Sierra Denali Forged engine/twin turbo install
Jan 7, 2012 | 09:37 AM
#53
Dropped the truck off at Synergy last week to be tuned. It had a slight miss so that had to be fixed before he could tune it. It's ready to go so he should be dynoing it early next week. I'll have my fingers crossed for some decent #'s.
Rick
Feb 20, 2012 | 10:30 PM
#55
Nothing but lousy news/bad luck so I decided to park it for a while... 
To start from the beginning, I had dropped it off at Synergy a while back with a bad, intermittent miss. After a lot of trouble-shooting and a new set of plugs and wires, the miss was gone but Rick said the rear seal was leaking too bad to load it up and was too booked to do the seal. It seems to be running fine so I brought it home. I dropped it off a couple weeks later at a local norcal-lsx.net installer (BlueMagicSS on LSITech) to install a new rear seal. Install went fine, drove it home and parked it. Drove it to work the next am and 5 minutes into the ride it started missing pretty hard. No SES codes, just an obvious, shuddering miss. Went through all the grounds, pulled off the coils/etc and double-checked every connection with no luck. It was running good enough to drive so I drove it to Synergy. The passenger O2 narrowed down what side was having the trouble but 3 days of Rick and/or his Tech working on it on and off and they couldn't find the cause. I picked it up and drove it home. It was still drivable but you could definitely feel a shuddering miss. On my "old" twin kit, the main harness ran through the 270* DS turbo hot pipe. I kept the harness wrapped up with some DEI silicone heat shielding but a small section along the bottom apparently had burned through and it cooked some of the harness. I could tell the OEM wire loom was singed but it didn't seem that bad, just looked superficial. No wires seemed to be obviously broken but I suspect that the heat caused enough damage over the 3+ years that something got cooked enough to cause a gremlin. I picked up a low mile '06 harness and a new set of coils and planned on swapping them out the following weekend. I was still commuting in it a couple days a week and had noticed that the emergency brake gradually started going all the way to the floor with less and less resistance. Checked the fluid, everything looked okay. That evening my brake pedal felt softer than normal so I figured I check it when I got home. When I pulled off the freeway, I got a decent sized puff of smoke from the DS fender well. By the time I made to the 4th stop sign, the pedal was about 75% gone, the brake warning was flashing along with some loud buzzer chiming at me and I was greeted by a huge cloud of smoke each time I pressed the brake. Limped it the rest of the way home and found out one of the main steel brake lines from the booster had rusted/corroded through and burst. Unfortunately, it sprayed the brake fluid directly on to the turbo downpipe and the flash flame burned up my Alky wiring loom along with some OEM wires that ran along the frame rail.
Not the end of the world by any means but it's going to sit for a while until I stop pouting about it and get my *** back to work on it.
Rick
To start from the beginning, I had dropped it off at Synergy a while back with a bad, intermittent miss. After a lot of trouble-shooting and a new set of plugs and wires, the miss was gone but Rick said the rear seal was leaking too bad to load it up and was too booked to do the seal. It seems to be running fine so I brought it home. I dropped it off a couple weeks later at a local norcal-lsx.net installer (BlueMagicSS on LSITech) to install a new rear seal. Install went fine, drove it home and parked it. Drove it to work the next am and 5 minutes into the ride it started missing pretty hard. No SES codes, just an obvious, shuddering miss. Went through all the grounds, pulled off the coils/etc and double-checked every connection with no luck. It was running good enough to drive so I drove it to Synergy. The passenger O2 narrowed down what side was having the trouble but 3 days of Rick and/or his Tech working on it on and off and they couldn't find the cause. I picked it up and drove it home. It was still drivable but you could definitely feel a shuddering miss. On my "old" twin kit, the main harness ran through the 270* DS turbo hot pipe. I kept the harness wrapped up with some DEI silicone heat shielding but a small section along the bottom apparently had burned through and it cooked some of the harness. I could tell the OEM wire loom was singed but it didn't seem that bad, just looked superficial. No wires seemed to be obviously broken but I suspect that the heat caused enough damage over the 3+ years that something got cooked enough to cause a gremlin. I picked up a low mile '06 harness and a new set of coils and planned on swapping them out the following weekend. I was still commuting in it a couple days a week and had noticed that the emergency brake gradually started going all the way to the floor with less and less resistance. Checked the fluid, everything looked okay. That evening my brake pedal felt softer than normal so I figured I check it when I got home. When I pulled off the freeway, I got a decent sized puff of smoke from the DS fender well. By the time I made to the 4th stop sign, the pedal was about 75% gone, the brake warning was flashing along with some loud buzzer chiming at me and I was greeted by a huge cloud of smoke each time I pressed the brake. Limped it the rest of the way home and found out one of the main steel brake lines from the booster had rusted/corroded through and burst. Unfortunately, it sprayed the brake fluid directly on to the turbo downpipe and the flash flame burned up my Alky wiring loom along with some OEM wires that ran along the frame rail.
Not the end of the world by any means but it's going to sit for a while until I stop pouting about it and get my *** back to work on it.
Rick
Last edited by Rick_Vor; Feb 22, 2012 at 08:04 AM.
Feb 21, 2012 | 08:07 AM
#59
If I had your luck, it would have popped #7 and THEN burned to the ground! 
I know it's not that bad. Just making that long *** post last night got me in the mood to pop the hood. I guess I may just have to swing by Costvo and pick up a 5 gallon Industrial size RAID and get back to work... 
I did get to enjoy some low RPM, low boost while I was cruising around in it. It spools up in a split second and it's crazy how much stronger it feels at just 5-6lbs between 2k-3k RPM's. The Circle D TC feels smoother than stock in town but flashes right to 2500 in an instant.
Rick
I did get to enjoy some low RPM, low boost while I was cruising around in it. It spools up in a split second and it's crazy how much stronger it feels at just 5-6lbs between 2k-3k RPM's. The Circle D TC feels smoother than stock in town but flashes right to 2500 in an instant.
Rick