Replacement Turbo Actuators

[JR]

Looks like the upgraded "half shell" design that City Diesel makes and was written up in TDR mag and that Genos sells

I kinda figured since it looks nothing like the OEM. Just looking for clarification.....

 

[TRAMPLINEMAN]

What actuator is that Tramp?

It’s the whole works from City, not just the half shell.

 

[seafish]

[QUOTE="TRAMPLINEMAN" It’s the whole works from City, not just the half shell.[/QUOTE]

Nice....I didn't realize they were making that. And its only $50 more then the half shell.

 

[CityDiesel]

It would really be nice if they made the units here in the states. They are backordered cause the electronics part is made in China.

They didn’t let me in on how they solved the heat cycle issue. Just that they had extensive testing to get it right. Hey China can get things right just look how well this virus is working.... Sorry poor taste joke.

Guys just a couple points of clarification. The electronics are not made in China. The raw FR4 the circuit board is made of is however. As far as I am aware thats probably true for almost everything with a circuit board in it these days as they make the vast majority of it. The board is actually made by (plated and milled ) and assembled by (components soldered on) Macrofab in Houston Tx. The magnet for the motor is produced in China (again the only place you can get strong enough neodymium magnets with a multi pole axial flux). The testing, design and firmware development was done 100% in house. With the exception of cutting the teeth on the gear blanks and stamping the motor laminations all the machine work was done in house. The laminations and gear teeth were cut in the USA just not in our building. All the components are assembled in house. Its as close to 100% USA made as we could get it.

As far as how we have solved the heat issues. In addition to having direct motor-stator to aluminum housing contact for heat sinking see the below copy and paste write up from my email for more design changes.

I cannot in good conscience ever recommend a reman actuator. We have
seen too many cases where it test good on the bench and fails on
application. We have also seen too many cases where the failure is
intermittent, and the actuator at times works and at times does not.
In these cases most customers receive a faulty product because contrary
to the reman label every reman we have seen is not a reman but a cleaned
up and repaired core. IE there is not any standard all the chips get
replaced and the circuit board gets x-rayed for fractures that could
cause problems in a heat/vibration cycle. Instead its power it up if
it communicates and moves clean it up put a new wire sleeve and connector

on it and call it a reman. If it doesn't replace chips by heating with
hot air until it does power up communicate an move. What makes this
strategy even worse is that the circuit board and surrounding chips
are only rated to so many heat cycles, and the rebuilder has no way of
knowing whats been done before. Because of this we would actually use
a core off of a known good unit before a reman. However we really don't
even like doing that unless the customer wants to get out as cheap as
possible and has no intention of keeping the truck considering that
the actuators even new are prone to early failing

Given the above in our opinion only sensible option is new. The new
actuators are good products in that if you buy it and calibrate it it
will work for a time. You only have to look at the rate these things
are failing and the average mileage to know how long its likely to
last. Your story is not unusual and pretty standard as far as how
long you can expect the factory design to last. Its really a question of
how long you plan on keeping the truck and how many times you want to
spend this money.

As far as specific design features that allow ours to last better:

The factory uses either class B or class F windings, ours uses class R
This means best case theres is rated to 155C and ours is rated to
220C

The factory uses a magnet thats rated to 150C ours is rated to 180C

The factory uses a motor design that has roughly 1/2 the magnetic
field strength (this is due to a number of design choices magnet material,
magnet air gap, stator material etc)

This means that to achieve the same torque at a stall they have
to use 2 times as much current and generate 2 times as much heat.

Our motor has abec rated ball bearings on both sides, while the
factory uses a ball bearing on one side and a steel shaft running inside the
aluminum housing on the other. This is what allows us to use a
smaller airgap which is the largest contributor to the stronger field.

Due to the stronger field our motor has roughly twice the torque as
the factory motor, however on 2013 and up they reduce this difference by
using a higher gear multiplier so the actual available torque is more
like 1.4 times as much as opposed to 2 times.

Our PCB uses components rated to the harshest enviroments with the
longest lifes in those environments that we could source. Some
examples of that below

The electrolytic capacitor we use is one intended for deep earth
mining operations where heat and pressure are the most extreme. At expected
temperatures and environment it has an expected life of 20000-40000
hours, contrast this to the factory capacitor rated at 4000 hours.

Our pcb substrate is made from 170c FR4 material as opposed to the
much more common 130c material.

I could go on but the long and short of it is that we did not design
these actuators to fail, we have done everything we know to do to make

sure that they outlive the truck.

 

[TRAMPLINEMAN]

Guys just a couple points of clarification. The electronics are not made in China. The raw FR4 the circuit board is made of is however.

This leads me to an apology. I must have misunderstood and retract my previous statement.
Anyhow, my CD actuator has been working good, thanks!!

 

[MtnRider]

...As far as how we have solved the heat issues. In addition to having direct motor-stator to aluminum housing contact for heat sinking see the below copy and paste write up from my email for more design changes.

.

So are you saying heat is killing the stock actuators? Have you done a failure analysis on them to find the root cause of the failures? Just curious as to what is killing them. Starting to see a lot more lately, especially in trucks that have been deleted and tuned (seems a much higher numbers of failures in them from what I am seeing?).


.

 

[TRAMPLINEMAN]

So are you saying heat is killing the stock actuators? Have you done a failure analysis on them to find the root cause of the failures? Just curious as to what is killing them. Starting to see a lot more lately, especially in trucks that have been deleted and tuned (seems a much higher numbers of failures in them from what I am seeing?).


.

I know of seven trucks locally that had actuator failures, all stock trucks.

 

[MtnRider]

I know of seven trucks locally that had actuator failures, all stock trucks.

Not saying they don't happen in stock trucks, just seem to see a lot more in delete trucks in my experience.
I know pointing anything to deleting immediately sparks a fight back response from the pro delete crowd Lol . Really just wondering what the root cause is and if there is a correlation to anything in particular? Heat, soot build up, etc

.

 

[TRAMPLINEMAN]

Not saying they don't happen in stock trucks, just seem to see a lot more in delete trucks in my experience.
I know pointing anything to deleting immediately sparks a fight back response from the pro delete crowd Lol . Really just wondering what the root cause is and if there is a correlation to anything in particular? Heat, soot build up, etc

.

Wasn’t trying to argue, just pointing out the ones I know about.

 

[jclifton]

This leads me to an apology. I must have misunderstood and retract my previous statement.
Anyhow, my CD actuator has been working good, thanks!!

Thanks for the apology friend, not necessary but appreciated. I hope you didn't take it as us being upset, we just want to get the accurate information out there.

I know of seven trucks locally that had actuator failures, all stock trucks.

So are you saying heat is killing the stock actuators? Have you done a failure analysis on them to find the root cause of the failures? Just curious as to what is killing them. Starting to see a lot more lately, especially in trucks that have been deleted and tuned (seems a much higher numbers of failures in them from what I am seeing?).


.

Deleted trucks tend to see a higher duty cycle out of the actuator. My understanding is <- (this could be wrong and I welcome anyone with more knowledge of how the tuning software works to correct me) that when you are writing tuning for these trucks at a specific rpm and load you will have a desired airflow. You will also have a minimum and maximum position allowed out of the actuator that the computer can use to try to obtain that airflow. The factory has fairly tight constraints on that position to stay emissions compliant, however a lot of tuners like to let the computer put it wherever it wants so they enter 0% and 100% for every load position. This means that on a stock truck the actuator tends to make much smaller adjustments at a time, while on some deleted trucks they make sweeping large changes often traveling through much of the allowable range. This increases the stress on the actuator.

We are talking about two different models of actuators, this part of the reply is going to be primarily about the actuators found on trucks after 2012. Heat is one of the two common factors in the failure of these units. When you model electrolytic capacitor expected lifetimes the capacitor will have an expected life hour rating. This rating is accurate if the capacitor is used at the maximum rated temperature and ripple current. As the temperature drops the expected life goes up almost exponentially. For instance a good rule of thumb if the datasheet for the cap doesn't specify is that for every 10°C you drop the temperature the life of the capacitor doubles. This is because electrolytic caps wearing out is related to the evaporation of the fluid inside them. The hotter they get the faster it evaporates and it does not have to be powered on to be evaporating. The neat thing about this is that the failure time is fairly predicable with electrolytics. There will be some differences due to if you have a lot of short trips there is a lot of time the caps spend hot (while the engine is cooling) without the engine actually running. The factory actuators seem to have an expected life of around 5000 hours. Now we have not actually tested these to failure to prove this, but anecdotal evidence seems to point to somewhere around this number.

One of the common failures we see in the late model actuator is a voltage regulation failure, the voltages on the different rails begins to oscillate out of spec. This causes the microcontroller in the actuator to actually intermittently shutdown. Leading to brief losses of communication U010c. At first these losses of communication are quick enough that the driver does not notice any difference in drive-ability but they gradually get longer and more common. Capacitance in most voltage regulation circuit is critical in the regulation and stabilization of the voltages. Fixing this problem is made much more difficult because the factory chose to use a axial capacitor as opposed to a radial. The problem is there are far fewer options for sourcing high temp/ high life capacitors in an axial footprint. Maybe the factory has the resources and capital to fix it but when we were researching for ways to extend the life of these actuators we could not find a suitable cap to significantly extend the life.

The other common cause of failure is that instead of soldering some of the through hole connections, IE the motor windings to the board and the external connector to the board, they chose to use pins with a spring like retention and tight fit and just slip them in. When you build a pcb the holes and vias that have copper all the way through them are typically coated with that conductive coating after manufacturing with a really thin layer of plating. Without that thin layer of coating on the id of the hole the hole or via will not conduct and connect all the layers of copper in the board. A typical value would be .001". I do not want to speculate on what thickness they are using as custom stackups are available but even if it was much thicker it does not fill me with the warm fuzzys thinking about if a very thing layer of plating wears off then my actuator will fail.

The earlier model actuators (2012 and before) are a completely different design. They were actually designed by delphi as opposed to cummins. In my opinion the circuit board is a better design in those models. Ie they use a radial high lifetime capacitor. The connections are actually soldered. However the motor is weaker and encapsulated in plastic making getting heat out of the motor really difficult (really most of the difference appears to be a smaller gear reduction). As the turbo ages this leads to the motor not having enough torque to push the vanes aggressively enough to keep them moving. This is made worse by a different (and inferior) piston ring design on the turbine wheel. This model uses a single piston ring as opposed to 2 piston rings. These piston rings are responsible for keeping exhaust out of the oil in the turbo. However if they get enough wear they will begin to allow some oil into the exhaust. Oil+carbon = sticky mess and the vanes begin to need a good bit of extra umpffh to move. A single piston ring design has been the standard for a long time, however the higher the back pressure the more wear on the piston ring, and these engines see a good bit of backpressure. Especially with exhaust brake useage.

All of the above is true as far as I know however I am far from perfect so I advise against taking it as an infallible truth.

Sorry I posted this under the wrong account this should be posted under Citydiesel not my personal account. -Jason

 

[MtnRider]

Thanks for the apology friend, not necessary but appreciated. I hope you didn't take it as us being upset, we just want to get the accurate information out there.







Deleted trucks tend to see a higher duty cycle out of the actuator. My understanding is <- (this could be wrong and I welcome anyone with more knowledge of how the tuning software works to correct me) that when you are writing tuning for these trucks at a specific rpm and load you will have a desired airflow. You will also have a minimum and maximum position allowed out of the actuator that the computer can use to try to obtain that airflow. The factory has fairly tight constraints on that position to stay emissions compliant, however a lot of tuners like to let the computer put it wherever it wants so they enter 0% and 100% for every load position. This means that on a stock truck the actuator tends to make much smaller adjustments at a time, while on some deleted trucks they make sweeping large changes often traveling through much of the allowable range. This increases the stress on the actuator.

We are talking about two different models of actuators, this part of the reply is going to be primarily about the actuators found on trucks after 2012. Heat is one of the two common factors in the failure of these units. When you model electrolytic capacitor expected lifetimes the capacitor will have an expected life hour rating. This rating is accurate if the capacitor is used at the maximum rated temperature and ripple current. As the temperature drops the expected life goes up almost exponentially. For instance a good rule of thumb if the datasheet for the cap doesn't specify is that for every 10°C you drop the temperature the life of the capacitor doubles. This is because electrolytic caps wearing out is related to the evaporation of the fluid inside them. The hotter they get the faster it evaporates and it does not have to be powered on to be evaporating. The neat thing about this is that the failure time is fairly predicable with electrolytics. There will be some differences due to if you have a lot of short trips there is a lot of time the caps spend hot (while the engine is cooling) without the engine actually running. The factory actuators seem to have an expected life of around 5000 hours. Now we have not actually tested these to failure to prove this, but anecdotal evidence seems to point to somewhere around this number.

One of the common failures we see in the late model actuator is a voltage regulation failure, the voltages on the different rails begins to oscillate out of spec. This causes the microcontroller in the actuator to actually intermittently shutdown. Leading to brief losses of communication U010c. At first these losses of communication are quick enough that the driver does not notice any difference in drive-ability but they gradually get longer and more common. Capacitance in most voltage regulation circuit is critical in the regulation and stabilization of the voltages. Fixing this problem is made much more difficult because the factory chose to use a axial capacitor as opposed to a radial. The problem is there are far fewer options for sourcing high temp/ high life capacitors in an axial footprint. Maybe the factory has the resources and capital to fix it but when we were researching for ways to extend the life of these actuators we could not find a suitable cap to significantly extend the life.

The other common cause of failure is that instead of soldering some of the through hole connections, IE the motor windings to the board and the external connector to the board, they chose to use pins with a spring like retention and tight fit and just slip them in. When you build a pcb the holes and vias that have copper all the way through them are typically coated with that conductive coating after manufacturing with a really thin layer of plating. Without that thin layer of coating on the id of the hole the hole or via will not conduct and connect all the layers of copper in the board. A typical value would be .001". I do not want to speculate on what thickness they are using as custom stackups are available but even if it was much thicker it does not fill me with the warm fuzzys thinking about if a very thing layer of plating wears off then my actuator will fail.

The earlier model actuators (2012 and before) are a completely different design. They were actually designed by delphi as opposed to cummins. In my opinion the circuit board is a better design in those models. Ie they use a radial high lifetime capacitor. The connections are actually soldered. However the motor is weaker and encapsulated in plastic making getting heat out of the motor really difficult (really most of the difference appears to be a smaller gear reduction). As the turbo ages this leads to the motor not having enough torque to push the vanes aggressively enough to keep them moving. This is made worse by a different (and inferior) piston ring design on the turbine wheel. This model uses a single piston ring as opposed to 2 piston rings. These piston rings are responsible for keeping exhaust out of the oil in the turbo. However if they get enough wear they will begin to allow some oil into the exhaust. Oil+carbon = sticky mess and the vanes begin to need a good bit of extra umpffh to move. A single piston ring design has been the standard for a long time, however the higher the back pressure the more wear on the piston ring, and these engines see a good bit of backpressure. Especially with exhaust brake useage.

All of the above is true as far as I know however I am far from perfect so I advise against taking it as an infallible truth.

Sorry I posted this under the wrong account this should be posted under Citydiesel not my personal account. -Jason

Great write up! Thanks

For heat related component failure it would seem to reason that guys running higher EGT's often (towing heavy, hot tunes etc) "might" see a lower life expectancy out of the actuator then a guy just commuting with the truck?

Sounds like soot build up (causing it to be hard to move the veins) is not a major factor in the failures? I ask this because there are 2 thought processes out there people are floating, one is replace the actuator and you will be fine (it was just an actuator failure), the other is you need to replace everything because the turbo caused it to fail and it is also going to fail soon as well or cause another actuator failure.
A lot of people also say to run your exhaust brake all the time to exercise the actuator more to avoid soot build up/failures etc. I never bought into that personally because I believe it "wipes" (or moves the veins the full range of motion) at start up and/or shut down anyway.

I hope mine never fails but if it does you'll get my business!


.

 

[TRAMPLINEMAN]

I hope mine never fails but if it does you'll get my business!


.

I don’t know how many miles you have on your truck or what part of the country you live in, but I have a strong recommendation for you. If you live anywhere near salted roads and you plan on changing it out yourself in the future, remove the bottom left bolt now and completely coat it in anti seize. You will thank yourself later. The stock housing has a window cut in it that exposes the threads of the bottom left bolt. Road grime gets in there and seizes the steel bolt to the aluminum housing. You make up all kinds of new words while trying to get that bolt out.

 

[TRAMPLINEMAN]

Now that I think of it, the only way to get that bolt out is to take the whole actuator out with it. Errr, it’s a bit of a pickle cause then you’d have to drain coolant and recalibrate it when putting it back on.

 

[MtnRider]

I don’t know how many miles you have on your truck or what part of the country you live in, but I have a strong recommendation for you. If you live anywhere near salted roads and you plan on changing it out yourself in the future, remove the bottom left bolt now and completely coat it in anti seize. You will thank yourself later. The stock housing has a window cut in it that exposes the threads of the bottom left bolt. Road grime gets in there and seizes the steel bolt to the aluminum housing. You make up all kinds of new words while trying to get that bolt out.

Thanks, good advise!

My truck is a 2016 with 63K right now. Lived part of it's life in Colorado and now in Georgia. Plenty of snow and moisture but thank goodness no salt! (I've seen what the north east vehicle s can look like, ouch). I'll take a look at it and see how hard it is to get to to add something on it anyway. Whoops just read your second post. Not sure I want to go that far? Maybe I'll just try and keep it clean as I can

.

 

[CityDiesel]

Great write up! Thanks

For heat related component failure it would seem to reason that guys running higher EGT's often (towing heavy, hot tunes etc) "might" see a lower life expectancy out of the actuator then a guy just commuting with the truck?

Sounds like soot build up (causing it to be hard to move the veins) is not a major factor in the failures? I ask this because there are 2 thought processes out there people are floating, one is replace the actuator and you will be fine (it was just an actuator failure), the other is you need to replace everything because the turbo caused it to fail and it is also going to fail soon as well or cause another actuator failure.
A lot of people also say to run your exhaust brake all the time to exercise the actuator more to avoid soot build up/failures etc. I never bought into that personally because I believe it "wipes" (or moves the veins the full range of motion) at start up and/or shut down anyway.

I hope mine never fails but if it does you'll get my business!


.

The stock actuator with stock tuning does not exercise the vanes on startup or shutdown. Some tuning I believe allows that to happen, and our actuator does do that on startup. In general on the 2013+ trucks soot building up and vanes sticking is less of a problem than electronics failure. Just guessing I would put the failures we see at 85% caused by electronic failure 15% by soot or mechanical vane issues.

On the 2012 and previous trucks, soot buildup is much more of a problem. I would put it at about 60/40.

I attribute the difference to the improved piston-ring design on the later model and the higher gear ratio allowing for more torque to be applied to the vanes. Thats one reason
why we went with such a large torque difference on our motor design trying to fix the part of the problem we can. We always tell people to make sure your vanes have full travel and move freely before replacing the actuator, however we have had several people tell us afterwards that the vanes were stiff and our actuator "fixed" the issue. While we do not suggest this, it does seem to indicate that the lesser motor torque of the early model is a significant contributor to the problem.

 

[TRAMPLINEMAN]

Thanks, good advise!

My truck is a 2016 with 63K right now. Lived part of it's life in Colorado and now in Georgia. Plenty of snow and moisture but thank goodness no salt! (I've seen what the north east vehicle s can look like, ouch). I'll take a look at it and see how hard it is to get to to add something on it anyway. Whoops just read your second post. Not sure I want to go that far? Maybe I'll just try and keep it clean as I can

.

You might be able to turn that bolt out far enough to get some anti seize on it without touching the other three bolts.