I gave the fuel screw 2 turns yesterday, what a big difference!
It's like a whole new truck now. Wish I'd done it 100,000 KM ago.
It feels like the turbo actually does something now.
I think I'll go order some guages now.

 

Gauges are good. Melted pistons are bad. Gauges are good.
Happy BOMBing!
greg

 

I would think you should have gotten gauges first.

 

I second what G1625S says. Get some gauges, but dont crash because of the distraction they provide . Then get in there and put in a 3200 RPM spring and grind that AFC lever!

 

Jim, I have bad news for you.


You're DOOOOMED!

 

You might be right.

 

How many Melted Pistons have you seen on a cummins? Just curious.

 

with that pump screw in 2 turns and no gauges to watch while towing he will find out pretty quick. i saw 1400 post turbo one time for about 2 sec. didnt take long to get off the loud peddle.

 

I'm going to take it easy till my guages arrive, just driving around locally
with no load.

 

It doesn't take a load to produce near critical EGT's. I found this out because I installed my EGT gauge after just a couple of mods. And she would get pretty toasty. My truck only weighs 5300lbs. With the stock exhaust I wouldn't hammer down for more the 15 seconds at a time. I didn't realize how fast EGT could rise.

 

check out my gallery,,,,i've seen 6,,,hope to not see any ever again.

 

Ok I seen the Piston in your pics, What caused it? What engine is it out of? The pics in the album said 8.3

 

Never seen a melted Cummins piston, but quite a few scuffed/scorched ones.

 

No the pic of the piston is from my motor, the 8.3L pics start after that, but I have 2 sitting on the shelf 1 from mine that I saved and one from the 8.3L

The 8.3L was an industrial motor used to run a sandblasting trailer for a bridge company. It was caused by sand getting in the motor EVERYWHERE. Coolant, oil, turbo, everywhere. It just finally overheated, probably due to the coolant passages looking like mudpies, blew the head gasket and bam.

Mine, when I first bought my truck I never checked the coolant content and the previous owners had just filled it with water. NO antifreeze, so the first day it got cold, the radiator froze. Hm. Was trying to figure out why the temp guage wasn't moving, I thought to myself " I need to fix that when I get home" and then I smelled burning oil, I turned the radio down and heard the whole engine knocking LOUD. And I immediately got off the gas, tried to coast to a turnoff, wasn't going to make it so gave her just a tiny bit of gas. that was a mistake, because apparently by that point the head gasket had let go and BAM BAM BAM it shot flames out the stack, actually blew the exhaust clamp OFF the turbo, and there she set with steam blowing out between the head and the motor.

Ended up costing me some pretty pennies to rebuild, but I went with all the best stuff I could so I probably could've done it for cheaper. But on the bright side, it gave me something to do that winter, and I learned how to rebuild a 5.9L lol.

 

Flames are cool!