A Few Updates

First and most significantly, the Getrag 360 transmission lived up to its reputation and grenaded it's self on the highway at ~65mph with my girlfriend in the front seat with me. We were on our way to IKEA and I truly believe this was Gods way of saying that chipboard furniture is the work of Satan and he was personally saving me from an eternity of damnation and unpronounceable Swedish disposal Crap. Luckily, afore mentioned significant other has AAA and so we got rescued by a sullen but prompt flat bed driver who hauled my truck back to my shop for tip money, saying not a single word the entire time he was in our presence. I have since ordered and received and brand new NV4500 transmission and bell housing adapter from Smart Parts on sale for the incredible price of $1400 all in. I found an old school transmission shop about 3 miles from my shop run buy a guy who loves to restore late 60's Japanese cars and was totally into helping me get this new trans installed. He's also going to swap out the rear end gears from the 4:10 in it now to a set of 3:55's I have coming. With the 4:10 rear end ration the engine was screaming at 60mph in top gear and really wouldn't have gone much faster even downhill. I know I need new tires and I'm going to go with 17" rims which will allow me to run real truck tires and gain a few inches in tire diameter as well which will help. The Getrag top gear is .77 and the NV4500 is .73 so with the 3:55 rear gears I should be able to cruse at 65-70mph with the engine in the 2-2.2K rpm range in top gear. Other than this I have spent a few hours sorting out some of the teething problems but for the most part everything works. I did have a loose wire that was keeping the dash gauge lights from lighting. That's fixed. Also the tach was set wrong effectively reading 1.5 times that actual engine rpm. One other problem I do have to address is that with the heaver engine and trans the front springs are sagging too much. When we first installed the engine, it looked like the suspension was holding the extra weight in the right place but as it turns out after being on the road, it is sitting too low. It's low enough that under load from large bumps the right front tie rod is slightly impacting the oil pan, so that will be addressed by a set of heavy duty springs that are stiffer and 1" longer than stock.
 Hopefully the transmission and rear end work will be done by Dave (Dave’s transmissions) while I’m in Bonneville helping my team defend its current record at speed week starting august 24^th.

There a Truck Sized Hole In My Shop Now

Waiting for the elevator

Nothing but stains and memories.

FINNISHED!

The front right fender was
never quit right

LED Day running lights in the
headlights. A little Cheesey Bling

Well about as finished as it’s going to get here. The grill needs to be welded but I’m not qualified to do that. I’m going to have my friend Scott do that at his place sometime soon. I also want to install airbags into the rear suspension but that too is going to have to wait as I don’t need them right now and I’m way out of mooola. I just need to drive the truck out of the shop and find a friendly flat bed wrecker to help me get it off the loading dock and it is on the road. Once down I’ll take it and have the front end aligned then I can finally put it to work. And I have plenty of things she is needed for waiting. I was able to get to the DMV and get it registered yesterday so she should be all set for shakedown drives immediately. BTW the headlights are 7" United Pacific Halogen replacements from Summit Racing. You have the modify the back of the head light shells a bit but it is dead simple to make them fit.

The modified Grille is the only
thing that gives away the
change in engines.

To make a Speed Hut Tach work with a Diesel

If you use a 3 wire inductive pickup like the Cherry I used, the key to making it work properly is the proper pick up resistor. Here you see a 1K resister soldered between the +12 lead and the tach signal lead. In image 2 you see how I tucked the resistor into the top of the Weather pak connector.

Tach Working

After mounting the new Hall Effect sensor and verifying its signal with the scope, I hooked it into the tack input and viola it worked. Programming the tack to recognize the incoming signal as a 1 pulse per revolution is a piece of cake with the Speed Hut tach. I also quickly reprogrammed the shift point on the shift light LED’s to 3K instead of the 2K RPM that they are set to in the video. Because of how close the radiator is it took me over 3 hours after I actually made the sensor bracket to get mounted. I had to put it on and take it off to get the position of the sensor right and then again to get the gap between the flywheel and the sensor into the sensor manufacturers recommended range.

Cummins Crank Speed Sensor

I’ve been spending far too much time debugging. I was hoping to have the truck on the road by this point but there were a few things I didn’t quite get right. One that took a surprising amount of time to correct was that I wired the KSB (Cold Start Advance Solenoid) to the same switch as the intake heater relays. I figured that I would only need the KSB when it was cold and therefore I would be using the intake air heaters too. Well the engine doesn’t like to start even in my 95 degree shop without the KSB so I had to rewire it to another switch. The other mistake I made with the same feature was that I wired the supply voltage to the switch off the 12v supply to the dash panel. When you turn the ignition key to crank it, cuts the power to the dash panel, so having features needed for starting wired to a power supply that cuts out during starting is one of my lesser achievements. Got that sorted and now she starts easily. Even on B100. The other bug I spent the last 6 hours chasing was that the new electronic tach read 0 when the engine was running. I found a number of problems, but cut to the chase, I think the crank sensor is bad. I had miss wired it and didn’t include the current limiting resister that it needs and running it at 12v instead of the 8v used by the factory dodge ECU may have well damaged it. Two oscilloscopes and a multi meter later I can get no signal from it. Instead of buying a new OEM replacement I happen to have a Cherry 3 wire Hall Effect toothed gear speed sensor (GS100502)that should work fine. With a 2.2K pickup resistor soldered between Vcc (+12v) and the black signal lead I get signal on the scope right in the voltage range the tach should trigger on. I bracket made from some precision 1-1/2” angle iron and I should be at least back where I started. That, I leave for next time.

Bio Diesel Compatible Fuel Line

 Gates 4219 Barricade Sold by most NAPA Stores.

The gates costs a little more than regular fuel line but it is Bio compatible. Normal SAE 30R7 is not bio compatible and will slowly turn to goo if you use anything over B20. You need Viton or more specifically flouroelastomer, or flourinated isolatsomer hose. most of the Viton hoses I've seen are thin walled light duty hoses and aren't rated for either pressure or a vacuum which you will need if you are using it for fuel line. The Gates 42xx series or the Goodyear Infinity line 543-xxx are both rated for full bio compatibility.