6.7L Cummins conversion project

[mk216v]

Originally Posted by mgmetalworks

Obviously you understand my struggle here. Sorry to hear about all the troubles. You have me beat on the "Number of things that fail while on a road trip far from home" game.

You got me beat on the axle story too. You got way more miles that I did. My "professionally built" Sterling 10.5 made it less than 200 miles before I had to do a full tear down and rebuild. Gear pattern, backlash, pinion depth, pinion preload and ARB lines were all so far off and so hastily done that I can't believe they even checked any of it. The oring seals on the axle shafts were so old, hard and chewed up that I had an oil leak before I had really driven the van anywhere. A $5000 axle build and you don't replace the axle seals? And unfortunately it's not the only axle I've fixed that came from them. Needless to say, I've purchased all of the tools and spent a good deal of time teaching myself as much as I can about gear setup so I can do it myself from now on.

U R JOking, right? I never knew you had so much trouble with that "pro built" Sterling 10.5. You didn't go with their RSC setup on that van, did you?

Man, and more torque converter horror stories!
I hope 3rd converter is a charm.

[mgmetalworks]

You know that ol' timers saying... "Every 20 minute job is just one broken bolt away from being a 3 day ordeal"

Yep...totally true.

I was stung by Murphy's law this week but a mere 3-days of "dealing with it" and the Cummins van is back together by the close of business Friday. Despite my clean up, preparation, chased threads, extreme care in assembly... a couple threads inside of my torque converter adapter ring let go and nearly seized the bolt. I was able to carefully back it out but the damage was too severe to try to fix it in place. Out came the trans (again) to assess the damage and of course, it was not something that could be fixed quickly.

So I essentially had to weld up the hole and redrill/rethread the adapter...but in order to get the hole placement precise, I had to machine a drill jig. Many hours later, the trans is ready to go back in...but not before the UPS truck shows up with new torque converter bolt kit to replace the one bolt I lost to the struggle. The "next day" delivery service must have been using a different calendar than I'm using here at the shop. Oh well... Things could be worse.

While the van is still on the lift, tomorrow I'm planning to run a couple air lines and do a little maintenance but then it's ready to set down on all 4s again, pour in some trans fluid and take it for a test drive!! Hoping for the best.

[mgmetalworks]

First drive on the new converter is in the books. Feels a lot better than before for sure. Annoying "clackity clackity" sound that the old converter had is gone too.

Now the tuner is looking over the data logs and making some adjustments. More road miles lie ahead before I can claim a total victory here but at least things look to be headed in the right direction.

[Lilnuts2]

Congrats in getting past all the BS and getting your van to where you envisioned!!

[marret]

Sounding good, glad to see you getting past the BS too.

[mk216v]

Niiiice! Don't be tempted to leave a bit of rubber on the pavement now.

[TomsBeast]

Originally Posted by mgmetalworks

...The converter bolt holes look marred. I pull the flexplate off to inspect further, check the bolts and find that the holes are too small for the bolts provided. There's a small shoulder at the base of the bolt that doesn't fit through hole in the flexplate so the bolts were never sitting right. The bolts (ARP) have a machined face under the head that's supposed to mate with the machined face of the flexplate but instead the bolts were tightening up against the flexplate on the small shoulder....

I just read your rant from Feb 22nd, it really resonated with me deeply, as i can relate. I've been in manufacturing for 40yrs, starting as an apprentice machinist and now a manufacturing engineer on some pretty 'ultra high reliability' systems. I also race cars as a serious hobby, build my own engines, tune for myself and others... The point is I've seen a lot.



The flexplate and bolt story reminded me of something similar I came across. I was crewing on a friend's racecar in the early 2000's, trying to sort out his newly built $12k race engine, and get the car down the track.

He built the engine himself, new crank, matching flywheel, and ARP bolt set all purchased from the (well known) crank manufacturer.



My friend was writing for a car magazine at the time, chronicling his steps as a Neophyte Racer in monthly installments. I was working behind the scenes so to speak fixing all the stupid stuff he effed up along the way, and tuning the car, while keeping it interesting for his readership. I was happy to help, looking back 20yrs it was a great experience.



On the car's maiden outing in Phoenix, the engine developed a knock. Not wanting to inflict more damage, he's ready to push it back in the trailer and make the 'tail between our legs' 600 mile tow home. Not me, with no metal particles in the oil and a well stocked trailer, we pulled the engine in the pits and got to work. The flywheel was loose, as I guessed. The low profile head shouldered bolts were green loctighted in, but the shoulders had bottoming out in the threads before the flywheel was fully clamped. The knock came from the torsional pulses hammering on the flywheel with each cylinder ignite. I did some pitside 'guerilla machining' as I call it, cleaned up the holes, trimmed back the shoulders of the bolts with a cut-off wheel grinder spinning the bolts in a cordless drill, checked for engagement depth, reassembled it all and made the last qualifying round.



The article my friend wrote and the magazine published, made no mention of the vendor (an larger advertiser in the mag he wrote for) other than some mention of the flywheel loosening. On a side note, be skeptical of what you read. Reminds me of news shows that won't run a story about prescription drug side effects when their advertisers are big pharma. I digress.


I ran into one of the crank manufacturer's owners at SEMA in Vegas later that same year. I relayed my story at the booth. He looked me straight in the eye and gave me this well polished story about how ARP (a very reputable company btw) had a 'bad batch' of bolts. A plausible story tothe less experienced indeed, that he had used with dozens of other customers experiencing the same issue (small industry, I know people, LOL), but the story was a complete line of BS, to cover up incompetency. They ordered the wrong length, about a hundred sets, and were stuck with them. So they shipped them to their customers knowing they were unusable. The story goes on, as these guys continued to build this company, expanding their product line into the V8 market, increasing their volume 20-50 fold, and recently sold to a large holding company for a tiddy sum, comfortable retirement money I'm certain. At it's core, these guys were just a bunch of hacks, stumbling their way through business, covering their losses on the backs of their customers, profiting from it. It's everywhere.



The problem is it's so darn difficult hard to separate the hacks from the hard working honest business owners. It's also easy to 'trust' that some huge company built a part correctly, and very difficult and time consuming to separate user error from a bad part, with a very custom build. I've almost become a curmudgeon, and trust nothing or anybody, LOL.


I'm glad you are getting to the end of your conversion, it's got to feel like summiting Everest

[mgmetalworks]

Originally Posted by TomsBeast

I just read your rant from Feb 22nd, it really resonated with me deeply, as i can relate....
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That's quite a story, thanks for sharing! It makes me feel like I'm not the only one and I'm not crazy for having certain expectations of companies who produce what they claim to be "high performance and/or high quality". While there are companies who can and do BS their way to success and holding company buyouts, I'm going to keep my high standards and high expectations rather than acquiesce to the new norm of complacency/blame shifting.

Originally Posted by TomsBeast

I'm glad you are getting to the end of your conversion, it's got to feel like summiting Everest

Me too!!!! Thank you!

[arctictraveller]

It seems like our experiences tell us we have little choice but to double and triple check everything and trust nothing. I once sent a crank out for polishing only and got it back marked 10 / 10 WTF I asked, and was told it wouldn’t clean up. Well, grumble, grumble, I built the engine and just before I installed it I remembered I had never plasticgauged the crank. I put it back on the stand, turned it over, pulled the pan and checked the crank. Much to my horror, I discovered it had actually been ground 10/20. Had I not checked, the engine probably would’ve run with little to zero oil pressure just before it blew up. Trust but verify.

[TomsBeast]

Originally Posted by TomsBeast

I just read your rant from Feb 22nd, it really resonated with me deeply, as i can relate. ...I've almost become a curmudgeon, and trust nothing or anybody, LOL.

My wife and I recently put together a second home, utilities, well, excavation, manufactured home factory and contractor to ground set it on our 37 acre site. Being 600 miles away didn't help, neither did the pandemic.



The number of egocentric excuse making blow-hards in THAT business, is simply staggering. They tell you how many people they know in the trades, 'we work with so and so company all the time, we're like brothers' but fingerpoint and disavow any knowledge of any other sub when it's convenient. Sure there's exceptions, and I apologize to the hard working tradesmen who put in an honest day's work for their customers, but OMG is construction full of finger pointers and cover up artists, that use polished story telling skills to make up for their lack of competence and organizational skills.



I won't go into the details but after an experience like we've had, well over budget and 10 months behind schedule, I almost wish for an '3 bad transmission ruining torque converters in a row' type problems. Not really, I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but the aftermarket automotive industry seems to be working overtime trying to catch up to the construction trades, and that's not a good thing LOL!