JUST DID 600 MILES: MY REPORT
On Wed my wife and I headed out to Vegas to attend the SEMA show. We returned a few hours ago. This was 600 miles round trip with plenty of grades to test the turbo on including Cajon Pass and Halloran Summit.
The night before leaving I figured it would be a good idea to wrap the downpipe in heat wrap since the downpipe blanket I'm having made wasn't ready yet. No big deal wrapping it and the AC hard line. The only thing not covered is the junction from turbo to downpipe and the wastegate itself. Once wrapped I had my little brother reinstall everything back since he's done it a few dozen times now.
The morning we left my brother mentioned that he couldn't get the mounting clamp on because the wrap was too thick. He picked a bad time to tell me because we needed to leave. I gave it literally a 1/2 second of thought and decided to try running it without the little bracket that hard mounts the downpipe to the truck's bellhousing. This proved to be a stupid decision.
The entire trip there the truck was only turned off long enough to get gas. Not enough time to completely cool down for a complete heat cycle. Zero issues the whole way to Vegas and the truck and turbo is just amazingly bad ass and couldn't be happier.
While in Vegas there was a total of 8 heat cycles. This is where the result of my bad decision started to rear its ugly head. My wife and I met with with Dan Kunz, Kurt Williams, Bryson Tsujimoto and a handful of others where we all got stupid (fireballs may have been involved). Anyway some of the folks wanted to check out the turbo truck so off we went to the parking lot.
Truck started up fine, questions were answered, it was time to get to the hotel. But...I did notice an exhaust smell. It was slight but it was there. I thought maybe the welded CAT sprung a hole with all the movement. Figured I'd check it out when everything cooled down. Forgot about the issue this morning until we were on our way home. Went up Halloran Summit and the truck was happiest pulling 82mph up the summit. It could easily go faster that just seemed the sweet spot. It was pulling hard and engine temps hit 198.
Once we got to the top and basically coasted down the other side, we could both start smelling it. Something was melting and a definite smell of exhaust. But truck was driving fine although I could start hearing that typical exhaust leak noise. We pulled over at Baker, scored some MAD GREEK and let the truck cool down for a bit. After lunch I popped the hood and saw what I hoped I wouldn’t see.
Since there was no downpipes mounting clamp there was nothing to the pipe rigidly mounted to the bell housing. This meant the weight, and movement, of the downpipes would be shared between the exhaust mounts and the V-band clamp at the turbo. It was the heat cycles that exposed the flaw of my 1/2 second decision. The connection is thin stainless steel to thick cast iron. These could have different expansion and contraction rates. Also different to the V-band clamp. Well, the heat cycles exposed the REASON for the clamp. The heat cycling allowed the downpipe to shift downward JUST enough to expose a small slit of exhaust gas coming out of the turbo.
The result: The hood liner disintegrated at the leak site. The F6 Woven wrap melted that was protecting the main engine harness. Its melting point is 482º. If I hadn’t had wrapped it, it would have destroyed the harness. All of the other cables, hoses, etc were protected with the supplied heats leaving so I’m really happy all that was included.
Luckily that is all that happened but it could have been a lot worse. The key is USE ALL OF THE PARTS I SUPPLY! Don’t be lazy. I got lazy and it could have been bad. But its more about my bruised pride. Now I could have just hid all of this and kept it to myself but I want the transparency. Its good to know what could happen with certain decisions and why.
In a few days I will have the downpipe blanket sent to me to be tested and adjusted. I will recommend either the blanket or ceramic coating (or even both). Some may prefer wrapping and that’s kinda ok too.
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