I've been wanting to do a little review on my setup for a while now, but wanted to wait until I could really tow something with some weight to do a full review.
I spent a few months going back and forth on turbo setups and what I wanted to add to my 06 in my sig. I finally got the head situations squared away (studs/gaskets/hpop updates etc) once and for all and put about a years worth of driving on the truck, tuned, to ensure it would hold up. So far, so good. I looked at all sorts of VGT setups, including MTW, Barder, a powermax, and then started looking into non VGT's. I decided I wanted to try something a little different and really switch it up. This may not be completely out of the realm on this page, but in my area there are not many people building 6.0's and certainly not many (if any) non VGT 6.0's around.
I knew I would be riding on stock injectors for a while so the turbo needed to work with those, and I knew I would also need to two occasionally, as we are avid campers. My truck has become more of a weekend toy as well.
After reading a ton of reviews, shopping around for prices, looking at all the turbo setups, I settled on a BW S362 FMW, with the .83 divided housing, and Matt's (CED) divided T4 up pipe setup. I went with the smallest available divided housing to help keep spool up quick with my stock injectors.
I ended up working up a deal with Matt to buy a used 362 he had put about 1000 miles on. As a bonus it had already been upgraded to the 360* thrust bearing, and it saved me a little bit of money vs. buying all new. I knew when I ordered he was in busy season and it would take a little while, but he was always nice to deal with and doesn't take any money until it's ready to ship.
INSTALL: This was interesting. If I had to do it again, I'd honestly just take the cab off, it would have been much quicker. I fought with a single exhaust manifold bolt for 3 days. PITA. I wont go into too much detail, but if you drive in the NE like I do, consider a cab off if possible. Once all the stock stuff was out, the new stuff went in pretty easy actually. It's interesting figuring out how to get the up-pipe with the built in turbo mount in to position, but carefully rotating it around and slipping it in will be easy once you see what needs to be done. It's really not bad at all. I also needed some interesting combos of swivel sockets and stubby wrenches to tighten up the compressor housing once in place.
TUNING/DRIVING:
I started off with ordering up a tow tune, a street tune, and an X-street tune, from Eric @ Innovative. I've used his tunes in the past and always been happy. I went through my local diesel shop to help get them some credit with IDP and still had tunes back in under 24 hours.
I loaded up street tune first. Just to see how it was. As I first took off down the road, I thought to myself, man this is going to suck driving this thing all the time. It seemed laggy as hell (reminder, I did come off of a STOCK turbo) and took a lot of throttle to get it to spool at all. I did I think a 10 mile loop around the lake and went right back home. Was not impressed. I decided to try X-street. HELLO! There we go. Again, a little laggy, but that's comparing to a stock turbo. All it really is, is developing new driving habits. Instead of gently rolling into it, just give it some throttle right off the bat and it spools. I drove the truck like this for a while, it was a blast. Boost easily maxes out my 35psi gauge without issue now. The only time the turbo falls on it's face a little bit is when you're light on the throttle accelerating (1/4 throttle we'll say) and it gets into OD and the converter is locked. As soon as it shifts to OD boost falls down to about 5 or 6psi and the truck just cruises. My truck shifts into OD at like 48mph though, so this is part of the issue. When using tow/haul it wont shift into OD until about 65mph, and that works just fine for those times you're not really on a highway.
Later on I put my PHP FICM tuning back on the truck. I started with Atlas 40. After loading that, I haven't touched anything. The FICM tuning helped spool up even more and made this an extremely fun combo to drive. I can drive it 100% smoke free and the turbo basically cleans up everything up top and pulls like a train. Leaving it OD with the converter locked and just rolling into it, it will pull quite hard (for what it is) and never seems to run out. (I'm also on stock 3.73's and 35x12.5x20's for reference)
Egt's... I stopped looking. The only time it gets to it's "warm" side is when the turbo drops in OD with the converter locked. It gets to 1100* rolling into it on hills. Seriously, that's as hot as it gets. Ever. Hammer on it so it downshifts and it will drop to about 900*. I have not tried an X-race or X-X tune yet. I'm avoiding those early lock up tunes for the street because I drive like an idiot.
TOWING: We bought a new camper recently, it's a 27' travel trailer, dual axle, with one slide, weighs ~6000lbs dry. I was a little nervous since I had not towed with this setup even once and had to tow this camper ~1hr 15min away from home for the maiden voyage. Ah well, what could go wrong! I loaded on my tow tune and put the PHP gryphon to an economy tune. This was always the setup I used when towing on the stock turbo. My initial impression was that this turbo was working so damn well that I needed more fuel. I had to really evaluate what I was doing here and try to realize that I don't need to be able to accelerate going up 5-6% grades. Maintaining posted speed limits is probably just fine considering what I'm doing here. So, I tried to relax and just let the truck do it's thing. Spool up is just fine, but it almost seemed to run out of steam up top. On flat ground with probably 7k lbs extra (gear, camper, water etc) I could barely hit 22psi. Foot to the wood. Hit a hill, it loads a little more, foot to the wood and I'm barely making 27-30psi on the steepest of hills. Truck maintains speed, EGT's are silly low. I try to tell myself, this is fine, I do not need a larger tune for moving the damn camper around. So far, it's worked. The warmest my EGT's got again, were 1100*, lugging it in too high of a gear, 30psi, going up a 6% grade hauling close to 7k (approximate) behind me. EOT and ECT crept up on those WOT pulls, I think the highest EOT ever got was maybe 220*, for only a second. It was probably 80* outside or so, very humid air. Trans never got above 160*. I could lower EGT's simply by tapping the brake pedal, or going to the floor and forcing it to shift. At that point, foot to the floor, mid 20's-30psi of boost, EGT's sat at a laughable 825*-900*. Never budged. I'd say it's moving enough air. I could see no visible smoke what so ever, but at night time with a truck behind me it looked slightly hazy, similar to stock.
All in all, I'm very happy with the setup, EGT's are ridiculously manageable, spool up is great, and I need to learn to have some patience when towing. Matt's quality on the pipes and mount is great, and the turbo works wonderfully.
Any questions, just ask.
If anyone has a Dipricol Optix boost gauge that reads higher than 35psi and matches Ford interior, let me know (very long shot LOL ) I will TRY to get some videos to load up at a later date, just haven't had time and I don't drive the truck terribly much anymore. My TDI has taken over for DD duties.
Also, I will be selling my stack setup ASAP. This setup is LOUD. Ridiculously loud. It's nearly impossible to keep it quiet. The only time the truck is relatively quiet is idle, and OD with converter lockup at highway speeds. Towing the camper, forget about conversations with your passenger unless you are on VERY flat ground.
I spent a few months going back and forth on turbo setups and what I wanted to add to my 06 in my sig. I finally got the head situations squared away (studs/gaskets/hpop updates etc) once and for all and put about a years worth of driving on the truck, tuned, to ensure it would hold up. So far, so good. I looked at all sorts of VGT setups, including MTW, Barder, a powermax, and then started looking into non VGT's. I decided I wanted to try something a little different and really switch it up. This may not be completely out of the realm on this page, but in my area there are not many people building 6.0's and certainly not many (if any) non VGT 6.0's around.
I knew I would be riding on stock injectors for a while so the turbo needed to work with those, and I knew I would also need to two occasionally, as we are avid campers. My truck has become more of a weekend toy as well.
After reading a ton of reviews, shopping around for prices, looking at all the turbo setups, I settled on a BW S362 FMW, with the .83 divided housing, and Matt's (CED) divided T4 up pipe setup. I went with the smallest available divided housing to help keep spool up quick with my stock injectors.
I ended up working up a deal with Matt to buy a used 362 he had put about 1000 miles on. As a bonus it had already been upgraded to the 360* thrust bearing, and it saved me a little bit of money vs. buying all new. I knew when I ordered he was in busy season and it would take a little while, but he was always nice to deal with and doesn't take any money until it's ready to ship.
INSTALL: This was interesting. If I had to do it again, I'd honestly just take the cab off, it would have been much quicker. I fought with a single exhaust manifold bolt for 3 days. PITA. I wont go into too much detail, but if you drive in the NE like I do, consider a cab off if possible. Once all the stock stuff was out, the new stuff went in pretty easy actually. It's interesting figuring out how to get the up-pipe with the built in turbo mount in to position, but carefully rotating it around and slipping it in will be easy once you see what needs to be done. It's really not bad at all. I also needed some interesting combos of swivel sockets and stubby wrenches to tighten up the compressor housing once in place.
TUNING/DRIVING:
I started off with ordering up a tow tune, a street tune, and an X-street tune, from Eric @ Innovative. I've used his tunes in the past and always been happy. I went through my local diesel shop to help get them some credit with IDP and still had tunes back in under 24 hours.
I loaded up street tune first. Just to see how it was. As I first took off down the road, I thought to myself, man this is going to suck driving this thing all the time. It seemed laggy as hell (reminder, I did come off of a STOCK turbo) and took a lot of throttle to get it to spool at all. I did I think a 10 mile loop around the lake and went right back home. Was not impressed. I decided to try X-street. HELLO! There we go. Again, a little laggy, but that's comparing to a stock turbo. All it really is, is developing new driving habits. Instead of gently rolling into it, just give it some throttle right off the bat and it spools. I drove the truck like this for a while, it was a blast. Boost easily maxes out my 35psi gauge without issue now. The only time the turbo falls on it's face a little bit is when you're light on the throttle accelerating (1/4 throttle we'll say) and it gets into OD and the converter is locked. As soon as it shifts to OD boost falls down to about 5 or 6psi and the truck just cruises. My truck shifts into OD at like 48mph though, so this is part of the issue. When using tow/haul it wont shift into OD until about 65mph, and that works just fine for those times you're not really on a highway.
Later on I put my PHP FICM tuning back on the truck. I started with Atlas 40. After loading that, I haven't touched anything. The FICM tuning helped spool up even more and made this an extremely fun combo to drive. I can drive it 100% smoke free and the turbo basically cleans up everything up top and pulls like a train. Leaving it OD with the converter locked and just rolling into it, it will pull quite hard (for what it is) and never seems to run out. (I'm also on stock 3.73's and 35x12.5x20's for reference)
Egt's... I stopped looking. The only time it gets to it's "warm" side is when the turbo drops in OD with the converter locked. It gets to 1100* rolling into it on hills. Seriously, that's as hot as it gets. Ever. Hammer on it so it downshifts and it will drop to about 900*. I have not tried an X-race or X-X tune yet. I'm avoiding those early lock up tunes for the street because I drive like an idiot.
TOWING: We bought a new camper recently, it's a 27' travel trailer, dual axle, with one slide, weighs ~6000lbs dry. I was a little nervous since I had not towed with this setup even once and had to tow this camper ~1hr 15min away from home for the maiden voyage. Ah well, what could go wrong! I loaded on my tow tune and put the PHP gryphon to an economy tune. This was always the setup I used when towing on the stock turbo. My initial impression was that this turbo was working so damn well that I needed more fuel. I had to really evaluate what I was doing here and try to realize that I don't need to be able to accelerate going up 5-6% grades. Maintaining posted speed limits is probably just fine considering what I'm doing here. So, I tried to relax and just let the truck do it's thing. Spool up is just fine, but it almost seemed to run out of steam up top. On flat ground with probably 7k lbs extra (gear, camper, water etc) I could barely hit 22psi. Foot to the wood. Hit a hill, it loads a little more, foot to the wood and I'm barely making 27-30psi on the steepest of hills. Truck maintains speed, EGT's are silly low. I try to tell myself, this is fine, I do not need a larger tune for moving the damn camper around. So far, it's worked. The warmest my EGT's got again, were 1100*, lugging it in too high of a gear, 30psi, going up a 6% grade hauling close to 7k (approximate) behind me. EOT and ECT crept up on those WOT pulls, I think the highest EOT ever got was maybe 220*, for only a second. It was probably 80* outside or so, very humid air. Trans never got above 160*. I could lower EGT's simply by tapping the brake pedal, or going to the floor and forcing it to shift. At that point, foot to the floor, mid 20's-30psi of boost, EGT's sat at a laughable 825*-900*. Never budged. I'd say it's moving enough air. I could see no visible smoke what so ever, but at night time with a truck behind me it looked slightly hazy, similar to stock.
All in all, I'm very happy with the setup, EGT's are ridiculously manageable, spool up is great, and I need to learn to have some patience when towing. Matt's quality on the pipes and mount is great, and the turbo works wonderfully.
Any questions, just ask.
If anyone has a Dipricol Optix boost gauge that reads higher than 35psi and matches Ford interior, let me know (very long shot LOL ) I will TRY to get some videos to load up at a later date, just haven't had time and I don't drive the truck terribly much anymore. My TDI has taken over for DD duties.
Also, I will be selling my stack setup ASAP. This setup is LOUD. Ridiculously loud. It's nearly impossible to keep it quiet. The only time the truck is relatively quiet is idle, and OD with converter lockup at highway speeds. Towing the camper, forget about conversations with your passenger unless you are on VERY flat ground.
