Project Silver Bullet

[Booyah45828]

Originally Posted by musigenesis

I had a dude in a pickup truck almost merge right into me on an interstate on-ramp a couple weeks ago. I laid on my horn for at least 5 seconds before he suddenly slammed his brakes on. I don't understand how you either don't see a 35' school bus or else assume it's going to sashay over one lane for you despite being pinned by dense traffic. He didn't even have the excuse of looking at his phone like the majority of drivers I see these days.

Dude, I know! I have no clue why people do it either. It's like I was invisible, or they all thought they had some right to do it, and that I was supposed to just slam on the brakes to avoid them. Just typing this up brought back the frustration that I had at the time.

And like I said, the stock horn is a joke. I might as well have squeaked a bicycle horn at them out the window.

I'd like to see them do it now and try to ignore me. I forget what the db rating was, or if it's even accurate, but these here look similar to them.
https://www.raneystruckparts.com/chr...MaAlNKEALw_wcB

[Booyah45828]

Originally Posted by Booyah45828

I replaced both front king pins and wheel bearings about 2 years ago. The pins were loose and the bearings didn't look the greatest when inspected. The left side pin was a complete bear to remove. I had to create a steel cage out of 2 inch square tubing and use a 10 ton porta power along with a rosebud acetylene torch to get it out. I was paid back when the right side fell right out when the wedge key was removed. The bore in the axle on the right side was out of spec/wallered out, So I used some loctite 660 retaining compound on it. The gap was just inside the specs for the loctite so I figured I'd try it. The correct way to fix this is to pay someone(Axle Surgeons) to machine the hole and insert a bushing, but the loctite seems to be working so far. I'll keep an eye on it.

I also forgot that the wedge key on the left side wouldn't come out. After going through heavier and heavier hammers, punches, air chissels, and more drill bits you could think of. I broke down and bought a rescue bit off of amazon. That was the only think that would drill through the wedge. Once a hole was through, the wedge came out with a few light taps from a hammer.

Another thing I learned in that process was to use a vise grips to hold the punch I'm hitting. Hit your hand with an errant swing from an 10lb hammer and that education comes real quick.

[Booyah45828]

New alternator for the apu came this week.



https://www.dbelectrical.com/product...4-2005-up.html
I bought it off the internet from DB Electrical. It's a 60 amp version and has a 1 year warranty. They have pretty good ratings on their starter motors on other forums that I'm a member of, so I figured that's the best option. None of my parts suppliers had one within a day, and they all wanted double what I paid.

The old alternator was a 40 amp unit and was purchased new a few years ago when I built the unit. I forget the brand or where I purchased it from online, but I remember having doubts about the quality. Actually, now that I think of it, I swapped the old voltage regulator onto the new alternator because the new one wasn't working right out of the box. I don't remember why I didn't send it back for a refund that time

It was replaced because it wasn't charging, or was barely charging. You could see it sparking internally between the stator coil and the case, so I'd say it's junk.

[somewhereinusa]

So, where are you in west Ohio?

[Native]

Originally Posted by somewhereinusa

So, where are you in west Ohio?

Based on a description posted in another thread ... about 150 miles due east of you. (I could be remembering wrong though.)

[Booyah45828]

A little update on the turbo build/install.

I pulled the manifold and turbine housing out of the molasses/water solution. They were in there soaking for about 2 weeks. I used a large plastic trash can with lid to hold it all, drilled a hole in the top of the lid, and used an aquarium pump to keep the solution from fermenting. Some folks had instances of this happening when they tried it so I figured I'd be proactive and try something.


Not very appetizing, and there were a few specs of mold floating, but It didn't smell fermented or rotten, So on the aquarium pump.

Pulling the pieces out, they looked like this.


All of the rust appears to turn into like an 1/8" of a black slime like substance. It all washed right off with a garden hose and a spray bottle of diluted super clean. There were some black specs that was like baked carbon that wouldn't hose off. That all came off with some scrubbing from a wire brush.

But, anyways, here's the results.

Nearly brand new metal.

I coated it liberally with wd40 to disperse the water and protect it from re-rusting. If it was left to dry, a surface coating of rust almost immediately appeared.

Now, I'm stuck waiting until next week for another engine I'm going to be buying. I need one of the exhaust manifolds off of it and then have it de-rusted like these pieces were. Then I can have it all cerakoted.

[Booyah45828]

Oh, and I also swapped the bottom cushion from the passenger seat to the air ride seat. The bottom fabric on the two were different but the cushion was identical. The seat backs are pretty different as well, so I didn't mess them. Went pretty well, although I'm going to invest in a good hog ring pliers if I ever attempt this again. It's kind of a pain trying to pull the fabric tight and fasten them with a needle nose pliers.

Planning to install it and the new genny alternator here in the coming weeks.

[Native]

The molasses & water solution worked great! Those parts look like new. I bet they will always look as nice once you have them coated.


What ratio of molasses to water? Your choice of molasses?


Edit: Where/how did you learn this method?

[Booyah45828]

Originally Posted by Native

The molasses & water solution worked great! Those parts look like new. I bet they will always look as nice once you have them coated.


What ratio of molasses to water? Your choice of molasses?

The pictures look good, but you have to see it in person to get a feel for how well this worked. I quite literally, washed the parts off to expose clean metal. I only paid 5 bucks a gallon for the molasses, and 10 for the aquarium pump setup. I'm not including the trashcan in the cost because we can use those in the shop anyways, and you could use any container to do this in. So for 25 bucks, It's cheaper then most commercial liquid rust converters.

Keeping it all looking nice is a side goal. I mainly wanted to lower the underhood temps by either wrapping or coating all of the exhaust pieces. The problem with wraps is they can retain water and cause rust. I figure there's less of a chance of them cracking or being ruined if they aren't rusted, and I definitely don't want to ruin this manifold.

I used 3 gallons of mollases from my local feed mill, it looked black so I'd assume it's blackstrap molasses, but I'm not certain. It came in gallon jugs so I dumped the molasses out and then rinsed and dumped each jug out with water around 7 times, So I'd say it's like a 7:1 mixture. Online people have used anywhere from 5-10:1 ratios. I don't know if a stronger or weaker mix would yield quicker results.

[banman]

Originally Posted by Booyah45828

Oh, and I also swapped the bottom cushion from the passenger seat to the air ride seat. The bottom fabric on the two were different but the cushion was identical. The seat backs are pretty different as well, so I didn't mess them. Went pretty well, although I'm going to invest in a good hog ring pliers if I ever attempt this again. It's kind of a pain trying to pull the fabric tight and fasten them with a needle nose pliers.

Planning to install it and the new genny alternator here in the coming weeks.

Last time I needed hog ring pliers I cheated -- use zip-ties instead. So much easier.

[Booyah45828]

Well, the spare engine was bought and picked up. Got it for 200 bucks. I need to remove the manifolds off of it and get one of them soaking in the derusting solution.

I cleaned up and painted the compressor housing off the old turbo. Cleaning consisted of bead blasting all the old paint and carbon. I then used super clean on it to get rid of the hidden carbon and gunk. Super clean is the stuff that comes in the purple jug, and it seems to work really well at cleaning gunk and corrosion off of aluminum. After cleaning, I hit it with several coats of primer, a couple coats of aluminum colored paint, and then a couple coats of clear. I used rattle cans of rustoleum for all of it, and I'm hoping it will stay a nice looking finish through heat and use.

After that, I installed the compressor housing on the new CHRA.

It fit like it should, and I used simple hex headed bolts from the bolt bin at the shop, but I might swap them out to stainless socket cap screws. The hex bolts worked fine with all but one, and that one needed an open ended wrench to tighten because a socket wouldn't fit. I'd say it's fine but I really don't want rust or issues with it, so that's why I might change it.

I'm hoping to have this other manifold off the engine and cleaned to bare metal in a couple weeks, then I can have the 3 pieces cerakoted by my buddy. That's if the covid virus doesn't throw a wrench in those plans. I'm not sure if he's considered essential or will be working, so we'll see what happens.

[Native]

Why did you not have the turbo compressor cerakoted?

[Booyah45828]

Originally Posted by Native

Why did you not have the turbo compressor cerakoted?

The cerakote I told him I wanted was a high temp black. I don't think it's necessary for the compressor to be high temp coated. There shouldn't be more then a few hundred degrees there, so the enamel paint should be good enough. I also didn't want the compressor black either. So if I would have had him coat it, he would have needed to get a different color/powder, and I'm not sure when he could have gotten that.

Truthfully, I don't know when he'll get to the stuff. I don't think he would be considered "essential", and I'm thinking Ohio is going to continue the ban on non-essential business for another few weeks more.

[Booyah45828]

Plus, I had the rattle cans on the shelf already, so it cost me nothing but time to do. If the paint comes off, I'll consider having it coated then. I should be able to remove the compressor housing on the bus.

[Native]

Originally Posted by Booyah45828

Plus, I had the rattle cans on the shelf already, so it cost me nothing but time to do. If the paint comes off, I'll consider having it coated then. I should be able to remove the compressor housing on the bus.

Somehow, I remember putting an IR gun to both the compressor and the turbine halves of the turbo. The number that sticks out is 300 F.

[Booyah45828]

Originally Posted by Native

Somehow, I remember putting an IR gun to both the compressor and the turbine halves of the turbo. The number that sticks out is 300 F.

Well, we shall see then. The TDS for the paint I used specifies the metal surface must not exceed 200 degrees. I doubt that means it will flake off at 201, but it might discolor or something else.

I find it hard to believe that it wouldn't work though. The turbo came off of a dt466 and it still had the blue/green color they paint the whole engine with from the factory. Knowing how cheap manufacturer's are, I doubt that they would use anything special or high temp in that situation.

[Booyah45828]

Finally installed the new alternator on the gen set. Holds the batteries at 14.2 volts while running so it's doing good.

The serpentine belt on the generator head started squealing. I don't really understand what happened and why now though. We ran it for 60 hours last year during the summer and didn't have a peep out of it. I ran it overnight once in October and it chirped all night. Fired it up a week ago and it squealed like a pig. Tried a new belt, it quieted down for a few minutes but then came back. I checked the pulley alignment, and that all looked good, I even machined off the peaks of the pulleys thinking that they were riding in the grooves of the belt. None of that helped. While running it after all that, I noticed the automatic tensioner was kind of bouncing while it was running, so I clocked it a little tighter, which helped the bounce but didn't stop the squeal.

Frustrated, I pulled out the belt tension tester and found it only had 30 lbs of tension on it. Dayco recommends 30 lbs per rib on a micro-v belt, so it should have around 240 lbs(8 ribs x 30 lbs) of tension on it, so I'm way below that.

The tensioner is the original one from the apu, and luckily I found a part number on it that cross referenced to a dayco number. So I bought and installed a new tensioner, reinstalled the belt, and then checked it again with the gauge and it only showed 50 lbs on it.

That's no bueno according to Dayco.

I have it clocked as tight as it will go while still having the ability to slide the belt on. So I don't think this spring tensioner is going to work in this situation. I'm not really sure how it worked when the unit was an APU. The belt routing is pretty much the same for both. Who knows.

As a test, I installed the old tensioner and welded the spring mechanism solid. I then cut off the clocking ear, used a breaker bar to manually set the belt at 200 lbs of tension, and then used a 1/2 inch air impact to tighten the mounting bolt. That worked for a few minutes in the shop and running it that way the squeal is now gone, so it's definitely a tension issue. The problem is that after running an hour or two, the tensioner moves slightly and it starts to slip again. The bolt stays tight, I guess its just the friction between the tensioner and frame isn't good enough to keep it from loosening. I guess I'll have to figure out a new tensioner design for it.

[Native]

You may have a little grease on the pully that transferred to the new belt. Just a SWAG.

[Booyah45828]

A couple years ago I installed a set of gauges to monitor engine oil temp and transmission oil temp. I must have forgotten to post that in here, so I'll do it now. They're mounted on some scrap aluminum sheet I had laying around, and are screwed to the left of the OEM instrument panel. The top gauge is actually a coolant temp gauge, but the fluid it's sensing isn't important, temperature is temperature in my eyes.



The engine oil temp is a cheap mechanical unit that I got on clearance from summit racing. They had a handful of different sunpro branded pressure, temp, and volt gauges on sale for a few bucks each, so I bought close to a dozen of them for current and future projects, because you can never have enough gauges . Sunpro isn't an autometer or isspro, but for 5 bucks, I feel you can't really go wrong.

Anyways, the sender for it is screwed into the rear oil cooler header, but before the oil filter.


Some people will argue with me on this, telling me that reading is pointless. But I wanted it this way so I could see the oil temp before the bearings. We ran it this way in the racecars too, for that exact reason.

Oil thickness determines oil flow and it's protection capability, and that is directly related to temperature. Too thin of oil is bad news for bearings, as is too thick. So watching the oil temp going to the bearings lets you know where you're at so to say. When this gauge starts creeping up towards 210-220°F, you know the oil is pretty thin and it's time to back off. Also, once it gets near that temp, you can assume the oil in the pan is hotter being before the cooler, and any hotter then around 250°F the oil will also start breaking down and be permanently damaged.

The trans oil temp gauge is an electric autometer unit. The gauge was a used unit included in a group of gauges that I bought for 50 bucks from a guy parting out a 6.5 diesel chevy pickup truck. I mainly bought the lot for the isspro pyrometer, but saw this gauge in my pile and figured I'd get some use out of it. It didn't include a sender, so I bought the correct one from summit racing and it's mounted in the cooler out line on top of the trans shown here.

The cooler lines use some sort of 37 degree hydraulic fitting, IDK sizes or specs. I removed the elbow out of the trans, and took it to my local napa and found the tee for it. The ID of the tee was small enough that I could tap it for 1/4 npt, and then adapt that to 1/8 npt for my sender. I then cut the steel line shorter, and bought a cheap 37 degree flare tool from summit (their house brand). That tool was a complete piece of crap, and wouldn't even begin to flare the steel line. I ended up having to heat the line up with a torch to get it soft enough for the flare tool to work. Summit is great, but their 37 degree flare tool gets a 0 star review from me.

Anyways, after it was flared, I screwed it all back together and ran it. Going down the road at 55mph, the oil temp hovers around 180, with the trans temp around 150. Going faster then that, and both temps will get hotter, as will going up any hills. Wide open at 75 mph, coolant, oil, and trans temp are all around 220, which is the absolute limit in my eyes. Any hotter then that and I feel temps could very quickly spiral out of control.

This test was done on a hot august day, which should be worst case scenario for a cooling system.

The big shocker for me was the trans temp results. Everyone and there brother seems to complain about the at545 and it's slipping and overheating woes. I'm beginning to wonder if those with overheating at545's have units that are just worn out, where as one in good shape might not have issues.

And where I have my trans temp gauge at, is the torque converter outlet/ cooler outlet, which will be the hottest point in the system. Allison gives a max temp of 300 degrees at that spot. I never came close to that.

[ImJ3ff]

Booyah, thanks for the detailed pics and that handy rust removal strategy. I hope you continue to post about this build as I have really enjoyed it thus far