Well, we're back. 17 days and over 5500kms, in the truck with my wife and nearly 3 year old daughter. Trip was awesome! Saw a lot of really cool stuff, gave my daughter a whole new set of experiences and spent some amazing quality time with the family! My daughter has now seen a mountain goat (which was a BIG deal for weeks leading up to the trip), seen the mountains (a lot of them), taken a ferry ride (where you drive right onto a boat!), ridden a gondola, ridden a roller coaster (which was a big hit), and met my grandpa, who isn't able to travel anymore.
We ducked into the states from MB, and stayed off the interstate. Pretty boring till western Montanna, then the terrain got more interesting. Went all the way west through Washington to the Olympic Peninsula, up into Vancouver, and back on the Canada side. Lots of mountains, a couple of National Parks and lots of National Forests, visiting with family and friends, old and new! Overall we clocked 5500+ kms, and averaged 17.6mpg (13.4L/100km). The truck is a lot different than when we left too!
TUNING NOTES:
We left Friday night with the MBC set to stock boost level, about 10psi. There's really just one significant hill in the stretch, where you drive down into the river valley and climb back out the other side at Brandon, but otherwise a great drive to get flat terrain gauge readings, yay. This is where I live, lol. I found that at anything over 100km/h I was pushing max boost, 10psi with the cruise control set. On that one big hill, EGT's raced for the 1250F danger zone, and I had to kick the cruise control off and get out of the throttle to keep from exceeding that very scary 1250F mark! I later learned, that cruise does a much worse job of balancing the truck's power level required, and the EGT level than your right foot. Prairie kid mistake. I cringe to think of how hot this truck, and my last HDJ81, and my Hilux Surf would have gotten on their maiden voyages home from the coast...this truck is essentially stock powerwise at this point. Yikes! I was having some real anxiety that this was going to be a very tough trip for the old girl.
With no additional air available, to exceed the 100km/h point that requires 10psi, it's dumping in additional fuel to make the extra power, resulting in higher EGT's. The speed limit is 110km/h on the #1 in MB now (finally), and with the cruise set to 120km/h the EGT's were already at 1050F+, only leaves 200F for when you try to climb a hill or pass a car, that's not much. It also has the cumulative effect of heat soaking the cooling system, contributing to making EGT's slow to drop back down it seemed. On a diesel, lean = cool=safe, fuel adds heat, and heat is what kills diesels. Before you have gauges, you make a LOT of assumptions about things that influence your driving style, ignorance is bliss, lol. 1250F is obviously not a drop dead limit, or everyone's diesel would be a lump. It was shockingly easy to blast past with the stock tune.
That night I adjusted the MBC to 15-16psi, pushing my luck a bit I felt, as everything you read will tell you 14.7psi is the max safe limit for the stock turbo. Truck felt much better! Best described as an extension to the power band of the engine. Where it would start to run out of steam around 3000rpm, and revving higher didn't seem to equal getting anywhere faster than downshifting, it would now pull to higher rev while making power. Probably 500rpm higher, which on an engine with a 4K rpm redline is a big deal. There wasn't really anything in the way of an increase down low where the turbo hadn't hit it's previous limits. The extra air up top was all you got, but it was very nice to have.
It also ran cooler, which was great! 120km/h now required 14psi, and pushed a steady 950F across the hot prairies. Started getting into some bigger hills as we headed west. Trying to maintain 120 means using your 2psi in reserve, and a bunch more fuel on top. If you hit hills with even a little bit of momentum it helps a lot. If you have to fight to reverse a downward trend, it spikes EGT's noticeably. I think this is where the cruise control falls short. The truck makes enough power to blast through the hills, but keeping it in the safe temp range is a balancing act, you really need to keep an eye on things. Getting into the foothills and bigger mountains there were climbs I held it at 1250F for minutes at a time, even dropping down into 3rd where necessary (often). It was much better than what we started with, and adequate to get us through, but lacking.
When we got to Vancouver, I dropped the truck off with my mechanic, for a valve adjustment, fuel pump timing check, and "power rod mod" tuning. Didn't get to talk to him when I dropped it off, so I made some assumptions about what I was in for. I was surprised to find when I picked it up, he upped the boost further to 21-22psi! We discussed it, and he's confident the stock turbo can take this boost level safely, and all his tuning was done with this level of air in mind, so I took his word for it. He's always done right by me, so be it.
Truck felt great! Much longer legs again, not as much increase down low as I was hoping for, but in talking to him it sounds like all of the grinding on the fuel pin would affect 15psi+, so that makes sense I guess. I had assumed the "power rod mod" was a pretty standard upgrade, but I left with the impression that this is a custom tune, and I could have put some more time into it and got more out of it. That's fine, I want to learn to tune it myself anyways.
With the boost limit at 22psi, there was lots of room to rev and still make power now! It really can be best described as though you raised your rev limiter as far as useable powerband is concerned, really wakes the engine up! I had made up my mind that I trusted my tuner, and I was going to drive this thing like I didn't think it was going to fly apart, lol. I was rewarded! Climbing out of the lower mainland, there were several grades where I was pushing 22psi for like 6 min at a time, it was great! Much easier to control EGT's again, with more power to play with. It was much harder to get into trouble temp wise, which I equate to a much safer tune, and was much, much easier to drive in the mountains. More fun too!
It was a few days of hooning around in the mountains before I got to flat land, and found that I was pushing 16psi and 875F at 120km/h with the new tune, there was lots of room with both power and temp to accelerate to pass. It's no rocket, but it's more than adequate now. Much more enjoyable to drive. And it would seem that fuel economy is unchanged. Winning.
Now I need to clean 2 weeks of bugs off the front, and cracker crumbs out of the backseat, lol. My daughter stopped eating supper tonight, and turned to me, and said "Thanks for taking me on vacation". That's a big part of why I own my Land Cruiser, and why it gets a spot in the garage.
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