What is the steepest grade you've climbed?
Our family was headed up to Bucks Lake in Northern California for a week of camping. I used to go to the 4H camp when my parents ran the camp so I was looking forward to seeing some old memories. I've...
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Well mystery solved... From my original post, I barely made it up the 13% grade pulling the camper and trailer. I was in first gear and my EGTs were struggling to stay under 1200 deg. When I read posts of other guys making steeper climbs with even more weight I knew something had to be wrong.
I finally found a PowerStroke 7.3 Guru close by in Salinas by the name of Peter at Paul Faro automotive. Took it to him for some work and asked him to go through my "mystery truck" (because of all the previous owner's addons that I didn't have written down when I bought it). While taking care of some small oil leaks, he discovered that my boots for the turbo to the inter-cooler where not tight and all of my boost was blowing out past the boots. He tightened them up and now the boost gauge that I thought was broken because it read at most 5 psi of boost at 2500 rpm (another story) now is reading 25+psi. The EGT problem has also been fixed. Whereas before I couldn't even go over an overpass at 65 mph in overdrive without peaking at 1200 EGT, on the drive home I could hardly get pass 1100 EGT when I was stomping on it up some hills at 75 mph with the camper.
Knowing all of this now, I'm surprised I made it up the Highway 70 route from Oroville to Quincy with Camper and Trailer and no boost. I won't get to do the same drive till next summer but I will be looking forward to noting the difference instead of just praying I make it up!
Last thing... We aren't done with the truck yet. There are still some more projects to work on. I'll be going to a 4" exhaust. Changing out the Inter-cooler and replacing the down pipes. Later on, money available I think I'll even change out the injectors and high pressure oil pump. No more 5 mph and 1st gear for me!
I finally found a PowerStroke 7.3 Guru close by in Salinas by the name of Peter at Paul Faro automotive. Took it to him for some work and asked him to go through my "mystery truck" (because of all the previous owner's addons that I didn't have written down when I bought it). While taking care of some small oil leaks, he discovered that my boots for the turbo to the inter-cooler where not tight and all of my boost was blowing out past the boots. He tightened them up and now the boost gauge that I thought was broken because it read at most 5 psi of boost at 2500 rpm (another story) now is reading 25+psi. The EGT problem has also been fixed. Whereas before I couldn't even go over an overpass at 65 mph in overdrive without peaking at 1200 EGT, on the drive home I could hardly get pass 1100 EGT when I was stomping on it up some hills at 75 mph with the camper.
Knowing all of this now, I'm surprised I made it up the Highway 70 route from Oroville to Quincy with Camper and Trailer and no boost. I won't get to do the same drive till next summer but I will be looking forward to noting the difference instead of just praying I make it up!
Last thing... We aren't done with the truck yet. There are still some more projects to work on. I'll be going to a 4" exhaust. Changing out the Inter-cooler and replacing the down pipes. Later on, money available I think I'll even change out the injectors and high pressure oil pump. No more 5 mph and 1st gear for me!
