i'd like to start off askin what all you lifted guys do about your carriage bearing? i have smoked 3 of them and im afraid another is in the makin. it shimmy's under full throttle under low rpm's i contribute all of it to the lift, i need to drop it down farther, anyone know of a kit? or can i just go to my steel shop and buy a piece of tubing drill a couple holes through it and bolt the carriage bearing up to it? secondly i have been towing a small trailer abond 6-8K gross weight but i am going to start hauling scrap metel to the local depot cuz stell is going for a great $ per/ton. currently i have upgraded my tranny, the torque converter and a superchips. runnin on the hot setting, i have had NO engine problems whatsoever this has been a great truck for me, 14MPG and 40K since i bought it. i need some advice on programmers and such, because mine is a off the shelf programmer read alot on here about custom programming and i would like to combine that with a gauge package. who has had expieriences with what?(bully dog-superchips-banks-Egde) and how did it go? and besides programmers, what else would ya'll recommend? I love this 7.3 and i would like to see the day of 300K maybe even 500K.

 

I see nothing mentioned in that HUGE picture in your sig or in your post about gauges. If you're running that superchips on the hot setting, and TOWING no less, then you may have screwed yourself right out of 300-500k right there. Bottom line gauges are REQUIRED any time you add even the smallest amount of fuel. Superchips likes to run towards the hot side anyhow because of ****ty programming, but running without gauges can very quickly become a death sentance for the engine.


Your lift kit should have come with carrier (not carriage, thats a bolt type) bearing shims unless it was one of the cheapie lift kits. Edit: I see that its a Procomp, yep its one of the cheapies. You can make your own shim, but you will need to have them machined to the correct angle so the bearing sits in line with the shaft. It does not have much of an angle (only a few degrees) but you need to have that. These things aren't expensive, don't cheap out and just buy the things.


For your programmers, well I advise you to search through this forum. This exact topic has been covered many times by me and others. A breif synopsis of this is that off the shelf programmers bring the suck in a big way. If you have modified your truck past stock then its more critical that you avoid programmers. Since you have "modified" your transmission then you need something that compensates for those mods in the form of custom trans tunes. What brand and model of torque converter did you get? There are alot of "upgraded" TC on the market for the 4R100 that aren't any better than stock. Usually the good ones go for $1000+ for the TC alone. Have you added any valve body mods or valve bodies? How about clutch packs? I had my chip custom tuned to compensate for my SD43 converter, BTS valve body, and Suncoast Extreme kit. A programmer will royally screw that up because they up the line pressures and throws the whole system out of whack.

 

well i was afraid of that bein the case with the programmer deal with the out of the box settings. ive had no issuses with any kind of problems with the motor at all, i bought it as is, with the lift and all so i did not shop and this is the lift i came up with, bought it this way with a smoked tranny and i will be honest, i had a respected shop locally replace the tranny and the torque converter i told them what i had planned on doing with it towing hevy, being chipped eventually as far as the valve bodies, i know its all new guts i got some part numbers on the reciept but no brand names, i will call in the mornin and see what manufacture is under the truck. dumped roughly 3500$ in the tranny and the torque converter. i dont pull the guts out of my truck or have it at wideo open throttle, maybe to get a lil smoke here and there maybe a couple times a tank. i do plan on pulling with the truck very soon, got laid off from my job found many tons of steel laying around on my family farm everywhere and its about a 70 mile journey to the steel depot, hard to turn down 110$/ton price and dont want to destroy the truck. its not showing ANY problems whatsoever, but as a truck driver i know sumtimes these big repairs come outa nowhere when the truck had no symptoms. i am going to add gauges first thing before i tow anything large. and when i have towed ive kept it around 50 and never put the foot through the motor i know the turbo was spoolin but not at full boost for any length of time at all. I have read some of the horror stories and dont want to contribute to it. if u could give me the best of what i should do let me know ya seem like your the one to ask, or should i just hit the search button. as far as the shim can i purchase the shims from my local dealer? it looks like there is maybe 2 or 3 more shims under the bearing compared to a stock one. so it was lowered just not enough evidently thanks alot

 

Well I hate to break this to you, but for $500 more (possibly less) you could have had a BTS transmission. BTS is the top of the line trans. Brian puts a 2yr unlimited hp warranty on them. He dares even the sled pullers to break the thing. No small shop reman can even hope to compete with BTS. If I hadn't gotten such a good deal on my SD43 converter I'd have a BTS in my truck.



For your gauges, I wouldn't say you need to avoid towing, just take the truck back to stock. You shouldn't be driving around PERIOD with that in the hot setting and no gauges. You have no idea what kind of EGTs you're making. Get the thing too hot and you can melt your pistons or the turbo vanes. Actually you driving around while towing making very low boost is doing WAY more damage. Thats actually the worst possible thing you can do. Boost is what keeps your EGTs down. The less air coming in the hotter the cylinder temps. Remember its not a gas engine, so the more air you can cram into the thing the better. You also don't need to worry about your boost getting too high. Its amazing how everyone who gets a diesel thinks that they're going to lift a head The limit of the stock studs is ~40psi, and there is no possible way that the stock turbo can make 40psi, even for a sec. The thing would absolutely grenade itself from overspinning before you got there. It can make low 30s on a super hot chip, but by then its so far out of its efficiency range that its putting more heat back into the engine, just by the shear amount its compressing the air, than its taking out. Don't be scared to run the boost up, you're not going to hurt anything.



As for a chip there is another thread, you've probably read it, in here just a few down from this one that answers your exact question of chips/programmers/modules. My advice take the superchips out of the truck and put it up for sale. In the mean time contact any of the chip makers and talk to them and they will help you decide what programs you'll need, as well as what they'll have to customize in the programs to work with the mods you have. I suggest contacting (in this order) DP Tuner, Tony Wildman, SCT (DP Tuner for this as well), or TS.


For your shims, no a dealer will not have what you need there. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that contacting Procomp about the issue you're having since they're the ones who made it. They'll know how many shims should be present and help you diagnose the problem further. If it still keeps eating them then you need to ditch the procomp. They're not a very good name in SD Lifts. Your best bet would be Donahoe Racing.

 

i pulled off the superchips off my PSD tonite after i read the thread thanks alot, i actually have two superchips tuners one for the gasser i owned b4 this diesel. as far as the tranny goes, i didnt do my research as was really new to the diesel world besides my freightshaker from the 80's. so after i did some looking after the fact with the tranny i saw the same price for a BTS. as far as installing the gauges since there will be tapping and drillin, im thinkin i will have someone else do the installation of it, how many hours do ya think it would be to get the gauges set up? and worse case scenerio if that tranny shop cant pull up my records what do i do, am i S.O.L?

 

Gauges took me 3hrs to install with the hole already being drilled and tapped from when I had my old Juice installed. Add 15min to drill and tap. Its not rocket science really. Expect to pay $300+ for installation.


The trans shop should have records of what was done, or at least a reputable shop should maintain records back that far. Heck in the old computer store we kept records back 5-10 years on most customers. The best info you can get is the TC stall, valve body type/mod, etc. Jody would need this to know where to put the line pressure and shift points to maximize power and economy.

 

i will be on the phone first thing in the morning, the tranny did come with a 12K/year warranty, which i have already tested once, with a bad TC. so it should especially be on record since i used a warranty repair, thanks alot for the help.