92 K2500 Revival

[Komet]

Got my replacement o-ring on Saturday. It's not viton like the oem, in fact it seems to be a different design altogether but it's the part number Tuned Performance said would work and I immediately bought the first one I found on ebay because he hasn't been wrong yet. Here's the original on top of the package for the replacement:

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6/8 fuel injector o-rings were damaged in the 2-3 installs they have had, I kept two as backups and got some fresh ones right off the performance wall at O'Reillys. I thought that area was for carb guys only but there is some good stuff over there.

I recieved my rail back yesterday. One guy at the shop broke his arm and another guy went on his honeymoon and it's a small operation so there was some confusion and delays but the point is they did re-fuse the pinhole and didn't charge me or anything. I whipped everything back together today for another episode of fuel smell paranoia:

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I was unable to detect fuel on my gloves after three leakdown tests for a total of 9 key cycles. I have the fpr dialed down to 38 psi because it started at 55 and it's hard to hit the exact number with just a 5 second prime. It leaks down slow but holds around 25, seems like typical fpr behavior. Time for the 24hr pressure test. We will see what happens.

 

[Komet]

I couldn't find any fuel leaks today either, so I tossed everything back together.

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That back bolt in the center of the previous photo is notoriously difficult to access. It's underneath the stock fpr, and you must access it from the passenger side through the egr solenoid and coil bracket. This is much nicer.

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That fitment. Everything went back together fine, got it running and dialed in the fuel pressure. I didn't notice the seal in my gauge got caught in the threads, it's totally hashed now:

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It spilled some fuel around but I got a good reading. I'll have to look into getting a replacement for that. Anyways, hopefully this is the end of the fuel system saga and I can get back to chasing down the mysterious coolant leak, and less mysterious leaking trans cooler hose that I didn't build correctly and failed to repair even though they tell you the crush sleeve can only be used once. I'll just make a new one.

 

[Komet]

Much to the detriment of my chore list and personal hygiene during the workday, I've been wrenching on the truck.

With the fan removed and the threat of explosion juice mitigated, the coolant leak ended up being the best case scenario:

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Yup, it was the only hose I replaced. I greatly dislike spring clamps, mostly because I don't have spring clamp pliers but also because of that right there. So I did the right thing and dug into my now-depleted bag of name brand hose clamps and slipped it on there without taking the hose off so I wouldn't make a mess:

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Bone dry today. I actually had another leak at the heater core return I've been fighting and not mentioning because it was too trivial and surely the last time I fixed it would work, but today after adjusting the hose and repositioning the clamp it still didn't work, I actually had to investigate.

The verdict:

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Junk hose clamp. I used my last good one on the bypass hose, so it's off to O'Reillys for me. I pulled the woven moisture reduction system off the coat rack and fired up the IROC-Z. After a thorough wipedown of all the interior glass surfaces, I was off with an increasingly wet rear end as my jeans wicked the seats dry.

My arrival was most fortuitous; I stumbled upon the holy grail of useless tchotchkes:

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I had to have it. O'Reillys brand hose clamps are disappointingly Chinesium but they didn't bend like the last junk so that leak is sealed. I topped off the radiator and started noticing increased heat output from the HVAC, so we might be getting close to correct with the coolant system now.

I built a new hose for the trans cooler, that one seems good but my other hose is leaking too:

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That one is a little long, I might snip the end off and put a fresh 90 on there and see how it goes. I think I'm getting better at making the PTFE hoses, there's a little technique involved.

I'm throwing a CTS High code, I popped the connector off and the contact pins were all loose in there. Not an OEM quality fitting. It was hard to gingerly fit it back in with the heater feed line being all hot so I'll mess with that some more when the engine cools back down. I messed with it a little and it briefly came back and then didn't. Kinda weird. Also had my first no-start today, had to turn the HVAC off to get enough juice to the ecm. My "tests bad" battery might be bad after all, at least in cold weather. It froze last night, was about 40F today. My handheld locked up when I was clearing the codes too. It rebooted itself and all was well. Interesting times.

 

[Komet]

Mini update because I did have to do them chores.

I took the TB off so I could really fit my hands around the CTS connector, but no combination of wiggling and gentle persuasion would let those contacts slide over the sensor pins. They just pushed out every time. Oem on left:

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So, I reluctantly chopped the connector off and tried to do a very tidy splice to fit it back in the harness:

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Slides right on now, fit back in the harness, no CTS High fault anymore. They just don't make em like they used to. No weird startup today, only ran it for a couple minutes but it's running nice and not throwing any codes or coolant or gasoline.

 

[HotWheelsBurban]

Much to the detriment of my chore list and personal hygiene during the workday, I've been wrenching on the truck.

With the fan removed and the threat of explosion juice mitigated, the coolant leak ended up being the best case scenario:

You must be registered for see images attach

Yup, it was the only hose I replaced. I greatly dislike spring clamps, mostly because I don't have spring clamp pliers but also because of that right there. So I did the right thing and dug into my now-depleted bag of name brand hose clamps and slipped it on there without taking the hose off so I wouldn't make a mess:

You must be registered for see images attach

Bone dry today. I actually had another leak at the heater core return I've been fighting and not mentioning because it was too trivial and surely the last time I fixed it would work, but today after adjusting the hose and repositioning the clamp it still didn't work, I actually had to investigate.

The verdict:

You must be registered for see images attach

Junk hose clamp. I used my last good one on the bypass hose, so it's off to O'Reillys for me. I pulled the woven moisture reduction system off the coat rack and fired up the IROC-Z. After a thorough wipedown of all the interior glass surfaces, I was off with an increasingly wet rear end as my jeans wicked the seats dry.

My arrival was most fortuitous; I stumbled upon the holy grail of useless tchotchkes:

You must be registered for see images attach

I had to have it. O'Reillys brand hose clamps are disappointingly Chinesium but they didn't bend like the last junk so that leak is sealed. I topped off the radiator and started noticing increased heat output from the HVAC, so we might be getting close to correct with the coolant system now.

I built a new hose for the trans cooler, that one seems good but my other hose is leaking too:

You must be registered for see images attach

That one is a little long, I might snip the end off and put a fresh 90 on there and see how it goes. I think I'm getting better at making the PTFE hoses, there's a little technique involved.

I'm throwing a CTS High code, I popped the connector off and the contact pins were all loose in there. Not an OEM quality fitting. It was hard to gingerly fit it back in with the heater feed line being all hot so I'll mess with that some more when the engine cools back down. I messed with it a little and it briefly came back and then didn't. Kinda weird. Also had my first no-start today, had to turn the HVAC off to get enough juice to the ecm. My "tests bad" battery might be bad after all, at least in cold weather. It froze last night, was about 40F today. My handheld locked up when I was clearing the codes too. It rebooted itself and all was well. Interesting times.

Cool you found one! Gotta get to my O'Reilly's on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, sometime soon. Hopefully if they get one my friend will hide it for me, but who knows?

 

[Komet]

Against my better judgment which I probably don't actually have, I rebuilt the trans cooler AN hose end that was leaking for a third time. It looked like an angry beaver cut it with a chainsaw, and the ferrule wasn't in nearly far enough.

I put it through a few days of cold start leak checks before I was satisfied with everything. I developed one drip on the fuel feed, tightened it a tiny bit and that stopped. Today I tossed the fan on, finished up the zipties everywhere, and hit the road for the first time again.

I put about 5 miles on it and ran it for about half an hour, no leaks or problems. All the gauges working is pretty cool. Brakes got a pulse and it's probably not coming out, but they stop with the correct amount of pressure applied.

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I did hear a nasty cracking noise but it was just my wallet after placing an order at Cunningham Machine.

 

[HotWheelsBurban]

Against my better judgment which I probably don't actually have, I rebuilt the trans cooler AN hose end that was leaking for a third time. It looked like an angry beaver cut it with a chainsaw, and the ferrule wasn't in nearly far enough.

I put it through a few days of cold start leak checks before I was satisfied with everything. I developed one drip on the fuel feed, tightened it a tiny bit and that stopped. Today I tossed the fan on, finished up the zipties everywhere, and hit the road for the first time again.

I put about 5 miles on it and ran it for about half an hour, no leaks or problems. All the gauges working is pretty cool. Brakes got a pulse and it's probably not coming out, but they stop with the correct amount of pressure applied.

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I did hear a nasty cracking noise but it was just my wallet after placing an order at Cunningham Machine.

Yup my wallet is gonna do that too, when I get the $$ for 4 sets of door pins and bushings, and 2 front door roller assemblies.....

 

[Komet]

Just got back from my first on the road datalog session. Gathering logs with the FiTech is really easy, I just push the LogOn button when I want to start the log, and I press the LogOff button when I'm finished and it outputs a .csv right onto the handheld controller.

Overall I'm pretty impressed with what I've got for absolutely no tuning yet. The learn factor swings between -18% and 14.8% so there is definitely some tuning to be done but out of the box, it's within the parameters that the ecm can correct for and the seat of the pants driving experience is very normal.

I hit 31.5 degrees max spark advance, which might actually be pretty much right where I want to be since I've heard vortec heads don't like a lot of advance, I should probably look into what stock max advance was from the factory.

I hit a max of 85.4% injector duty cycle on the 24lb Bosch IIIs, I think that means 'sized appropriately'. Not that it's a huge surprise that stock LT1 injector size supports a similar sort of engine, but I'm glad I didn't go smaller and I don't think I'll need to go bigger.

I've attached the datalog if you want to have a look. I had to zip it since the forum doesn't support .csv. The rolling road burnouts happen at row 2900 and again at 3460, everything else is just gentle country cruising. No leaks and no fault codes, pretty cool.

 

[Supercharged111]

Stock tune is LAME, don't even worry about what the factory did.

 

[Komet]

I've been messing around with some issues on the post-swap todo list with varying degrees of success. It fires on the first turn of the key every time and I'm not finding leaks anymore so my confidence in leaving the hood closed is growing.

I need switched 12v, ground, and reverse lights 12v to run the autodim compass mirror, and I have constant 12v, ground, and mystery wire at the harness that was hacked in, so I'll need to pull the headliner if I want that.

I polished the wheels on a day it was supposed to rain:

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Not really the best photos but they cleaned up pretty well and there's no more reddish brake dust tint to the back two. Slopped a ton of sauce on the tires, I figured now was the time to do this job before I got new tires.

Still not getting good heat. It's lukewarm at best. I backflushed the heater core and I'm not getting much improvement. The hoses running to the heater core aren't hot though, I'm trying to drive it around and heat it up but it hits 180, the thermostat opens, and then it barely gets to 185 if I let it sit. So I dunno, maybe the blend door isn't blendalating.

I had about 1/4 tank on the gauge, drove it to the gas station and put 18ish gallons in and it's beyond full now but the gauge is vaguely indicating correctly, supposedly I have a 24 gallon tank.

Brakes do weird grabby stuff but not consistently so I want to put more miles on them. Maybe a lifter tick during warmup?