Builds Family haulin' (2 Viewers)

[Hojack]

If that translates to 205-215 in Texas, then our setups aren't so different.

Earlier this week it was mid 90s and running in at temp range.

 

[boots4]

For me, when I'm running AC in hot temps during normal driving I run 190-195F. If I start working it like towing a small trailer in the dessert up long grades I have to turn the AC off because I'll see 230F if I let it.

I've been picking @J Mack brain and reviewing his set up and have decided to convert to a mechanical fan. Even with my bigger radiator and the switch to the bigger fans it runs hotter than I'd like while I'm working it. The electrics are awesome for normal daily driving and have a couple of other advantages. It's only when I start working things hard do I run passed their capacity. I want to be able to charge up a hill letting high boost do its thing running the AC with or without a trailer in tow and not have to pull out of it.

Mechanicals can just flat out pull more air. Running a single turbo, smaller tires, and less fueling I really didn't have many issues with electricals but since I've converted to compounds the balance changed.

 

[The Phoenician]

For me, when I'm running AC in hot temps during normal driving I run 190-195F. If I start working it like towing a small trailer in the dessert up long grades I have to turn the AC off because I'll see 230F if I let it.

I've been picking @J Mack brain and reviewing his set up and have decided to convert to a mechanical fan. Even with my bigger radiator and the switch to the bigger fans it runs hotter than I'd like while I'm working it. The electrics are awesome for normal daily driving and have a couple of other advantages. It's only when I start working things hard do I run passed their capacity. I want to be able to charge up a hill letting high boost do its thing running the AC with or without a trailer in tow and not have to pull out of it.

Mechanicals can just flat out pull more air. Running a single turbo, smaller tires, and less fueling I really didn't have many issues with electricals but since I've converted to compounds the balance changed.

I pretty much have the exact same issues. I'm running a mechanical and two electric fans with the largest radiator I could fit. Everything is great until i make it work. Just make sure you have a good shroud.

 

[Hojack]

My dodge 3500 6 speed hauled 14,000 pounds of hay Saturday. 88-92F outside. My water temp was just over 200F climbing 5 mile grade from 1500’ to 2700’ in elevation at 50 mph. I let the truck do the work and not try to push it any faster. Only issue was my PACBRAKE blowing the fuse again. Hopefully I’ve narrowed it down to the check valve not closing allowing it to over cycle the compressor.

 

[cruisermatt]

@boots4

Mike, 10 years later, are you still running this reluctor wheel setup?

Since the ring was cracked anyways I figured I could try and mount it outside somewhere on the spinning drivetrain. That's exactly what I did in a crude backyard fabricator kind of way. I cut out a plate and drilled holes as centered as I could to mount it to my tcase flange. It's not spot on but it turned out pretty good.

I made some funky mounting bracket for the speed sensor that I grabbed from the other tranny. The sensor is held on by a hose clamp because I wanted to be able to adjust the gap and I wasn't sure what the run-out on the ring was going to be. I have a .040 gap on it with the ring run-out about .030 and it picks up the speed just fine. Speed has been verified by GPS so it's good. To test the run-out I put the rear on stands to get the wheels off the ground and put it in gear idling so it would spin. I also found at this time that the rear tires are out of round, not the rims, but the tires.

 

[Kief]

Where do you guys have your sensor? I have mine at the t-stat on the top front. There is an old sensor under the intake between #2&3 (Ithink) cylinders that I wonder what it would read..
I've never ran warm hot afaik but I run the factory Gage.

 

[boots4]

@cruisermatt

Yes, I am still running that speed sensor set up. It continues to work and I have not had to get into my transmission to install the ring where it should be so I'm still using it as is. The wheel does have a little wobble while spinning but does not cause any issues with the sensor. I think I've adjusted it once or twice and it's been solid.

Just a reminder for those who aren't sure why I did this set up. In the 4L80 there is a front and rear speed sensor position and in 4wd versions both positions had reluctor wheels inside the transmission part stacks for the sensors to pick up. The last time I put this together before running a transmission controller I mixed a 2wd and 4wd to get the best parts. I didn't realize the rear didn't have a reluctor ring in the stack because I was still running my manual control setup/experiment. So when I went to a transmission controller and found that I didn't have a rear wheel that the controller needed I fabbed up this outside reluctor ring set up using the ring and sensor that was from my spare transmission parts. I figured the next time I had to tear it apart I'd install a new reluctor ring and move my sensor to the transmission rear position.

With my newer version transmission controller I could use the front and rear speed sensors to have some more features work, but having the sensor after the tcases I can use the off-road programing tab of the tuning software to play with low and double low shifting maps. I haven't done that tuning yet but I do get the controller to go into safe mode in the normal tune when I'm in low gearing because the speed does not match the tps plot points on the map so it thinks there is something wrong and goes into safe mode (full line pressure). It's not a big deal because I usually manually select my gears when off-roading and safe mode resets when I turn off the engine when I park to get out to see something, etc. Someday I'll get a map for low gearing set up.

 

[boots4]

@Kief

I am currently running my electric fan sensor on the front port on the engine side of the thermostat. I am running my factory and aftermarket gauge sensors off of the rear driver side port off of cylinder 4 as that's been said to be the hottest reading from these engines. The mechanical gauge is where I'm getting numbers from as opposed to the factory H L read out.

 

[Hojack]

@Kief

I am currently running my electric fan sensor on the front port on the engine side of the thermostat. I am running my factory and aftermarket gauge sensors off of the rear driver side port off of cylinder 4 as that's been said to be the hottest reading from these engines. The mechanical gauge is where I'm getting numbers from as opposed to the factory H L read out.

This was from my build thread-

Pickup a temp gun this morning to check temp. My water temp gauge is in the back of motor and is right on.

Fan sensor had the highest temp.

Radiator hose

Radiator cap

Twice I’ve checked water temp since the Speedhut gauges and the temp gun showed the front hotter than the back of motor.

 

[Kief]

Cool, I could see areas with less circulation being hotter but on a 4bt I wouldn't think that should be an issue with the same pump as a 6bt. The last spot leaving the block should be the hottest- makes sense to me...I'm so thankful you guys figure all this stuff out.

 

[boots4]

Interesting results. The last cylinder is the furthest away from the coolant flow so it makes sense it should be hotter. This is also the likely spot for coolant pressure spikes when pushing more power and was the reason I ended up installing a coolant bypass set up to release pressure from pushing out my freeze plugs. I wonder if the front reading being on the exhaust side of the head had some heat soak going on. I'll have to try you IR gun on my engine one of these days.

The rear port is also where the factory sender unit on the 1st gen cummins are located.

 

[Jason Andrews]

I pretty much have the exact same issues. I'm running a mechanical and two electric fans with the largest radiator I could fit. Everything is great until i make it work. Just make sure you have a good shroud.

I'll give my $.02 since I have fought high temps with my 4bt swap since 2009. Multiple single turbos, torque convertors, injectors, injection pumps, "tunes," compounds, hood louvers, multiple fan upgrades etc. In my experience if the cooling system is otherwise in top shape the elevated engine temps are not so much attributed to the load on the engine towing/or pulling steep grades, but more a symptom of heat soak. Certainly true if the exhaust manifold isn't stock or not ceramic coated - mine is neither. The heat that is shed from 2 turbo exhaust housings, the hot pipe, and the down pipe tremendously effect the entire Land Cruiser engine compartment ambient temp. Especially when sustained for long periods of time like pulling mountain passes.

The difference in running from a normal 800-1000* EGT to running a sustained 1200* up a steep grade amounts to say ~300* difference at the manifold. That can easily translate to 30*+ to the engine and components. When I wrapped the turbo exhaust housings in turbo blankets and lava rock wrapped the hot pipe and exhaust manifold that made a huge difference in my engine temps when pulling steep passes. The only thing I haven't done is my downpipe which I know is shedding a ton of heat above the wheel well on its way out.

@boots4 Any heat containment provisions in place currently? Or is it too humid where you are and it would rust?

 

[boots4]

I do have my small to larger turbo transition pipe (hot pipe) wrapped as well as my down pipe off of my large turbo down to under-ish the rig. I don't have any wrap on my exhaust manifold nor am I running any turbo blankets. Blankets would be easy to install but wrapping the manifold would probably be best with it removed. Glad to hear that has made a difference in your set up.

I do tend to believe it's a balance kind of thing of getting good airflow through the cooling row and having somewhere that the heat can escape, plus the kind of tune and whether one is pulling under hood air or outside air for the intake. Sounds like the wrap compliments the system with everything else and it works really well together. I'll have to look into some blankets for summer time although I don't have any big trips planned for this summer. I may not get to my mechanical fan swap as soon as I thought.

 

[Hojack]

Cascade Cruisers Christmas tree run

Snow wheeling trip in the Cascades

 

[boots4]

Not quite the awesome powder we were hoping for but it did start to get deep.

 

[Hojack]

Not quite the awesome powder we were hoping for but it did start to get deep.

We’ll soon get that dry powder wheeling at the Crater Lake property buddy

 

[boots4]

Dang, last real update was over a year ago. Time to get some more stuff on here.

I had noticed that as I was playing with turbo juiciness that I was getting some coolant leaking from the block heater. I took it out a couple of times and tried resealing it or using a different washer. It still leaked. Well that was because it was leaking from the power connection and not around the rim like I thought. I replaced and and no more leaking.

New one is obvious

Leaking from the connector, you can see the deterioration in there.

It should look more like this.

 

[boots4]

At some point I decided to pull the intercooler to clean it out from juicy turbos and found that it was leaking in a couple of spots. That whole research train lead me to Treadstone and this exciting package.

I though about epoxying my old one myself. Finally found a repair show locally I could consult with after many phone calls around. They could epoxy it and I thought that was a good idea since they'd clean it better. But there was no warranty and then they talked about replacing the core. This core was an odd size/thickness... and on it went. Basically I found I could get a place like Treadstone to build me one for cheaper than I could get my old one fixed. So that's the direction I ended up going using that money toward a new piece instead of patching up the old and then doing it again once it failed.

Old on top, new on bottom.

So overall the new intercooler was narrower, a little shorter, but way thicker! I ended up building a mock up out of cardboard to see if I could make its dimensions fit in my cooling row. Of course this did mean new surgery to the front end to make it work but it seemed like it was going to fit.

Old one over the larger radiator. You can see the lower left corner of the radiator how it was getting oily. That was from the leaks in the intercooler.

If you noticed in the first comparison pic that new intercooler did not have any mounts on it. I decided to design mounting like my old unit so I bought some aluminum and bugged @brokenparts about using his tig machine to weld it up. I watched hours more of tig welding aluminum to try and get a hold on it again. I had previously used his machine to convert my little turbo's compressor housing to a v-band set up since I was continually blowing up silicon boots at that connection to my intake tubing. I have to admit that aluminum welding kicked my butt for the second time. I share the following pics embarassingly but it must have worked because I've not had any failures over this last year.

I welded on aluminum angle for the top mount much like I saw on my old intercooler. I ground down all the ugliness and added a bunch of rivets as piece of mind.

I bought a core, end tanks, and elbows and paided Treadstone to have them put it all together; they did a great job. They say these cores are rated up to 100 psi which was a good direction for me since I'm hitting 60+ psi from my compounds. I think the most I found digging on the internet about the old intercooler was maybe a 40 psi rating. The internal tube design is supposed to be better for dispersing heat as well.

Here's my hack job on the bottom mounts.

Used some weather stripping to act as a seal between it and the radiator.

Now with some mounts is was time to get it set up in the cooling row.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

You put pop rivets through the aluminum angle into the intercooler core? Did you take steps to prevent leaks through the rivets?

 

[boots4]

The top bar on the core is solid meaning no airflow goes through it. I made sure the rivets where only deep enough to grab that piece and not touch the actual tube below them.