Background.
Bought this truck with a blown head gasket, I don't/didn't have the time or space to do the work, otherwise i'm entirely capable. So I took it to a shade tree guy....very thorough and highly praised by a couple guys I work with. During tear down found the turbo was slightly out of spec, so I bought an aFe (little bigger than stock, no core charge), mahle hg's and gasket kit from merchant, hard intercooler pipes, PPE downpipe, PPE up pipe (only passenger, since it was already plugged from EGR), heads were milled 0.010", exhaust manifolds milled 0.004", valve seats installed and shaved accordingly. New ARP head studs, turbo, exhaust manifold, turbo O2 housing. Water pump, t-stats, coolant, all fresh. New oil. Truck already had an intake, straight 4" pipe, axle dump, EFI live on CTS (with pyro), 150% injectors. When I picked the truck up from being freshly completed... low coolant - I figure there was about .5-1 gallon left in the system, I added approximately 5 gallons and purged it but I think I still need to add about a quart - half gallon tops.. enough to turn off the low coolant alarm.
Problem.
EGT:
Yesterday - Put some oil on a freshly cleaned air filter and reinstalled, started the truck with no problems. Approximately 5 minutes after start up, EGTs got to about 1600 (while driving) with a granny foot, down a hill, THEN after about 20 minutes of running/driving, drove up 1/4 mile hill in a neighborhood and EGTs (by CTS) shot to almost 2000. I let it sit for 5 minutes (idling) while I was talking with a friend...don't want to put it away wet ya know?.. Came back and it was at about 700.. Drove off - to work (5 minutes away), parked and let idle down from 650ish til it calmed down to 400ish. Shut it down, walked in to work, and 5 hours later fired it up and drove home, very uneventful...wasn't paying a lot of attention to EGT. Work is 5 minutes commute, truck didn't get very warm..parked it.
Today - started truck right up (also uneventful), stopped for breakfast and coffee to get some more run time in...get the truck warmed up. Coolant temp didn't even hit 165, EGTs may have gone over 700 once. After work (9.5 hours later) I started the truck and it dumped some heavy gray smoke for about 15-20 seconds. I drove off after about a minute and no smoke, and about a minute in to the drive the EGTs were north of 1000, not even reaching 15mph in my work parking lot. I had somewhere I needed to be about 35 minutes away, and i'm looking at everything else...no CEL, no codes, all other parameters look fine at 5 minutes in. So I feel that it's fine to do the freeway trip where I need to go (which by the way is my new house that I walked the property with sellers). Trip all the way to the exit seems pretty uneventful...I hit 1100 once while cruising at 65mph up a slight grade. Then, there's a pretty steep hill getting to the house. I went at this hill about 20mph for a half mile, and by that time I was at the house and my EGT was at 1700 when I parked, and still climbing while in park...hit about 1980 and there was no way I was going to put her away wet, I let it idle for a while and temp didn't drop for almost 2 minutes. At that point I jumped out and felt the exhaust coming from the tailpipe..didn't feel oddly hot.. should have checked to see if my manifolds, turbo, or downpipe were glowing red, but I didn't think about it. Let the truck idle for about 45 minutes while I walked the property with the owner/seller, came back and EGT on the CTS was back around 275. The whole drive home didn't manage to get the EGT over 1100. I don't have my FASS lift pump in yet, so I fear running out of fuel if I lay too deep in to the throttle for too long. For the last 3-5 miles of my trip I tried to replicate driving conditions to raise EGT and couldn't even get it over 700. Pulled up to my house while driving through a neighborhood, as soon as I put it in park the EGT was down to about 330.
Boost:
I didn't think to monitor boost until I drove home. At a couple WOT pulls for a few seconds, I was only peaking at 22psi, and 2psi cruising flat at 65mph. I tested in all five "performance" levels/tunes all with the same peak boost and cruising boost. I don't know who the EFI live tuner was, previous owner only told me that 1 - hot, 3 - tow, 5 - stock(ish) and 2/4 were the in betweens.
Fuel Consumption:
Leaving work and doing the 50 mile round trip (today) I had about 12% consumption per CTS.. I know it's BS to try to rely on electronics to give fuel mileage, but that was pretty far off from before I ran in to HG problems. 12% of 34 gallons = 4.1 gallons...ehh..maybe. But unlikely with a pussy foot. (now that I think about it, I DID get in to it half a dozen times for a few seconds each). But yes I know, can't rely on the electronics for fuel.
Bottom line:
Fuel injector balance rates are +/- 2%
Coolant temp never gets over 190
Boost seems low
EGT seems exponentially too high
Fuel consumption seems high
Most recent cold startup had ~20 seconds of heavy gray smoke from tail pipe
My WAG for fixes:
Get a new analog pyrometer gauge "kit" with a new probe
Check IC piping for leaks (how?)
Compression test for bad rings (haven't searched yet, but how?)
Top off coolant
Am I on the right track?...why am I getting crazy EGT? Should I worry about the smoke? What's going on? This is literally only day 2 of having this thing back.
Long post, I know.. I am a maintenance technician and need to be very thorough on work orders i've completed, so it's a little bit habitual.
Bought this truck with a blown head gasket, I don't/didn't have the time or space to do the work, otherwise i'm entirely capable. So I took it to a shade tree guy....very thorough and highly praised by a couple guys I work with. During tear down found the turbo was slightly out of spec, so I bought an aFe (little bigger than stock, no core charge), mahle hg's and gasket kit from merchant, hard intercooler pipes, PPE downpipe, PPE up pipe (only passenger, since it was already plugged from EGR), heads were milled 0.010", exhaust manifolds milled 0.004", valve seats installed and shaved accordingly. New ARP head studs, turbo, exhaust manifold, turbo O2 housing. Water pump, t-stats, coolant, all fresh. New oil. Truck already had an intake, straight 4" pipe, axle dump, EFI live on CTS (with pyro), 150% injectors. When I picked the truck up from being freshly completed... low coolant - I figure there was about .5-1 gallon left in the system, I added approximately 5 gallons and purged it but I think I still need to add about a quart - half gallon tops.. enough to turn off the low coolant alarm.
Problem.
EGT:
Yesterday - Put some oil on a freshly cleaned air filter and reinstalled, started the truck with no problems. Approximately 5 minutes after start up, EGTs got to about 1600 (while driving) with a granny foot, down a hill, THEN after about 20 minutes of running/driving, drove up 1/4 mile hill in a neighborhood and EGTs (by CTS) shot to almost 2000. I let it sit for 5 minutes (idling) while I was talking with a friend...don't want to put it away wet ya know?.. Came back and it was at about 700.. Drove off - to work (5 minutes away), parked and let idle down from 650ish til it calmed down to 400ish. Shut it down, walked in to work, and 5 hours later fired it up and drove home, very uneventful...wasn't paying a lot of attention to EGT. Work is 5 minutes commute, truck didn't get very warm..parked it.
Today - started truck right up (also uneventful), stopped for breakfast and coffee to get some more run time in...get the truck warmed up. Coolant temp didn't even hit 165, EGTs may have gone over 700 once. After work (9.5 hours later) I started the truck and it dumped some heavy gray smoke for about 15-20 seconds. I drove off after about a minute and no smoke, and about a minute in to the drive the EGTs were north of 1000, not even reaching 15mph in my work parking lot. I had somewhere I needed to be about 35 minutes away, and i'm looking at everything else...no CEL, no codes, all other parameters look fine at 5 minutes in. So I feel that it's fine to do the freeway trip where I need to go (which by the way is my new house that I walked the property with sellers). Trip all the way to the exit seems pretty uneventful...I hit 1100 once while cruising at 65mph up a slight grade. Then, there's a pretty steep hill getting to the house. I went at this hill about 20mph for a half mile, and by that time I was at the house and my EGT was at 1700 when I parked, and still climbing while in park...hit about 1980 and there was no way I was going to put her away wet, I let it idle for a while and temp didn't drop for almost 2 minutes. At that point I jumped out and felt the exhaust coming from the tailpipe..didn't feel oddly hot.. should have checked to see if my manifolds, turbo, or downpipe were glowing red, but I didn't think about it. Let the truck idle for about 45 minutes while I walked the property with the owner/seller, came back and EGT on the CTS was back around 275. The whole drive home didn't manage to get the EGT over 1100. I don't have my FASS lift pump in yet, so I fear running out of fuel if I lay too deep in to the throttle for too long. For the last 3-5 miles of my trip I tried to replicate driving conditions to raise EGT and couldn't even get it over 700. Pulled up to my house while driving through a neighborhood, as soon as I put it in park the EGT was down to about 330.
Boost:
I didn't think to monitor boost until I drove home. At a couple WOT pulls for a few seconds, I was only peaking at 22psi, and 2psi cruising flat at 65mph. I tested in all five "performance" levels/tunes all with the same peak boost and cruising boost. I don't know who the EFI live tuner was, previous owner only told me that 1 - hot, 3 - tow, 5 - stock(ish) and 2/4 were the in betweens.
Fuel Consumption:
Leaving work and doing the 50 mile round trip (today) I had about 12% consumption per CTS.. I know it's BS to try to rely on electronics to give fuel mileage, but that was pretty far off from before I ran in to HG problems. 12% of 34 gallons = 4.1 gallons...ehh..maybe. But unlikely with a pussy foot. (now that I think about it, I DID get in to it half a dozen times for a few seconds each). But yes I know, can't rely on the electronics for fuel.
Bottom line:
Fuel injector balance rates are +/- 2%
Coolant temp never gets over 190
Boost seems low
EGT seems exponentially too high
Fuel consumption seems high
Most recent cold startup had ~20 seconds of heavy gray smoke from tail pipe
My WAG for fixes:
Get a new analog pyrometer gauge "kit" with a new probe
Check IC piping for leaks (how?)
Compression test for bad rings (haven't searched yet, but how?)
Top off coolant
Am I on the right track?...why am I getting crazy EGT? Should I worry about the smoke? What's going on? This is literally only day 2 of having this thing back.
Long post, I know.. I am a maintenance technician and need to be very thorough on work orders i've completed, so it's a little bit habitual.