Are you sure about the overboost thing? I've seen anecdotal evidence that 30psi is not unusual on 2003 trucks.

As for the ECM being modified...who can tell. Anything is possible I guess. It seems unlikely in my opinion. Nothing else on the truck had any hint of modification when I bought it. I added the boost guage for example. No 5th wheel hitch. Stock tow hitch.

I realize this proves nothing either way, just a gut feel.

I may connect a scope to the crank sensor and injector #1. I can verify the timing based on the pulse creation. Basically the equivalent of a timing light on a gasser. I don't really want to mess with it too much because it runs really well.

I'll call to check on the cost of taking it to the ***********. they are f brutal around here.

I'm on Vancouver Island.

Thanks for taking the time to post your information. I have 0 ego on this stuff, just trying to get the best result without spending $$$$$$$$$.


Chay

 

Weird that stxxxxxship is a bad word lol.

Chay

 

^^^LOL, yup.. It's been that way for as long as I can remember on numerous forums!

Love Vancouver Island, hate the Vancouver Island Ferry. I grew up in North Central B.C., post secondary in Vancouver. Got out of there as soon as I could. Been in Calgary for over 25 years. Still a Canucks fan though!

30 PSI is definitely high on the 2003-04 trucks. The power gain for the 2004.5-07 trucks, compared to the 2003-04 trucks, came from higher boost, which required a larger turbo to reliably support that.
Spinning a stock 2003 turbo regularily to 30PSI will shorten it's life and out of it's efficiency range.

The stock 2004.5+ turbo is pretty much done at about 36 PSI. Any more boost than that and it is overspeeding and it's just blowing hot air at that point which will greatly raise EGT's.

So the 2004.5-07 engines are much susceptible to melted pistons and broken piston rings than the 2003-04 engines.
Despite all the power mods on my 2004.5 truck, which tows our 10k lbs 5th wheel all over B.C. in the summer, I am very conservative with the injector timing.
Proceed carefully with your new 2006 engine.

I know you don't want to spend more money nor time on your truck but I would be pricing out 2003 style pistons (rings) and 2003 injectors (or nozzles) for it.

 

I had a chance to look at the 2003 turbo wastegate. It has a threaded adjustable actuator rod. Is this stock? Maybe it has been modified?

Chay

 

Going by those pictures, that does look like the stock Dodge Cummins 2003 HE341 turbo wastegate.

Both the 2003-04 HE341 Cummins turbo and the 2004.5-07 Cummins HE351 turbo wastegates are adjustable but the ECM is monitoring boost levels with the MAP sensor.
If you bump up the boost too much, the ECM will set Overboost DTC's.

These trucks are now ancient, over 16 years old. There is a ton of info and pics all over the internet. Some of us have been working/modding on these trucks since they were new!

Just for reference, here is an old pic from my photobucket account. The pic shows a HE341 turbo on the left and a modded HE351 on the right. This is from over 10 years ago.
If I recall, the HE341 specs are 56mm/56mm/9cm. HE351 specs are 60/60/9.

Technology has long passed these old turbos though. My twin turbo's are now ancient too. Modern turbo's are way superior to these old Cummins turbo's.

 

Ancient can be good. They are simple journal bearing turbos but they keep working. For stock levels they seem to do fine. Ive got a lot of respect for a little turbo pumping out 30psi for hours on end with no issues.

i have a Mitsubishi evo 8 twin scroll divided wastegate/exhaust manifold on my Integra. Still not state of the art but a very responsive turbo.

Someone out out there is probably running a ceramic ball bearing inconel turbine turbo. It probably wouldn’t be much better on a stilock engine though. Size is a big consideration also of course


Havent fone any further. I may make a boost
fooler to see if it will
make any difference to performance.

Chay

 

I was asked by StealthDiesel to update this thread. Good idea!

The truck was running ok-I'm pretty sure I could have left it with the modified timing wheel and enjoyed many miles. But, I do like to optimize things.

I have a separate project installing twin GM LQ4 (6.0 V8) in my big *** boat. I needed to reprogram the ecms for them to remove a bunch of emissions stuff and also defeat the VATS (Security). After doing the research, I selected the HP Tuners device. Its a plug in hardware device (Into the OBDII Port). It costs about 250us, and the software you run on a laptop is free. By itself it is a kick *** scanner. Then you buy credits for the engines you want to tune. Typical cost is $100us for an engine. So I bought $200 worth of credits and I was good to go for the V8s.

Lo and behold, this device can also tune the Cummins, all third gens. Cost? $100us. No brainer!!!!

So, I bought the credits and it works great. As far as my truck in particular, the 2003/2004 and 2004.5+ ecms are a bit different. Similar, but different. One big difference is that the 2003 only seems to have transient and low denstity tables for most items, vs the 5 state tables in the 2004.5+ ecms. Some of the row and column designations are different.

So, the ones that were the same, I direct copied. The ones that were different, I fired up excel, and copy pasted them in, then interpolated the values for the different column/row values, then copy pasted back in to 'VCM Editor', the HpTuners Software. Worked very well. I have post injection deleted. I could have added some (the tables are there), but left it stock which is off.

I have a few small details to work out, then I will post the tune to the website. HP tuners have a tune repository for people to share tunes.

The result has been very good. I had some light timing rattle on throttle tip in at low settings; it's now gone. It's very quiet, smooth and has decent power up top. Observation tells me fuel economy is as expected. $100 well spent.



Chay

 

Resurecting this thread for an update.

Turns out there are differences in the way the early ECM (2003/2004) uses the numbers in the pilot injection table. Therefore, the numbers for the pilot timing from the 2004.5+ ECM do not cross over to the 2003/04 ecm.

Using the 2004.5+ tables was causing a backfire like pop, and cutout, at about 2200 rpm and med to high throttle input, but only when the engine was warmed up. It was brutal to find. I suspected all kinds of mechanical issues and sensor issues etc, having just done a tonne of work related to the mechanical side, but really it was just the pilot injection timing map.

I went back to stock on everything and I have been running it like that for a while. Really I just needed a truck that ran, and I wasn't going to push it that hard for a while, just wanted to get some experience at the 2003 stock setting to get the truck sorted and reliable. In the back of my mind though was the fact that the 2003 is quite advanced compared to the 2004.5+ and I didn't want to pop a head gasket etc.

So now I've had some time to de-stress and come to like my truck again. As the temp has gotten colder, I have had more haze on cold startup, and also I've had some black smoke at mild to medium throttle settings. I thought it's time to dig back into the table and figure out what's going on, given what I'd learned about the pilot tables being my big issue from the last time. I found recommendations to reduce black smoke at low throttle, a reduction in timing is good. At high throttle an increase in timing may reduce black smoke. This matched my symptoms and what the 2003 vs 2004.5+ maps were telling me.

So, I'm just working on the main tables for now. I re-looked at the pressure and duration tables. The 2004.5+ and the 2003 are very similar in every respect. The 2004.5+ pressure table is withing 500 psi at every point in the table. The 2004.5+ has a few more entries in the duration table, but is otherwise identical. So, I loaded the 2004.5+ maps for pressure and duration (With a bit of interpolation where needed).

The main timing is quite different though. In general, the 2003 timing is way more advanced than the 2004.5+ timing. This was backed up by my ear; the engine is more noisy and less 'smooth' than my old 2003 was.

The tables themselves are a bit different, so I did some interpolation as before, and made a 2004.5+ timing table in the 2003 format. I'm going to call this a 100% 2004.5+ table. Then I made a table that's half way between the two sets of values. I'm calling this the 50% table.

The 2003 actually has two sets of tables, but they are really similar. They are called 'transient' and 'low density'. So, I ended up with 4 tables in excel, the 100% and 50% timing for Transient and Low Density.

Given my previous experience with the 2004.5+ programming I wanted to ease the settings in, so I used the 50% table and I'm really happy with the result. It's quieter and much smoother at every point.

I may try the 100% table at some point, but it runs REALLY well right now. Very smooth, noticeably quieter. Haze is virtually gone. Not sure on black smoke yet; it was dark out, but I suspect it's gone too.

Chay

 

Here are the tables I calculated and loaded with HP Tuners:



This is the stock 2003 timing map:




This is the table, modified for 2004.5+ values (100%):




And here is a comparison, to show how much the vales have changed:



Here is the half way between table (50%) I'm currently running:




And a comparison to the 2003 for the 50% table:




Note that this is just the transient table, but the low density table is very similar, and I used identical techniques on the math.


Chay