a few questions

orange150

orange150

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 20, 2005
Location
Fairfax City, VA
Finally have a chance to sit down; summer school and work take about 23 hours of my day... one to sleep. no time to even think about messing with my 250 let alone my orange truck.
anyway. Before I even start looking at SVO I want pay for the stuff that I feel should be taken care of first as a DD vehicle.

I want guages for monitoring my engine, 5speed so no tranny temp, so after reading another thread about it I figure I just need a pyro and boost guage, really just pyro but whatever. the pyro is PRE-turbo not post right? I like the Z-series from Auto Meter because they look OEM.

My transmission needs some work, the 2nd gear syncro is bad(i cant downshift into second going around or above 10mph). and also the clutch might be going bad. I can't really tell though because Im not sure if a diesel clutch is supposed to feel any different than a normal(gasser) clutch. How much am I looking at paying for this and where is a good place near Raleigh around NCSU to take it.

I talked to a guy at work (Lowes... it sucks) who drove a Cummins, he had an aftermarket timer on his that automatically would shut the truck down after a pre set amount of time so that he wouldnt have to sit around for a few minutes and wait for the EGT's to drop. He could get out and lock up his truck and not worry about it. I thought that is a pretty good investment seeing as how im usually late and dont have time to sit and wait for temps to drop. Is that something that is worth it and if so where can I pick one up?

I do plan on putting a chip and exhaust on it, but thats later on. I like the selectable chips where you can select from a different number of power settings and looking at dieselperformance.com it seems that there aren't many choices for my style truck.

I think thats all the questions I have.
 
orange150 said:
...and where is a good place near Raleigh around NCSU to take it.
Click to expand...

UHH HELLO...MCFLY.

Pyro is pre-turbo. Boost guage is good if your are a tuner & monitoring performance, diagnostic etc, but really for decoration and conversation. Most people wouldnt even know what to do or even notice if boost changes were occuring.

The clutch is no different, should be firm pedal feel and grab a little off the floor. Your pressure plate may be worn. If your not adding tons of hp, you can get away with another stock type clutch. If you plan to get serious with hp/tq down the road, plan ahead and get the cerrametalic/organic clutch. You can stay with a dual mass flywheel or change over to a solid flywheel.

A turbo timer isnt necessarily needed with a stock turbo. It again is a cool conversational piece.
 
I'm with Mr. Nuts about the timer.. let's look at it this way.. Gasoline engines (going off memory) have exhaust that runs at 800-1000° at a minimum, since they have to maintain that "14.7:1" air-fuel mixture. So is shutting down when the exhaust gas temp on your truck is at 400° gonna kill the turbo? Doubt it.

There was a poll on what caused the failure of people's turbos on the Dodge board... Not a single failure was from oil starvation caused by the coking of oil. Hell, my stock turbo went 255k miles and was fine when I upgraded it, and I can guarantee that the previous owner didn't do a cool-down.

Cummins also only says to wait a minute if you're towing heavy and just pulled off (like stopping at a highway rest area).
 
orange150 said:
My transmission needs some work, the 2nd gear syncro is bad(i cant downshift into second going around or above 10mph). and also the clutch might be going bad. I can't really tell though because Im not sure if a diesel clutch is supposed to feel any different than a normal(gasser) clutch. How much am I looking at paying for this and where is a good place near Raleigh around NCSU to take it.
.
Click to expand...
You're probably better off finding a good used transmission, repair of a ZF 5speed is astronomical. The dual mass flywheel and clutch kit when I bought one was close to a grand and yes, you can usually bet the flywheel will need to be replaced.
 
Ditto...

Many folks on TDS report great results changing to a single mass flywheel or simply converting the DMF to SMF (IIRC, a guy named "LaRue"? came up with how to do it...).

Most folks there shy away from ceramic... saying there's no in between disengaged & engaged... makes it a PITA to slip when backing a trailer, etc.
 
Rich said:
I'm with Mr. Nuts about the timer.. let's look at it this way.. Gasoline engines (going off memory) have exhaust that runs at 800-1000° at a minimum, since they have to maintain that "14.7:1" air-fuel mixture. So is shutting down when the exhaust gas temp on your truck is at 400° gonna kill the turbo? Doubt it.
There was a poll on what caused the failure of people's turbos on the Dodge board... Not a single failure was from oil starvation caused by the coking of oil. Hell, my stock turbo went 255k miles and was fine when I upgraded it, and I can guarantee that the previous owner didn't do a cool-down.
Cummins also only says to wait a minute if you're towing heavy and just pulled off (like stopping at a highway rest area).
Click to expand...

cool, that makes me feel better about it.

BIGWOODY said:
You're probably better off finding a good used transmission, repair of a ZF 5speed is astronomical. The dual mass flywheel and clutch kit when I bought one was close to a grand and yes, you can usually bet the flywheel will need to be replaced.
Click to expand...

why is fixing the tranny so much? i thought manuals were cheaper than autos? is there any salvage yard to look or should i just post up some wanted ads?

still very new to the diesel with very little time to learn between calc II tests. thanks for all the input guys.
 
I can rebuild an auto fairly easy...a "handshaker" still makes me scratch my head some. The internals for the 5 spd are just plain high in comparison to an auto, however the rebuilds are less frequent. I'd take my time and look around you should be able to find one reasonably ($500-750). Or who knows you may find someone to rebuild it cheaper, but good manual tranny rebuilders at a fair price are few and far between.
 
thats kind of a bummer, but oh well.

and yea, no high power rating for this kid. Like i said just minor mods like chip, intercooler and exhaust to make the drive a little more fun.
 
turbo

The cool down period is important. The reason for cooling the turbo down is this, a hot turbo will coke the oil in the turbo and over time build up enough coking to limit the flow of oil to the bearings in the turbo. If you use the proper technique, "keep your foot off the fuel pedal as much as possible prior to stopping", you can have the turbo temp fairly low when you get to your stopping point. I just recently installed a system on my Dodge that has the cool down feature and it is pretty neat. It will normally shut off, 300 degrees pre-turbo, before I get 30 feet from the vehicle. I still strive to cool it down as much as possible while stopping. With the 97 Dodge and this one, three minutes is usually enough time to reach 300 degrees.
 
Another thing turbo timers are good for is to let the turbo spool down if you've been hard on the throttle prior to shut down. (Towing, drag racing etc.) Hate to cut off the oil supply to something turining 100,000 RPM. 'Course, getting off the skinny pedal a bit before parking it will also let it slow down.
 
since the discussion has turned a bit towards the timer, I'll toss in a question (that I think I already know the answer to)...

with a 5-speed...using a timer...I assume you just have to depend on the parking brake since you can't leave it in gear when you get out?

Thanks.
Greg
 
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