turbo replacement tips

[crispyboy]

Well it seems that the emissions soot disease is slowly taking out a second turbo charger. 1st turbo changed at 45k miles and now at 79k miles I am getting the P2563 code "Turbocharger boost control position sensor circuit range/performance". I could hear and tell the exhaust brake acting up (sticking) and engine having no power - flat spots etc...
It frustrates me such that I am very particular in how the truck driven, used, minimal idling, mostly highway runs and religious use of the exhaust brake. So it goes.

So with that said I am either going to have the current turbo sent off to be rebuilt or get another reman unit and install this myself. So far all the suppliers tell me that the turbo will be properly calibrated when it arrives and will essentially be a remove and replace operation. Prices seem to be all over the place so I am trying to decipher which one seems to be of quality.

From your experience do you have any tips or tricks for what I am getting into?
Are there other consumable parts I should have on hand such as gaskets, oil lines, etc...... for preventative maintenance?

After the truck is fixed then the I will figure out what to do with this truck. It will either get deleted and run a stock delete tune or get sold and possibly go back to a gas truck. Frustration abounds.......

 

[Shadrach]

Normally when you buy a Reman turbo it comes with the necessary mounting hardware, gaskets, washers etc. These turbos have plumbing for oil in and out as well as coolant in and out. Make sure it comes with ALL the mounting parts as well as 2 studs and 4 nuts. Two studs go in the turbo and two in the exhaust manifold, two pointing up and the other two pointing down, that's why you only need two. The two in the manifold can be left alone but the nuts can get wrecked coming off. The last part to go on is the oil feed line so before you fire up the engine for the first time with the new turbo on make sure to pour some fresh engine oil into where the oil feed line goes on to the turbo. This will give it a pre-lube. The turbo drain pipe is a pre-bent flexible part and can also get munched when removing the turbo.
The exhaust clamp between the turbo and the cast elbow is a Cummins part but the one going to the exhaust pipe is a Dodge part. Usually the Reman turbo comes with the cast elbow already attached

 

[crispyboy]

Thanks for your insight. The package arrives tomorrow via UPS. Hope to work on the project sometime this weekend.

 

[Bob4x4]

Allow plenty of time.The turbo is heavy and there is not enough clearance to remove it easily

 

[crispyboy]

I took a little time off of work and completed the replacement today. Had to clear some codes because I forgot to plug in the sensors for the air cleaner and had to finish tightening the water line to engine block connection. The two toughest parts of the job was figuring out the puzzle to get the old turbo out and the new one in. The studs made the job interesting. The other fun part was getting the gasket in place for the oil return line on the bottom of the turbo. I finally got smart and put a dab of form-a-gasket to hold the gasket in place while trying to get the bolts lined up. The rest wasn't too bad as I have been in much deeper on other vehicles/projects before. I have some stubby wrenches and other odd ball stuff that doesn't get used too often which helped out on this job. Tomorrow the core gets shipped back.
Now I can start work to upgrade the railing and steps on our deck before winter sets in.
This winter or before I will start gathering information on deleting the soot problem on this truck.

My first question about deletes: I am looking for keeping the exhaust muffled as much as possible. Should I an FTE resonator between the cat and stock muffler or should I go straight to a long Donaldson muffler after the cat?

Here is a picture of the offender.....

 

[Jim W]

I have an 2008 Mega Cab, 6.7L Cummins. I used a Smarty S67 (no longer available) with a 5" MBRP muffler system for a 5.9L Long Bed truck, all of the hangers fit correctly. This has been on my truck now for 90,000+ miles, since I have made these changes with no issues at all. The MRBP is a turbo back system and has the muffler with tail pipe that reaches to the rear wheels. The EGR is blocked but the cooler is still on my truck.

I would suggest that you look into EFI Live for your truck since this is the best programmer on the market now. You just need to find someone to write a tune if you do not want a can one out of the box. MRBP offers two styles a Stainless Steel and the normal anodize steel pipes when I purchased my improvements.

 

[crispyboy]

Jim,
do you remember what you used to block the egr valve?
How loud is your exhaust? Drone? Turbo whistle?

 

[Bob4x4]

Make sure you think the delete question through thourghly before making the jump.The epa will soon have all the programmers shut down.Just recently hard@@@ anounced they would no longer support non race tuning.H&S has already closed their doors,Edge was forced to stop delete programming.Good luck making your decision.In the 18's Ram has added another model only used to prevent hacking

 

[crispyboy]

Bob4x4 - I honestly have thought long and hard about this issue and the second turbo only going 33k miles before having issues sort of put me over the edge. I felt that I have painstakingly been careful how this truck has been used and apparently my duty cycle for the vehicle isn't good enough for this early generation of diesel emissions. My wife's vehicle is next on the list for replacement and need the truck to go a few more years. I am really not too excited about fiddling around with all this. I have modified vehicles in the past and really had no intentions of doing this with this truck but things have changed.
If you know of certain risks to the truck itself that I should be aware of please inform me. At one time we had emission testing in our area. With the attrition of older vehicles emission testing in our area was done away with 10 years or more ago.

 

[Bob4x4]

The biggest failures that I have had to deal with has been blown headgaskets.The program sellers don’t seem to warn their customers of risk involved.Since I worked near a major tourist attraction we got many stranded vacationers towing. Pretty much everyone of them told me they were just using a tow level and the vendor said no problem just drive it.Another issue no one will have a desire to fix your truck when it has a bunch of dtc’s..
I understand your frustration,notice I have never had a desire to own an early 6.7

 

[CToney]

All 6.7L s should have head studs installed. Stock trucks have head gaskets fail. Guaranteed to fail if you have a tune. Studs are not hard to install. Time, patience and care needed.

 

[Bob4x4]

Having worked on CTDs every work day since their inception I have never seen a failed head gasket on a 6.7 under 200k with stock programming.However I have seen a few cracked egr coolers after diy coolant system work.

 

[RVTRKN]

Crispyboy, I'm not judging your driving habits or any program your running or not, but two Turbo's in 79K miles seems excessive. I'm running EFILive with the EPA crap still intact since @ 60K miles, & I'm now at 68K miles, and it has never thrown a turbo related code or has it had the official cleaning port upgrade that your 09 stock factory turbo came with. Have you ever had a dealer clean it, before the first turbo was replaced?

Unfortunatly for me, the 07's didn't have that cleaning port, and I was told that unless it throws a code, the dealer will not update the turbo, and that is under warranty or not, which I have a hard time with. I wanted a preventative turbo cleaning, now that I'm close to 70K miles, but was refused at my local dealer where I know the tech, and I was willing to pay market rates for it. Bob4x4 can you shed some light on this as to the reasons? If your willing to pay, why not, afterall its not like I paid a hell of a lot money for an EPA burdened truck, that was purchased from them?

Crispyboy, do have any theories as to why your going through so many turbo's?

 

[Shadrach]

Maybe I missed it but what brand of turbo did you put on? The Cummins turbo drain gasket has triangle shaped bolt holes in it so that the bolts "thread" thru the holes thus keeping the gasket in place. Does the replacement seem to be any different?




I have acquired the latest Reman turbo from Cummins and plan on replacing my stock one with that. I have about 135k Kilometers ( about 84k miles) on the truck and it was deleted when it had about 23k kilos ( about 14k miles) I know the full history of the truck. My reasons for doing this is 1) I got a super deal on the turbo, 2) I get a "new" turbo and 3) I can sell the used one for. I have never had any turbo codes show up. I have my Smarty set on 3 ( 60 horse plus timing) and altho I pull the mountains with my trailer I don't "abuse" the truck and thus far haven't had any issues. David

 

[Bob4x4]

Crispyboy, I'm not judging your driving habits or any program your running or not, but two Turbo's in 79K miles seems excessive. I'm running EFILive with the EPA crap still intact since @ 60K miles, & I'm now at 68K miles, and it has never thrown a turbo related code or has it had the official cleaning port upgrade that your 09 stock factory turbo came with. Have you ever had a dealer clean it, before the first turbo was replaced?

Unfortunatly for me, the 07's didn't have that cleaning port, and I was told that unless it throws a code, the dealer will not update the turbo, and that is under warranty or not, which I have a hard time with. I wanted a preventative turbo cleaning, now that I'm close to 70K miles, but was refused at my local dealer where I know the tech, and I was willing to pay market rates for it. Bob4x4 can you shed some light on this as to the reasons? If your willing to pay, why not, afterall its not like I paid a hell of a lot money for an EPA burdened truck, that was purchased from them?

Crispyboy, do have any theories as to why your going through so many turbo's?

If the truck is running correctly there is no need to perform the procedure-nothing to gain

 

[RVTRKN]

Normally I'd agree with that, but with the regen glitch my truck has experianced from a 2009 updated ECM program that your all to familure with, after many conersations we've had over the years, I thought it would be worth a try. What bothered me is the fact that the dealer won't perform the task at my cost I'm electing to have performed?

 

[CToney]

Having worked on CTDs every work day since their inception I have never seen a failed head gasket on a 6.7 under 200k with stock programming.However I have seen a few cracked egr coolers after diy coolant system work.

A local repair shop has done a lot of them. A few buddies have had to do them. Most guys just run a delete tow tune and have them fail. Exhaust brake may in crease cylinder pressure as well? These guys all seem to tow a lot as well. It's less $ and hassle to install studs than to do a head gasket.

 

[BrianAtSmarty]

On a trip where i was a few hundred miles from home, (07.5 stock except Smarty Touch) the variable vane turbo decided to stick on me. It was quite alarming. Over 90 lbs of exhaust backpressure had shown on the Smarty Touch screen when I used the exhaust brake to slow for a red light then gently accelerated thru the intersection. Thankfully my Smarty Touch monitors the exhaust back pressure. I stopped using the exhaust brake the remainder of the trip and was forced to feather the go-pedal up the hills as the back pressure would go up to 70 psi going up a hill if I wasn't careful. I was crawling by the time I got to the summits but by golly, I made it with no head gasket failure.

I was able to watch the psi on my Smarty Touch and safely limp it home using a gentle accelerator pedal, with no head gasket issues so I could replace the variable vane turbo in our shop. If i hadn't been monitoring that PID with the Touch I would have been stranded 400 miles away from here. Sticky vanes can sneak up on you quick with not much warning. I monitor the exhaust back pressure along with everything else I set on my main screen, and toggle the Touch to watch my injector balance rates as well.

 

[Bob4x4]

On a trip where i was a few hundred miles from home, (07.5 stock except Smarty Touch) the variable vane turbo decided to stick on me. It was quite alarming. Over 90 lbs of exhaust backpressure had shown on the Smarty Touch screen when I used the exhaust brake to slow for a red light then gently accelerated thru the intersection. Thankfully my Smarty Touch monitors the exhaust back pressure. I stopped using the exhaust brake the remainder of the trip and was forced to feather the go-pedal up the hills as the back pressure would go up to 70 psi going up a hill if I wasn't careful. I was crawling by the time I got to the summits but by golly, I made it with no head gasket failure.

I was able to watch the psi on my Smarty Touch and safely limp it home using a gentle accelerator pedal, with no head gasket issues so I could replace the variable vane turbo in our shop. If i hadn't been monitoring that PID with the Touch I would have been stranded 400 miles away from here. Sticky vanes can sneak up on you quick with not much warning. I monitor the exhaust back pressure along with everything else I set on my main screen, and toggle the Touch to watch my injector balance rates as well.

Where is The like button ??

 

[sag2]

I tie the turbo drain gasket onto the drain pipe with dental floss before installing the new turbo. The OEM gasket does have the tabs to hold the bolts in place but if you bump them they can fall out anyway. The floss just stays there with no effect on sealing.