rear frame diagonal struts, but it's pretty spot on other than that.

Here is the frame, all stripped down, with most of the heavy fabrication done. I used Picklex 20 as a pre-treatment prior to paint. To get to this point was a pretty hellish combination of grinding, wire wheel, sand blasting, and a lot of welding dirty steel along the seams to box the frame...

Howdy All, Been another long time away. Back in 2017, the OM606 shifted forward from a pothole impact and clipped the fan blades off on the shroud. A few hundred feet later, major overheating warped the head and blew the gaskset. I was on the freeway up a hill with no margin and no where to...