Twin turbos for dd?

[Short Bus]

You can have drop in replacement spoolup and driveability with unlimited top end performance all in one.

What about that DOESN'T scream daily driver? Compounds are obviously the most capable system. Hence the fact that many diesel engines come this way from the factory now.

Fwiw, I've been driving around with this 94mm first stage for some time now, and I've got to say, the spool is a total non-issue. I'm still of the notion that you CANNOT oversize the first stage on a 7.3L engine. Garrett only makes one turbo frame larger than the GT55 that I'm daily driving with response that would probably SHOCK most people. At part throttle I routinely spin at least a little bit on the 1-2 and lockup... This is with no smoke, no real sound from the truck and very low rpm shift points.

When my electronics were super Fubared I still towed my trail truck (F-350 on 50" backhoe tires) 5 hours through the mountains of TN, over MontEagle and all with 700psi of ICP to work with... Try that with even a modestly sized single.

Servicability of certain engine components is a chore compared to a truck running a single turbo in the valley. But on a DD.... you shouldn't be pulling the valvecovers anyway. Seriously. Passenger's side valvecover is the only thing that takes me more time. Honestly, it's ~30 minutes to get that valvecover off, and ~45 to have it back on vs say 5 minutes each way with a single in the valley. For a dd.... this should not sway your decision IMO. Now if you hang the charger all F'ed up.... then yes, it could make things miserable. Conversely, if you hang it really well, you can have it off and on in a third the time I can.

The next set of compounds I do, both chargers will be next to the engine and the set will have a lift eye made onto them for a hoist to lift the entire charger setup out of the way with V-band releases everywhere.

Charles there's one difference between you and me.... you like to continually *** with stuff to get it just right and i dont lol. My turbos werent set up like yours at all, if i wanted to get to the vc's it was a project all in itself. For instance the time my uvc harness came unhooked on the passenger side, it took me the better part of a day to fix it AFTER i was towed home. If that were to happen now a 7/16 deep socket, 13mm shallow, swivel and an ext or two and 30 min later i would be back on the road. h2e leaking oil, no problem thats only a full days work lol. h2e by itself, 30 min tops and its sitting on the tool box. That were the straws that broke the camels back for me. I dont make money if my chit is always sitting in the shop taking 5x longer to fix than if i'd just tune it down a touch. Put the single on and life is good. Still makes good power and if i need to swap glow plugs, plug in a uvc harness, etc its a simple job once again. I will never touch twins or recommend twins on a true dd truck again.

 

[Charles]

I have thought about this. Do you see any issues with spool up due to having to run longer piping for the up pipes? That is the only issue that I am worried about with a setup like that.

I plan to reverse the manifolds and run the exhaust out the front of the engine, straight to the setup with a crossover tube from the driver's side hitting a merge collector right under the setup.

 

[Charles]

do you have a vid of the 55 anywhere chucky?

Not really. I have one but it's just to show how messed up the engine is running. I'll see if I can find it. In the meantime, just imagine a perfectly silent engine running full song at 600+hp, lol.

 

[Charles]

Charles there's one difference between you and me.... you like to continually *** with stuff to get it just right and i dont lol. My turbos werent set up like yours at all, if i wanted to get to the vc's it was a project all in itself. For instance the time my uvc harness came unhooked on the passenger side, it took me the better part of a day to fix it AFTER i was towed home. If that were to happen now a 7/16 deep socket, 13mm shallow, swivel and an ext or two and 30 min later i would be back on the road. h2e leaking oil, no problem thats only a full days work lol. h2e by itself, 30 min tops and its sitting on the tool box. That were the straws that broke the camels back for me. I dont make money if my chit is always sitting in the shop taking 5x longer to fix than if i'd just tune it down a touch. Put the single on and life is good. Still makes good power and if i need to swap glow plugs, plug in a uvc harness, etc its a simple job once again. I will never touch twins or recommend twins on a true dd truck again.

I built the charger setup one time. I didn't optimize servicability, but I did okay. I could do better now than I did back then. It is nothing like you describe above. Which means the act of having a second charger isn't as important as how you package it. Hell, people have done stupid sh*t with single charger mounts that takes twice as long to work on than my setup does. You can always make something a whore to work on, one charger or two. My point was that it really doesn't need to be that way, and secondly, that on a DD, if you need to get into the valvecovers on a regular basis, then you've got other problems.

 

[Hotrodtractor]

The next set of compounds I do, both chargers will be next to the engine and the set will have a lift eye made onto them for a hoist to lift the entire charger setup out of the way with V-band releases everywhere.

Instead of lifting both chargers out like that - I am building a hot pipe that can be popped off using v-bands to get under the valve cover - by using the atmosphere charger that I have chosen it should provide me with the turbine and compressor flow needed for the app while giving it to me in a package that I can deal with. Compact GT55 FTW. Its physically smaller than an S400 charger and still capable of 140lbs/min with the GT55 turbine wheel.

Charles there's one difference between you and me.... you like to continually *** with stuff to get it just right and i dont lol. My turbos werent set up like yours at all, if i wanted to get to the vc's it was a project all in itself. For instance the time my uvc harness came unhooked on the passenger side, it took me the better part of a day to fix it AFTER i was towed home. If that were to happen now a 7/16 deep socket, 13mm shallow, swivel and an ext or two and 30 min later i would be back on the road. h2e leaking oil, no problem thats only a full days work lol. h2e by itself, 30 min tops and its sitting on the tool box. That were the straws that broke the camels back for me. I dont make money if my chit is always sitting in the shop taking 5x longer to fix than if i'd just tune it down a touch. Put the single on and life is good. Still makes good power and if i need to swap glow plugs, plug in a uvc harness, etc its a simple job once again. I will never touch twins or recommend twins on a true dd truck again.

Luke - your compounds were definitely a chore to work on - you won't get any arguments from me on that one. This is a prime example of how some forethought for serviceability should have been gone through during the design and construction of the kit under the hood of your truck. The design of your setup is exactly what has soured your taste for these things and I don't really blame you - except I still see why I think they can be a great addition to a daily driver. I'm really glad your happy with your new single turbo, but you also have to remember you are comparing an old compound kit with "old" turbo tech with the latest and greatest turbo tech in your single. Imagine your current single with a similar tech filled atmosphere on a turbo setup designed for maintainence.... just saying.

 

[Charles]

do you have a vid of the 55 anywhere chucky?

Here's the only one I have. The truck was running like a dog, soft and vanilla...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eET7VsH6cOQ&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

It pulled either 623 or 628 uncorrected as it is in that video, which may seem nice, but believe me.... it was waaaay down on power. Before I started having problems it was a consistent 620 to 640 on fuel with the GT47 and the 300/300's, then once all electrical hell broke loose it dropped to low to mid 500's on fuel, even with 400/400's. And trust me.... the injectors aren't the problem. Spurts of power in the time sense has proven that.

Even with the truck being down to ~540rwhp the swap from the GT47 to the GT55 still bumped the truck back up to 620-630rwhp. If I had made the swap before the truck took a sh*t it would have been mid 700's all day. If I can get everything a solid ground and figure out where the 2+ volts on my ground is coming from, I may get there yet.