thats a sweet truck. Amazing how much the banks wakes up the 7.3 huh?
thats a sweet truck. Amazing how much the banks wakes up the 7.3 huh?
Thanks for the kudos guys, obvviously it is my "baby".
The only thing on the truck that is Banks is the intercooler, they make the best one for the early Ford.
To be honest with you, in my opinion the rest of the Banks stuff is way over priced as far as bang for your buck goes.. Their stuff is fine for someone who does not know alot about their truck, does not want to learn, (and can afford it) and is just looking to get an improved seat of the pants deal, but for the the price of their "Power Pack" I could go (and have) way beyond their performance level and do it safely.
This truck has an open element Air Cleaner by Tymar Performance. The air filter itself is a Donaldson unit, you guys who drive big trucks have heard of Dondalson. The whole kit was about $120.
I have a Beans Performance D66 Turbo, which is an improvement over the stocker and runs much cooler as it moves more air.
The downpipe is a 3 inch Hypermax, ceramic coated and a huge improvement over stock. The exhaust is 4 inch from the downpipe to the tip. It was about half the price of the Banks exhaust. (I'd like to do a bigger turbo, but before I do that I need to pull the head bolts and slip a set of studs in. With bigger injectors this turbo will pin a 35 PSI manifold pressure gauge.)
I am running a Terminator Engineering High Pressure Oil system that provides a much stronger and more consistent high pressure oil supply to the injectors; on the Fords it is hgh pressure oil that fires the injectors. Even with the stock injectors, which are about 120 total cc, I saw a major improvement in performance. I plan on adding a set of 160cc Stage 1 injectors soon, and the oil system will have no problem supporting them. That intercooler and the other flow mods help control the EGT, when loaded down you drive these trucks by the pyrometer, if you are towing heavy with a diesel and don't have one you need to get one.
Custom tuning is where you get the power out of these trucks. An off the shelf tuner is set with generic perameters and not designed to take advantage of the mods you have. For the past couple of years I have been running a TS style chip by Power Hungry Performance, tuned by Bill Cohron. He has been in the diesel tuning business for over 20 years.
I sent him some run data on my truck and he custom designed the chip for me, this chip has 6 positions and is set up with stock, 20 tow, 40 tow, 65 tow, 80 daily and 100 HP, plus a no start position.What is really nice is that I can ask him to modify a shift position or add some high pressure oil at a certai n RPM in a certain gear and Bill will write the tune, load onto his server, and I can pull it down and with a burner that I bought with the chip reload the new tunes to the chip myself, all in less than an hour.
There are two or three really sharp tuners out there right now, DP Tuner has some really nice stuff, as does Tyrant Diesel. I would like to try a DP Tuner F-6 system when I get the new injectors, they will require all new tunes as they will be single-shot units and my current stockers are split-shots. The Stage 1's should be good for an honest 75 HP
This truck loaded up as seen in the pic will pull up and over Donner Pass (7200 ft) at about 65 MPH in drive with the A/C on, holding about 2700 RPM (4.10 gears) at about 28 PSI of manifold pressure, and around 1125 on the pyro (hot side). I don't hot rod it around town, every mod have done was done to improve towing and longevity of the engine, trans and rear axle.
I think the 7.3 is the best diesel Ford has come out with, they (and the other engine builders) have struggled ever since trying to get
reliabilty, performance, and low emmisssions to satisfy the smog people.
If I ever wear this engine out I will have to do some real soul-searching, I'd love to drop a 12 valve 5.9 Cummins in it, on of the first gen engines that are super simple and absurdly easy to crank up.
I also have several friends in the diesel performance business that would have no problem whatsoever helping me build a dead nut reliable 500 HP 7.3 that would be far simpler than the new 6.7 Cummins, the D-Max or the new Ford.
Hopefully it will be many years before I have to make that call.
