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Parts Used In This Episode

ATS Diesel Performance, Inc.
ATS Diesel Performance

Episode Transcript

[ Eric ] You're watching Powernation!

[ Eric ] Today on Music City Trucks we've got Project Nightshift back in the shop and we're getting ready to transfer on even more parts. [ Mike ] We tackle all of our plumbing issues from intake, exhaust, brakes. All that and more coming up. [ Music ] [ Joel ] Nothing cooler than an old pickup am I right? [ Music ] [ Eric ] Underneath all this dirt there's probably a pretty good truck. [ Music ] [ Mike ] Hey guys, welcome to Music City Trucks. Today we've got Project Nightshift back in the shop, and seeing this thing in paint is getting me excited but we've got a ton of work left to do. [ Eric ] And the first big ticket item we're gonna be installing today is this big purple transfer case that was painted and rebuilt by ATS Diesel while they were building our transmission. But it's been a while since we've had this truck in here. So if you've forgotten or just tuning in for the first time here's what we've done so far. We started by pulling this dirty and dinged up '93 Dodge Ram out of the barn that it was left in. Once we got it back to the shop we gave it a quick rinse and started tearing out the drivetrain. Pulling the transmission and transfer case so we could yank the 12-valve 6-BT Cummins from its resting place. Once removed we gave the 31 year old B-series diesel a bath and a fresh coat of paint. To get a little more power we swapped out the factory VE Pump for a P-7,100 to deliver fuel to bigger injectors and help the engine keep up with the new bigger turbo. After finishing up with our power plant we started stripping the factory suspension so we could make room for a new lift kit. This included a set of new leaf springs all the way around and new remote reservoir shocks for added capability. Next we laid down a custom paint job on our W-350 with a dark two-tone theme to match the name and attitude of this project. Most recently the transmission was swapped out with a more robust and reliable Allison 1,000 from ATS that can handle the added horsepower and keep this rig rolling for thousands of miles to come. That brings us to today where we're just about ready to get our transfer case installed, but before we do that there's one little thing we've got to do still and that is get our tone wheel installed on this coupler that connects the input shaft of the transfer case to the output shaft of the transmission. This wheel's gonna be getting installed with the chamfered side first onto the end of our coupler here. That's gonna help keep it centered. Once it goes on like that we're gonna put it in the press to get this pressed down. We're gonna use this template that came with the installation kit as a gauge to get the right depth and should be about three quarters of an inch from the end there. Before I take this out to get it pressed on let's talk about how it actually works. Older speedometers relied on a mechanical input through a cable that was driven by a gear in either the transmission or transfer case. Modern speedometers rely on electronic input from an electrical sensor and that's where the tone wheel comes in. Once we get the transfer case installed with the couple and the tone wheel it's gonna sit just about like this. As the output shaft spins these teeth are gonna go past this sensor. There's a magnetic pick-up inside the sensor that's gonna utilize the frequency of these teeth passing by to send your speed signal out to your speedometer. So I'm gonna go get this pressed on and we can get this transfer case installed. Before we head out to the press I'm gonna be making a couple of reference marks with this template to make sure that we don't overshoot with our tone wheel. Just like that!

Our tone wheel has met the mark from our template and our measurement to the end came out just about right. So we're gonna be checking this a third way just to be certain that we're not gonna have any issues. We're gonna be doing that by putting this back on the output shaft of the transmission and checking the position of our tone wheel in relation to the position of the sensor. What we're looking for is the center line of the tone wheel to be within an eighth of an inch of the center line of the sensor. Looking and feeling around this is just about dead on. So I'm gonna call that good and we're gonna go ahead and get this transfer case installed. [ Mike ] Speaking of transfer cases. [ Eric ] Look at that! The customer service here is great! Slip that guy on there. Up we go! [ Mike ] Oh yeah, the back needs to go up to get the angle of the dangle in the correct direction. There you go! [ Music ] This one's definitely started now. She's in there. [ Eric ] I think that's just about good. All we've got left here is to get it torqued down. [ Mike ] Tighten them up and we should be good to go. Coming up, we show you how to keep your turbo tubes from blowing off under pressure.

[ Mike ] Hey guys, welcome back to the shop. Now it's time to tackle the plumbing for the intake side of our diesel here. I got the intercooler. We're gonna set this in, get this attached. Now the job of the intercooler is to remove the heat from the air going into the engine. Anytime you compress the air via a turbocharger or a supercharger all those air molecules generate a lot of heat. So we're gonna get rid of that heat with the intercooler. That way we can get good, clean, cold air into the engine. [ ratchet clicking ] [ Music ] [ Mike ] First piece we're gonna install on our intake system is the air filter. We'll go air filter to the turbo, from the turbo to the intercooler, and make a way around to the intake manifold on the other side of the truck. First thing are these couplers. These little rubber or silicone couplers can get pretty tight when you go to install them. So I like to shoot it with a little brake clean. Kinda let it slide over. Make your job a little bit easier there. Get that one on. We've got some clamps here as well. [ ratchet clicking ] [ Mike ] hWith the brake clean there. [ Music ]

We'll probably have to clock this a little bit different once we get the fenders and the hood on. Just see our general location. [ Music ] [ ratchet clicking ] [ Mike ] Our next piece here we've got to make the turn from our turbo out to the intercooler. So we've got a 90-degree elbow. A little brake clean there. Slide it on just like that and there's our direction. We'll get this guy tightened up. There we go! To complete the next section we've got to make our own tube here. I've already got it cut to length, rolled a bead on, and I'm gonna show you how to roll another bead. The reason we want a bead on that end is when we put that hose clamp it provides mechanical interference so it doesn't slide off. You could leave this with no bead but it would easily slide off once it's under pressure. So let's go to the work bench and I'll show you how to put that bead on. We're gonna get our bead rolled onto our tube here. The way this works here we're gonna slide this on here. This controls our tension between our two dies. All you have to do is get it touched right there, and then you'll start to spin it around, make a lap, and then we'll increase our pressure. You don't want to get too aggressive on that cause you can actually damage it. Slow and steady there. Depending on the thickness of your tubing is gonna determine how quick this goes. Now this one's a little bit thicker for aluminum. It's gonna take us a little bit longer than normal for any type of thinner material. Once again the reason we're putting this bead on here is to provide resistance for that hose clamp. Without that bead, as we start to pressurize that tube it's gonna increase the chance of blowing that silicone hose, coupler off. So if we put a bead in the end of this tube it gives a little bit of resistance for it to stay put. I'm just trying to keep the tube square on our fixture here. You can control how much bead you want on this. How aggressive you want that lip. The more aggressive you go the more material you're moving around. That looks pretty good! Go ahead and take this off and get it on the truck. Get our tube on here and that will complete this side of the intercooler. If you're ever wondering how deep they need to go inside run it metal to metal so it touches and then back it off just a touch. That way they're not rubbing up against one another.

We're back on the driver's side of the vehicle now. First thing I want to do is install this heating grid. Now the purpose of this is to warm up the air coming into the combustion chamber when the truck is cold and the engine's cold. You may say we'll put an intercooler on it to cool the air. Yeah, when this thing is cold it needs warm air coming in to help it start up. A lot of diesels utilize glow plugs to achieve that. This one's different. It uses this heating grid. Once the engine starts up, gets warm this shuts off so it doesn't negatively impact us. Let's get it bolted on. Move our little dust cover there, gasket, and we'll drop our grid down here. Let's get our last tube installed. Go right over the intercooler on the outside of the intercooler and twist this over and get that buttoned up. [ ratchet clicking ] [ Mike ] Last bolt and then we'll take a little wrench to that nut because it's hidden underneath that tube. Gonna go a little slow cause we have to go a couple of flats at a time just cause it's kinda awkward to get to. Get a little bit more on it. That one's tight. All our tubes are connected. We'll go through and double check our connections by hand just to make sure they're all tight. That wraps up all of our intake system. Onto the next. [ Eric ] Up next, we'll give you some tips to make your own brake lines.

[ Eric ] With plumbing being our priority today we're moving right along with getting brand new brake lines built and installed on our Dodge. We've already got this front axle finished up but before we move along let's take a look at one of these old lines. As you can see it looks a lot better than you would expect from a work truck that's as old as this one. It's always a good idea to install new brake lines because brakes are arguably the most important system on any vehicle cause as bad as it sucks to blow an engine or a transmission, break an axle, or throw a driveshaft they're all made exponentially worse if you don't have brakes to stop after the fact. These ones are no use to us anymore. So I'm gonna go take a look at some tools and show you guys what you're gonna need to make your own. As you can see we have quite the assortment of tools here on this cart, and it's all the basics for what you're gonna need to make your own brake lines. Like I said, this is basics. So we've got cutters, benders, and flaring tools. Let's talk about them. Most of your cutters are gonna be something a little like this or even in a smaller size like that. There's a lot of options out there for benders and you could get as fancy as getting something like this that has an angle gauge, multiple sizes, and all that but you're not always gonna need that. You could go as simple as making something like this for yourself. This is just a piece of square stock with some round stock welded to the outside. Then we'll move on to flaring tools and you've got a couple different options there as well. You'll look and see this is an old school manual flaring tool that works really well but it's not quite as fast as some of the other options out there like these hydraulic flaring tools that you can get. Now these come with a lot more adapters and you can do a lot more with them but they come with a heftier price tag. This isn't quite everything and the rest of the tools are over on the table. So let's go check them out. Before we get to use any of those tools we just talked about we've got to talk about one more. This is a brake line straightener and you don't need it to make brake lines but it does help out a lot. All this is is just a set of wheels that you run your brake line through to uncoil it because it comes packaged up in a coil like so. That's the first thing we're gonna be doing. We're gonna get this straightened out and then we can measure to see how much we need. First things first with this, we're gonna get it loose enough to run a length of our line right through. Then we're just gonna tighten up a little bit until it's grabbing and coming out straight on the other side. Then once you've got it dialed in you're just gonna unspool with one hand and pull through with the other. I find it a lot easier to do all the cutting and bending if the line is straightened out beforehand. Now that we've got this pretty well straightened out we've got to figure out how much of it we need. There's quite a few different ways you can measure for line but I'm gonna show you one of my favorite ways using a piece of tig wire. Using this piece of tig wire and our old brake line we're gonna line it up right at the end and then we're just gonna follow every bend that this thing makes until we get to the very end of it. Then we're gonna cut our wire and that's gonna tell us how long our brake line needs to be. Now we can cut it off right at the end. Now that we've got that done all that's left to do here is to get this straightened out, lay it down next to our new brake line, and make our cut. Now that we've got our cut made we're gonna go ahead and swap out our straightener for our bending tool. [ Music ]

With this tool I like to get it set with the old line. I'm gonna line this up on the ends. What's nice about these is you can bend by hand or you can use the whole jig. I always overbend just a little bit because nine times out of ten that line is gonna spring back just a little bit when you let the tension off. I'll admit this is not the easiest way to do this but for me it seems to work the best and get the most accurate results. Now that we've got all our bending done we can move on and get it flared. For that we're gonna be using a different type of flaring tool that we haven't talked about yet, and this one as you can probably tell is a little bit fancier than the rest of them. I'm gonna get it set up in the vice and then we're gonna talk about it. [ Music ] Now this flaring tool does the exact same thing as every other flaring tool out there but this is actually the easiest way that I've found to do it. Of course it's gonna be easier using a fancier tool but there is some things you need to pay attention to while you're getting it set up. So this flaring tool can do 45 or 37 degree flares depending on what kind of lines you're making. A 37 degree flare is gonna be for an AN line and a 45 degree flare is gonna be for your standard inverted and bubble flares, and that's what we're gonna be making here today. You're gonna look on the inside of your block, pick the 45 degree side, and drop that in, get your line set. Now initially you want to leave your line sticking out just a little bit. Make sure you get the top half of the block on the same degree for the flare. At this point before you guys clamp your line down I want you to think and make sure you're not forgetting anything like I just realized that I am. Don't forget to put your nut on. Now that we've got our nut on we can go ahead and get our line clamped down. Now for this first operation we're not gonna be tightening it down all the way. We're gonna take the wheel, get it installed on the tool, and set it to here where it says operation zero. That's gonna be this flat head of a bolt. What that's gonna do is press that line down even with the end of the block here. Then tighten this down the rest of the way. Make sure it's in there nice and secure. Once that's done we're gonna switch to where it says operation one and that's gonna give us our initial flare. Then we're gonna be going to operation two, and that's what's gonna create our bubble. You don't want to pull too hard on these cause you can split your line with this. Once that's done you can go ahead, get this popped out, take a look at one nice, perfect flare. Now that this is done I've got just one more brake line to make and then we can put a stop to this part of this project. [ Mike ] We'll give you a quick and easy way to bleed your master cylinder.

[ Mike ] Well we've got all of our brake lines installed on the truck. Next thing we've got to do is install our master cylinder and bleed it. When you get a brand new master cylinder you have to bleed the master cylinder. You can do it on the work bench in the vice or I like to just install it on the truck and use the pedal itself. We'll get the fluid installed into our reservoirs. Eric's gonna jump in and use the brake pedal, and we're gonna move that piston back and forth to bleed the master cylinder. To bleed the master cylinder you have to loop the outlet to the inlet. I just made some of these lines here from some material we had here at the shop. You can get the clear tubes at your parts store that loop it back in there. Whatever you want to do. We'll go ahead and fill this reservoir up. And the front. [ Music ] Alright, now Eric's just gonna push the pedal down slowly and we can start to see the bubbles coming out. We'll keep pushing the pedal down back and forth nice and slow until we don't see any more air coming out of the fluid. Go ahead. [ Eric ] You ready? Nice and slow. [ Mike ] You can see it. [ Music ] Then we'll just keep doing that until all the air's out. Then we can button up the system and be good to go. [ Music ] Alright Eric, that looks pretty good. We'll go ahead and get our bleeder lines off of there, hook up our regular brake lines. Then we can bleed all four wheels. [ Music ]

[ Music ] There she goes. [ Music ] That one's started. [ Music ] We got all of our fittings tight. Now we'll just top off our brake fluid. [ Eric ] In the spirit of plumbing and fluids it's time to get our Dodge filled up. Front to back we've got engine, transmission, and axles that we need to get filled up and we're gonna be using Hot Shot's Secret products in all of it. Starting with the engine we're gonna be using their Blue Diamond Full PAO Synthetic 15-40 to get this engine filled up. To get started we're gonna pre-fill this filter. This synthetic p-a-o engine oil is infused with Hot Shot's Secret proprietary FR-3 nano technology that provides unsurpassed levels of longevity and improved performance. This advanced friction reducer creates a protective barrier between metal surfaces and limits metal to metal contact, which helps with lower operating temperatures and improves fuel efficiency by three percent, giving your engine the ultimate protection while prolonging its life. [ Mike ] There you go! [ Eric ] Dangerously close to finished. The higher film strength of Blue Diamond PAO provides bear wear resistance that allows for longer service intervals between oil changes. It contains no wax, giving your diesel engine easier oil flow in cold weather startups that drastically minimize wear on engine components. [ Mike ] Now our oil already has the FR-3 Friction Reducer made into it but you can buy some of this additive and add it to your oil for extra protection. If you need to know more about what's going on with your engine and the oil inside of it you can send Hot Shot's a sample of your oil. They'll analyze it and tell you the best products for your application. How's it coming over there Eric? [ Eric ] We're just about finished up, and also just about out of time. We didn't get to the exhaust today but that's alright cause we can catch up on that next time. But right now we'll see you next time.
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