Got the Hewitt-Tech SAIS bypass kit in yesterday and installed it last night. Took about 3 hours total. Cleaned the front brakes and greased the pins while I had the front wheels off.
There are two block off plates that have to be installed in the air tubes near the exhaust manifold on either side. You access these via the wheel wells and they each have 2 studs with 10mm nuts on them. I opened up the access to these FIRST and soaked them with WD40 penetrating oil. By the time I got to this step 2.5 hours later they all broke free very easily. If you snap one of these studs off, you are in for a nightmare of a repair from what I can tell.
The hardest part of this entire install BY FAR is unclipping the two Air Switching Valve/Pressure Sensors at the back of the engine. You literally have to cllimb on top of the engine to reach these things are you really can't see them without wedging your head back by the firewall. When you get to this step STOP. Do you wear a Size L, XL or even bigger glove? Walk away and go find a friend with baby hands.
I am kidding. Sort of. I was able to unclip a couple harnesses and get enough room to get a long set of needle nose pliers back there on the drivers side and unclip the connector. From there I was able to pull it off and connect the new wiring harness.
The passenger side is like some cruel torture device and my forearms and fingers still hurt this morning. Even with unclipping the main engine wiring harness and removing everything I could find in the area it was simply too small for me to get my hands down in there. I ended up using a very long flat had screw driver with a tiny head to pop the clip on the connector. From there I used two very long flat head screw drivers on either side of the connector to work it forward side by side like 0.0001mm at a time. All while laying on top of the engine. This part took me about 1.5 hours. It was NOT fun, but it can be done.
Everything else is super straight forward and simple. The kit is very well put together. The Youtube video mentions that in the future they will have custom plugs for the unused connectors (The are 12V 50AMP power so don't want to leave them exposed.) My kit DID come with the custom plugs. Sweet! I took this a step further and packed them with dielectric grease then popped the plugs in to prevent and corrosion down the road. The plugs fit great but not sure they would be water tight.
The instructions have you remove 1 of the 2 secondary air injection system drivers and mount the Gen-II Bypass system to the bracket. The have you leave one of the (No longer used) drivers just so you can plug the extra power connector back into it so its no uncovered. The kit is now coming with plugs for these connectors so you could definitely remove both air injection system drivers if you want a more clean look. I did leave the second driver in there, but I may go back and remove it, just so it doesn't look like there is disconnected hardware in the engine bay in case I have to go through a visual emission inspection at any point.
So the good stuff: IT WORKS! Reconnected the batter and fired up the truck. No error codes. Took it for a few drives last night and my wife has been out and about driving it all morning. No issues. Can't say I notice that it runs any differently. Even when it was throwing a code it still started/idled/ran perfectly, but I am happy to have no errors on the screen and have access to 4LO again!
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Custom plugs for the power connectors that now come with the kit.
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The two factory secondary air injection system drivers. You have to remove 1 of them because you will moun the Gen-II system in its place. But you can optionally remove both. They are no longer in use with the bypass installed.
