Tearing Down a Duramax to Prep for 1000 HP

(Austin)>> Alright brother let's fire it up.

(LT)>> Hey you know what. I've got to give you credit because this is actually a pretty cool idea. I don't think anybody on the planet is crazy enough to put a 292 straight six in a 2011 GMC but we might just have to pull this off one day.

(Austin)>> Dude I saw an empty hole. This thing was hanging over there. I figured why not stick it in. We could actually probably put two in here. And it'll look cool regardless of power it makes.

(LT)>> Hey a project for another day, but you guys might have guessed that today we're talking about power plants, and this is the LML that we took out of our 2011 GMC, and we've got some pretty big plans for this thing, but we've got to put some goodies on the inside to make that happen.

(Austin)>> Speaking of Duramax I am scooting around a loaner too I want to show you later. It's a little bit older than this LMM, but hey it's free wheels.

(LT)>> Well that must be pretty hard for you being a Ford guy to drive around in a GMC but I want to check it out. Plus I've got something to show you. So you're driving.

(Austin)>> Deal, let's roll!

[ engine revving ] [ tires screeching ]

(LT)>> Yeah baby, woo hoo!

[ tires screeching ] [ engine revving ]

(LT)>> Remember Austin's F-250 from last year? Well now it sits in his driveway barely running and blowing smoke out the exhaust. Lead foot here probably cracked a piston, but it might be normal for a 6.4. Now he's in a loaner where obviously those old habits are hard to break. [ tires screeching ]

(LT)>> There you go.

(Austin)>> Yeah buddy! That's floored! [ tires screeching ]

(LT)>> That is a lot of freaking birds. Like what are they all doing?

(Austin)>> Birding around man.

(LT)>> The way I see it there's no better way to start the day than burning a little bit of rubber.

(Austin)>> Dude for sure. That's how we do business. Even though I was given specific instructions not to do burnouts in this truck by Tommy, who's my stepdad.

(LT)>> Yeah so what's the story? You're borrowing some wheels just until you get your truck put back together?

(Austin)>> Yeah man, my six-four's dead. So I'm not proud of it but I'm putt-putting around in this GMC. You can't break it cause it has no power.

(LT)>> The way I see it this is an upgrade even if you don't want to admit it.

(Austin)>> I kind of feel like a classy dude driving this. Bro where we at? We're in the boonies, you got me out here. There a cool truck we're gonna check out or something?

(LT)>> Yeah you know we're gonna be working on some diesels a little bit latter. We've got the LML, and I figure since that truck's gonna be torn apart for some time before we get it put back together we've got to get some inspiration. Kinda get a little bit of motivation I guess. So I've got a buddy who's got a couple of old Cummins, and he said we could kinda go drive around with them and he's show them off to us. So yeah, we're just checking out some cool trucks.

(Austin)>> Yeah I'm down with that. This it?

(LT)>> Yeah!

(Austin)>> This dude's spot right here?

(LT)>> Right here, this is the place.

(Austin)>> I see two diesels for sure.

(LT)>> Three!

(Austin)>> Maybe three.

(LT)>> Hey you must be John.

(John)>> Yep.

(LT)>> How are you, very good to meet you.

(Austin)>> What's going on, Austin, how are you?

(LT)>> So I heard you had a couple of cool diesel trucks but I've got to say a Ford Ranger's not what I expected. Tell us about it a little bit.

(John)>> Well it's something that I decided to see if I could do it after I got my other truck into the 14's.

(Austin)>> Looking like a full blown race truck to me. Not a daily drive I'm guess?

(John)>> Yeah it's main potential is a race truck.

(LT)>> The slicks are kind of a dead giveaway but what you got under the hood? This is a Ranger. You got like a little 2.8 Cummins, or maybe a 4-BT?

(John)>> No I've got something a little better than that.

(Austin)>> You've got to show me.

(LT)>> Let's pop the hood and check her out.

(John)>> Will you grab that one?

(Austin)>> Come on.

(LT)>> A 12 valve 6-BT Cummins underneath the hood.

(Austin)>> I was expecting at least a Ford power plant but I get it. This is cool dude. You ever see anything like that?

(LT)>> No that's pretty impressive, and I don't know if you guys know anything about Cummins diesel engines but they are big and this is a little truck. So how'd you get it in here? What's the story?

(John)>> It's just something I wanted to see if I could do. I used to drag race my other truck, my Ford, and I got that into the 14's. I was happy with that. So I figured let's see if I can build something that if I break it or blow it up I can put it on a trailer and fix it another day.

(Austin)>> So you bought this with the intention of building it, racing it, and just having fun. Just doing something out of the box. Obviously you don't expect to see the Cummins under there.

(LT)>> And so how much cutting did you have to do to get this thing under the hood because up front here you've still got the stock core support here. You've got a front mount intercooler and a radiator. So I'm guess you had to cut on the firewall side?

(John)>> Yeah I had to go in about six inches.

(Austin)>> So I'm guessing cab up, figured everything out, chopped it up. You've got to put the cab back on the frame. The easiest way to do it cause putting this in and out from the front.

(John)>> If you want to call it easy. I spent some time. I had to make the motor mounts. I had to make other brackets for like the tensioner, the water inlet, also the trans mount and the trans crossmember. So along with boxing in the frame.

(Austin)>> Stiffen it up.

(John)>> And then also take care of the front suspension with different springs.

(Austin)>> Well that's cool but let's crank it up.

(LT)>> I gotta hear this thing. [ engine starting ] Gotta love the hood stack!

(Austin)>> Why do I love this so much? It sounds awesome.

(LT)>> It's the most distinctive sound of any diesel out there.

(Austin)>> You know a Cummins instantly. Even if that hood was closed and you crank it you could tell it's a Cummins.

(LT)>> Dead giveaway. [ engine revving ]

(Austin)>> Dude I love it, I love it. Yeah go ahead and kill it.

(LT)>> That is a really cool truck man. I'm digging it.

(John)>> Thank you, I like it.

(LT)>> But I think you're holding out on us cause I've got a really clean second gen Dodge right here behind us. So what's the story on that?

(John)>> It's a little something I picked up due to bad habits.

(Austin)>> Diesel over here, diesel over here, diesel over here, but we can stay here all day.

(LT)>> Seriously could.

(John)>> This one we've got here is my '99 Dodge 2,500. It's my daily.

(LT)>> So you must have painted this truck right cause this is way clean?

(John)>> No it's been touched up in a few spots, but other than that I just try to polish it and keep it clean.

(LT)>> Alright well I love the color choice. That bright green works on a black truck for sure. I knew it wasn't stock. An S&B hooked up to what, S-360?

(John)>> It's a 363.

(LT)>> Steed Speed manifold and the big front mount intercooler, that's a plus. What you're fuel system like?

(John)>> I've got 7-12 injectors and then I've also got Air Dog coming out of a sump on the tank.

(LT)>> I mean you've gotta run a lift pump on these cause stock one, it'll loose pressure.

(John)>> Yeah that's what started it all.

(Austin)>> This thing is set up.

(LT)>> Well I don't know about you guys but it's a little chilly out here.

(Austin)>> Dude crank them up.

(LT)>> Let's go for a ride, what do you say? You like doing burnouts.

(John)>> Sure.

(Austin)>> Okay, which truck though.

(LT)>> We're going in this one.

(LT)>> Next get you some of this three ton rolling burnout.

(Austin)>> I guess I'm in the back huh?

(LT)>> Hey that's the perfect spot for you. John Davis is a friend and diesel junky who's built some over the top trucks. This he calls rearranged, sporting a 12 valve Cummins that runs the eighth mile in the 7's. There's just something about a Cummins man. That rattle, that sound, the exhaust.

(Austin)>> Means business that's for sure. We're going for a ride in his deal, a second gen two wheel drive Ram powered by the five-nine 24 valve Cummins.

(LT)>> So you drive this thing every day. What kind of fuel mileage you get out of it cause I've always heard these two wheel drive Cummins are supposed to be real good huh?

(John)>> Actually yeah, running back and forth to work and running around town with the box turned off I get about 16.4. That's hand calculated. Turn the box on and it goes down quite a bit.

(LT)>> How's the response? Is it like right there when you step into it?

(John)>> Oh yeah, there's no lag really at all. If you're already moving a little bit like we are now and if I floored it it would just pick up and take off.

(Austin)>> Alright whenever you want to you can roll into it as hard as you want, I'm just saying. [ engine revving ]

(LT)>> Oh he's got his foot on the brake.

(Austin)>> I like it.

(LT)>> Here we go! Oh yeah she's spinning a little, I see.

(Austin)>> For sure. Okay yeah, let's trade. Just let me know and we can work it out.

(LT)>> You can have it down here tonight right?

(Austin)>> Bro you want me to get you a selfie stick to help you with that.

(LT)>> It'll keep the followers happy.

(Austin)>> Smart man because even though this is a diesel and it's quite simpler than having an ignition, and coil packs, and spark plugs everywhere, it's still quite complicated on the routing side of things with hoses, and tubing, and wires.

(LT)>> Yeah and when we put this thing back together in a month or two from now we've got to remember how it all goes back together, and a picture, that's never gonna forget.

(Austin)>> Yeah I can't even remember what I did this morning, much less in two months from now.

(LT)>> Well I mean here's a perfect example right over. In this one little corner you've got coolant tubes, you've got electrical wiring, you've got low pressure fuel coming to and from the filter head, and you've got the low pressure injector return, and the challenge that one of us is gonna have is how to put this all back in exactly the right spot.

(Austin)>> Yeah a simple little trick but you'll kick yourself if you don't do it because I've been there, I know, and speaking of one of us this is kind of a one man operation. So I'm gonna let you handle this. I know you like to be neat and organized. I'm gonna fire up that paint booth and take care of some business.

(LT)>> Alright have fun. I'll catch you in a little bit.

[ drill spinning ]

(LT)>> Since the wiring harness was one of the last parts to go on on the assembly line it's the first part that comes off on the disassembly. That concept is known as first in, last out. [ drill spinning ]

(LT)>> Don't forget about the grounds. Down below we have the crank and cam sensor, and when you're working with these small electrical and hose connectors one thing you've got to keep in mind is just to be patient cause a lot of times you've got to have just the right amount of pressure. Sometimes there's a little lock tab, and sometimes they're just plain stuck, but you don't want to go nuts on it cause you can very easily wind up breaking a connector, and if you do that you're gonna have a hard time repairing it. So just take your time, there's no rush. A bit of diesel left in there.

[ drill spinning ]

(LT)>> Alright that's pretty much the main branch on the passenger side. Now to the driver's. The other thing you want to keep in mind is as you take pieces and parts off like this heat shield there's gonna be a bunch of more connections and wire routing underneath that you want to pay attention to. So never hurts to take a couple more pictures. [ drill spinning ]

(Rob)>> What's next?

(Rob)>> What are you a mime?

(LT)>> The very next thing is the passenger side main accessory bracket. So really the whole purpose of doing this bracket now is cause there's one branch of the wire harness that they kind of snuck down there. It goes all the way back to a water temp sensor and an oil level sensor.

(Rob)>> Why do they do that?

(LT)>> Why do they do that says Rob the camera guy? Well that's a great question. I think sometimes GM just likes to mess with you, make you really work for it, and not only that they bundle together a fuel line and an electrical wire in the same clip.

Now I'm fairly confident that whenever we pull this coolant crossover off I'm gonna get wet. So I'm gonna clean up, put a pan underneath, and try to contain the mess, but first organize parts.

(Austin)>> Ahead I'll spice up these boring taillights. Time to black them out.

(LT)>> So with the coolant crossover out of the way I thought we could finally take the wiring harness off but there is one last wire that is still connected and that goes way down in the valley, follows this guy right here, and it's connected to the CP-4 injection pump. Now there's a few parts of the air handling system that we need to take off in order to get to the back of the injection pump. Now a diesel might seem a little bit complicated with all the air that's flowing around but it's actually quite simple. First of all fresh air is sucked into the turbocharger through this guy right here. There's normally a filter and a mass air flow sensor on the end. The turbo pressurizes the air. It gets pushed all the way up front across the intercooler to cool it back down, up a charge pipe, and then ultimately in the engine right here, and this part is called a Y-bridge. This is where the air gets distributed between the left and the right banks of the engine. This is the part I need to get off to access the CP-4 injection pump. So I'm gonna start with the intake and get the Y-bridge out.

(Austin)>> Now I know it might not be everybody's flavor but if I can color match something or black something out I'm doing 100 percent of the time, all day every day, twice on Sundays. Now what we have here are some new l-e-d taillights from Summit Racing but they only come in red. So I decided to take the factory o-e-m ones, give them some spray out so we can test for translucent and get our right mix. So there's two different ways you can do this. Method 1 would be mix your base with a color blender and then put clear coat on top of it just as you normally would, and as you can see light shines through. Method 2 is mixing a little bit of base with the clear. Now same visually, they're exactly same, there's no difference, and that's really what I wanted to show you. As you can see on this one light shines through. I know I may have got a little bit heavy. These are slightly dark. After all you don't want people to see when you actually hit the brakes and not rear end you. But benefits, one step, mix the base with clear, and this one you get 100 percent u/v protection and you know that black is not gonna fade out, and that's the way we're gonna roll.

(LT)>> Goodbye mister mud wasp.

Here comes the Y-bridge, and finally I'll have access to the very last wire down there on the injection pump. Now and officially now the whole wiring harness for this whole entire engine can come off. Just got to snake it around all the fuel lines, snake it around all the nuts and bolts. Make sure nothing gets tore up and that is one wiring harness officially removed. [ drill spinning ]

(LT)>> Let me introduce you to compound turbocharging. This is a kit we picked up from HSP Diesel and it's based around a Borg Werner S-485, and it works with a factory v-g-t down in the valley. Now eventually we are going to be replacing this one with a 67 millimeter v-g-t but we just wanted to get things mocked up so we could show you guys the air flow path in a compound setup and what our plans are. Not only that this thing just looks cool. So after the exhaust gases leave the high pressure charger down in the valley it spins the low pressure atmospheric charger. Now this pumps a lot of volume of air at a low pressure into the high pressure charger, which sits down here. After the pressure gets raised even more the air gets pushed down to the front of the intercooler, across it, and back into the engine through a Y-bridge just like it would in a normal application. Now there are several benefits to running a compound setup on a street or a race truck. Basically we're combining the best attributes of both turbos, the smaller highly responsive one and the larger more powerful one. So if you could run each of these turbos individually there'd be some drawbacks. The smaller charger would run out of breath at a higher power level and the larger turbo would make all the power you want but it wouldn't be very responsive on the street. With compounds you can tow and have nice, cool e-g-t's in a highly powerful truck that's responsive and you can drive every single day. So basically compounds are the best of both worlds and the coolest looking thing we could put under the hood of Dragonali.

(Austin)>> T-boy we hit it on this one. This thing is bad bro!

(LT)>> We had it in the box for just a little while but I had to throw it on even if it's just for a minute just to put eyes on it because this compound setup, it looks really cool.

(Austin)>> That's what I love about the Duramax. With a good compound setup that big charger's up front staring you in the face. Don't get cooler than that really.

(LT)>> Not at all, and you know we do have a little bit of teardown left to do. There's a lot of stuff going on with the fuel lines and such but I kinda wanted to leave that on until we get a few more parts in the house just to make sure I don't get any contamination, or dirt, or just lose the parts cause there's probably about 250 individual items in the fuel system alone.

(Austin)>> Who's counting though right? I just can't wait to hear these dudes spool up.

(LT)>> This thing's gonna be awesome.

(Austin)>> Our blackout continues when I finish up in the booth. That's next!

(Austin)>> Alright I'll be the first to admit the only time you're gonna catch me wet sanding if it's after a paint job and we're gonna block out that clear getting ready to polish, or if it's plastic. I just prefer to do it dry because it's just cleaner. I mean this is messy, but on plastic it's a better idea to do it wet because your scratches are gonna be way finer and you're gonna get a way cleaner cut. If you do it dry it could be a little rough. When the taillights are manufactured they have some raised lettering stamped on the outside. Now you might not think this is a big deal but this is painting. It's all about the details. If I were to use just a little hand scotchbrite pad and scuff it out yeah we'd get the proper adhesion but you definitely would see that in the finished product. That's why I got this soft block on here. We can level it out and it's gonna look clean.

Woo that's slick boy. She gone!

Before I shoot that base coat I'm gonna lay down one coat of adhesion promotor. [ spray gun hissing ]

(Austin)>> Alright partner I've got our black base coat mixed up and I already pre-mixed our color blender. Now I found the perfect concoction to be four parts color blender and one part base, and that'll be just the right amount of transparency. Not too light, not too dark, and it'll probably look pretty slick when it's all done.

Now you really can't go wrong here. You just keep spraying until you get the exact shade you want. I ended up with about three coats and it looks killer. Time to get that glass like finish with three coats of clear.

Well alright there buddy I guess we're not gonna wait to strip this little dude down huh?

(LT)>> You know what I got to thinking and to properly measure and order the pistons that we're gonna need we've got to take it apart and measure the cylinder bores and make sure everything's within spec, and so far the two that I did check are within half of a thousandths of the original size. So all we've got to do is hone this thing out, get some stock size pistons and we're in business.

(Austin)>> Dude that's awesome news. I mean for 98,000, 100,000 miles it's really nothing for a diesel but you never know what you're gonna find until you pop the heads off.

(LT)>> Yep just double check before you order something. So what you been up to, just kinda relaxing back there?

(Austin)>> Yeah I actually finished up smoking these taillights. The first one was a little dark. So I hit these right on the money. Still transparent, got light shining through, and black matches the rest of the truck.

(LT)>> Yeah and I like how you can kinda see just a little bit of that red. It almost gives it kind of a cherry look, and those are 100 percent legal right?

(Austin)>> Absolutely! I guess this would be a good time to slap them on since you've got your hands full you know.

(LT)>> Yeah it'll be a minute before we actually need them since this truck won't be driving for some time, but if you have any questions about anything you've seen today be sure to check us out at Powernation TV dot com.