I started looking into the fuel pin again thinking that I needed a more gradual ramp for the fuel guide pin to follow as boost was building. I pulled out my M3 pin and put in my stock pin. It sucked so I ordered an THD fuel pin. But while I was waiting I ground in a new ramp on my stock pin to try that out. Took some metal polish after the grind and smoothed it out.
M3 on the left, reground stock on the right
Some time around this, maybe it was before, I started playing with timing using the dial indicator. My dial is in inches so I had to convert to mm. I played around in the .060-.066 range (1.52-1.67mm). That should be in the 15 to upper 16 degree timing range if I figured it out correctly.
It always started well, didn't get clackity loud, but didn't clean up the haze I was wanting to clean up.
The THD pin showed up.
M3 left, THD middle, reground stock right.
My reground stock (back) ended up being pretty close to the THD pin (middle). The bottom of the ramp was a little less with the THD which means less pre-boost fueling which should make it cleaner. The THD is a more gradual/linear ramp than the M3. M3 actually has a little better preboost fueling ramp but then gets into it quicker than the THD. Plus the M3 has a deeper top cut which means more top end fueling. Since I care about smoke I was figuring I needed to fuel my turbos in a way that lets them get up to speed to add in the air needed to clean up the fuel. Too much fuel too soon will slow them down somewhat choking them but not enough fuel won't get them spinning. It's a balance thing.
I played with the M3 and the THD pin. Each time playing with the power screw, smoke screw, and the star wheel. As expected the THD pin felt stronger at midrange and the power was more linear. The M3 pin came on stronger and had a stronger top end. Even up until now I'm not sure which one I like better. What I did find out is that neither of them solved my hazing. With some settings it was worse and more black puffs happened but with others it never went away.
I had the star wheel at the top of its threads and the underside of the AFC housing ground away and you can see in some of the pics above that the fuel guide pin was traveling to the least fuel spot on the fuel pins. But the same weird thing was happening, clean exhaust in park/neutral during idle, but put it in gear with the brake on and it would haze.
With the star wheel maxed out I started putting spacers under the spring to give me more tension. Eventually I started seeing that I was loosing full travel on the fuel pin ramps. I knew I was using a spring designed for a boost range into the 20s so I started looking for stiffer springs to see what that would do.
Found one to play with at the local hardware store. Cut it to length to match the stock spring. Took out my spacers and reset the star wheel to middle of the thread column.
It seemed to help a little but goldie locks would not be happy, it wasn't just right. So I continue to play with this spring with all the settings and see how it does. Maybe I need an even stiffer spring, maybe it needs to be a little longer than stock. I have run the star wheel up high enough that I've reduced full travel on the fuel pin.
It was around here that I just started living with it and started focusing on some other projects. I figured I'd take the injection pump to someone to see if some internal calibration was off and causing too much fuel to quickly. Once I even turned down the fuel so much that I started stalling the engine (yes, even with the automatic) when I'd come to stops and it had no low end power. Even then it would haze like before. It wasn't super obnoxious (except to those electric car drivers -hehe) but just more than I wanted.
The project I really wanted to focus on was getting my AC system working again. It was the beginning of summer and I dreamed about what it would be like to drive that truck in the summer without sweating.