So assuming we eventully get some kind of electronic timiing box that's adjsutable, how will we know what the optimum setting is??

 

Just a few tips for those thinking of doing the tone ring . Pull the belt off from below with a 1/2" ratchet. If you don't have a really good air ratchet, you'll need someone to hold the flywheel with a prybar (after removing the access cover) while breaking loose the balancer bolts.

I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get the fan shroud out of the way . It doesn't look like this will work when you first look at it but try it and its really simple. There are two 13mm nuts holding the bottom of the fan shroud to the engine fan shroud bracket. It looks like you won't be able to move the shroud even of the bolts are removed. The shroud looks llike hard plastic but it is acutally more like rubber. So after you take those two nuts off it collapses back towards the radiator a couple of inches and gives you plenty of room to get to the balancer bolts. An engineer finally earned their money .

 

As far as optimum setting goes, the only thing I can say is to experiment. With the amount of play in the tone ring, at least on mine, there was probably well over one degree of play and maybe closer to two (it was half a tooth or more). I'm sure the engine assemblers down in Mexico didn't give a lot of thought to the relative position of the tone ring, and this may account for the significant difference in the way some trucks run. If you do this mod on a 4.5 lets say, that has later injection timing by design, and your tone ring was installed in the most retarded position, if you then advanced it couple of degrees, I believe the results would be very noticeable, as I experienced. Actually, I was thinking since I didn't know where the exact alignment of the tone ring should be, by advancing it and the truck running smoother with more low end power, that I was probably close to blueprint spec as far as injection timing went. Just a thought.

 

"Thats when I realized that the factory hole in the balancer pulley had so much slop around the pin that you could move the balancer back and forth about one tooths worth by itself, thus rendering my origional mark on the balancer useless."

Here is what I wrote last week:

"BTW: It was mentioned that the damper could be marked as a reference so that one will know how much one has moved the tone ring. I think this would be misleading. The damper has a 1/4" dowel hole. The dowel itself is 6mm. The damper has some play on the crankshaft thus it isn't a good reference point."

Maybe I better explain more... 1/4" = 0.250" 6mm = 0.2357" roughly. So the damper is by no means tightly keyed to the crankshaft.

Maybe I should say one thing more. Be sure to double check that the tone ring is fully advanced and that it didn't slip back before the damper bolts are fully tightend.

 

Hopefully Quad will make some dyno runs to get us in the ball park. Or maybe just certain preset levels.

MikeyB

 

I got my timming sensor yesterday and hope to get it installed this weekend. I have about 18000 miles on my Ram now so I decided to go ahead and change over to Amsoil. I have 4 gallons on the way.
I hope to go to Myrtle Beach Labor Day weekend so that will be a good test of how the changes affect my towing mileage and power. I have been getting 18.5 mpg at 70 mph on the interstate solo and 10.5 mpg towing the 10000 lb. travel trailer at 65 mph.

 

Thanks for the info Superduty! I might have read what you wrote about the pin slop ,but I couldn't re-read this whole post. I just scanned to see which way to turn the ring before I started hacking

 

woops!
I think I may have overcut (yea, I cut about +/-2mm)
Now when at a stop at idle it sounds fine, but when i put it in gear, I hear pinging.... Did I overadvance, or is this o.k.?

 

if you didn't cut the mounting bolt holes, you can not really go too far... the mounting bolts limit how far the tone wheel can be rotated.

 

T&T,
Did you make some marks on the outer tone wheel for reference? Just wonder if the 600 could use a little more advance timing than two. Say like +4 degrees?? If the mounting bolt holes is large enough.
BTW, when the engine loads down a little more pinging is heard, mine does it letting out the clutch.

MikeyB

 

Still waiting to hear about this tone ring mod with guys running Edge Juice w/Attitude!!! The Quad man says it's OK to run it with their box; just wondering about Edge. Keep posting updates everyone and we'll figure this this out shortly!!!!!! Talked with gatf4 today at his shop; he says that there is probably at least 1 degree of slop in the damper/tone wheel without modifying it. Kind of poor engineering IMHO!!! You have some dude down in Mexico slapping parts together and we wonder why there is such a wide variance in performance/mileage in these trucks!!

 

MikeyB,
just loosened the bolts and measured the slack in the tone ring from end to end. Appears to be about 1/4" or approximately 1 tooth. I backed it up to 1/8" slack to check the difference in engine performance. May pull it off again and grind a bit more and experiment.

 

I was wondering if advancing or retarding the tone ring just moves the power band up and down like advancing or retarding the cam on gasoline engine. Not really giving you more power, just changing the point where it comes into play. At least at the level of advance we're talking about. I'm guessing thats whats happening. Anybody know for sure?

 

Mod'ed the tone wheel yesterday and making a trip today (300 miles) I will let you know how it worked.... Turned it to the bolts after filing towel hole. Anyone know how many degrees that is?
I noticed a little louder at idle and nice power. On the 04.5 if you unbolt the bottom fan shroud and pull it back and put the bolts back on a little... it will hold the should well out of the way.
Had no idea what I was doing and it still took about 45 min. Hardest part was loosening the 15mm bolt on the pulley.

OilGuy

 

if you advance it to the bolts, it will ping like crazy under small load (like putting it into gear). I backed my down slightly to remove the loud pinging and got pretty good results. Now to adjust the tone ring, I use a permanent marker and just mark the location on the belt (on the flywheel), It is all about trial and error. The adjustment only takes about 5 minutes once the mod is done.