We made it!
Well the rig made it with no real issues. 2275 miles or so. We had a little water leakage around the thermo housing and from some bad top seams on the radiator, but it wasnt enough to cause an issue. There was also a little oil leakage from the oil lines near the oil filter and the rear main, but again nothing serious.
We adjusted the fuel down one full turn after the first tank in central OR. It was running too hot on the EGT. We later adusted it back up 1/2 turn after we passed the the highest point of the trip (8600 ft) in eastern Wyoming near the halfway point of the trip. Roughly half the trip was uphill.
Our mileage over the whole trip was just under 19 US gallons/mile. Ill post details later.
There are some issues that I would like some feedback on.
1. The engine idles very rough between 750-950 RPM. Its enough to make the steering wheel rattle. If you set the hand throttle at 900 + its pretty smooth.
2. This setup has NO POWER in the top end. We had a tough time maintaining 65 mph which was about the max top speed we could do . It seemed as if the top speed was directly controlled by the adjustment of the fuel stop on the pump ( which makes some sense). 65 mph in fifth gear put us about 2300 RPM.
I have had two other 3B powered cruisers for almost 10 years and they both have much more top end than this setup currently does - with lower EGT.
The 60 weighed 5900lbs with us, fuel and the load we were carrying. Last summer and many summers previous I have taken my BJ75 on 1500 mile expeditions with loaded weight as high as 7100lbs and had no trouble doing 70-75 mph with little trouble with EGT (and a 4 speed trans to boot) . My 75 is a similar setup with 33x10.5 tires and 4.1 gearing.
What should we look into? There has been no smoke from the 60 conversion. The engine tested at 410-420lbs compression. The only thing we have not checked is the injectors, but I would suspect smoke with the EGT we were getting if the injectors were bad. Could it be that the injector opening pressure is too low and causing an issue with timing? We did check the pump timing per the FSM and it was dead on.
Thanks