You've got to look at what you want to do with the truck. Glen pulls heavy and all the time. I have 2's in my truck and love them most of the time. But I only pull about 8000lbs. I can keep my egts in check pretty much all the time and maintain speeds. Glenn is pulling double that weight.

 

I can't see your sig. Are u running a stock turbo?

 

Nope. 38r.......

 

The further I think and read about it. The more I'm thinking stage 1's are a better fit for me and what I do. I have a feeling I might be opening a can of worms with stage 2's. Turbo head studs clutch… little more than what I want to deal with. Maybe when my kids leave the house.

 

Splatts.. Take it from an exact personal experience! Don't go stage 2's unless you want to do some big air! I fell victim to the "ah, a D66 will be great with stage 2s!" FALSE!-
-First they killed my transmission in 7 months, stock turbo went out 6 months later..

If I could swap out my stage 2s with some 1 or 1.5 I would. Don't get me wrong, they are awesome (rosewood), extremely powerful, but so terribly smokey and hot, even empty (if you want to have any fun at all). It will get over 1500* empty if you're being an idiot.. not sure how I know that haha.
If you cruise or tow in "heavy tow" mode, they are great and not too smokey, but they are heavily de-fueled. Why go with such an injector if you have to defuel it so much to be manageable.
I should have gone with a t4 mount, intercooler and Efuel... To the tune of $4000... Not possible. Stick with stage 1's. They're awesome and make good power.

 

Thanks for the info and that sucks you had to deal with that. I'm debating 1 or 1.5. I heard rumor that the 1.5 get better fuel mileage but I think it's all in how u drive. Jim said that it is tough to tune from split shot to singles. But I have confidence that Jody can make it happen

 

I myself swapped out the Stage-2's in my '96 and went with some 200/30% because I was tired of how smoky they were.
So far the small Hybrids are pretty impressive.

 

Jim, how much power do you think they are good for? Do you think an S400 series turbo would be required for them?

 

I believe my stage 1's are on their way. Got my race car fixed (1990 Chevy lumina ) so I'm goin to start getting the old ones pulled this weekend. any quick tips for a first timer doin injectors? Been reading s bunch and have a real good idea of how do go about doin it without hydrolocking.

 

The #1 advice I can give is take your time, and don't drink beer while your doing it.

 

Whoa no beer!!! Maybe just one. Lol

 

I will go ahead and chime in here. When I started with my truck it was bone stock, did a chip on stock injectors. Just that made it run too hot in anything outside of the stock tune. Thought it was up pipe leaks and I had next to nothing for soot on the donuts or near the collector. The truck was just a big smoke roller and actually pruduced less boost than the stock tune when it was in the economy or 80 tow tune. It was tuning and a combination of high altitude.

Added a 6.0 IC with 3” plenums and it helped 100-125 degrees, but the tuning was waaaay off for high altitude. Anyways I went ahead with stage 1’s after finding my injectors were very abused by the previous owner. Stage 1’s caused a heat issue if towing heavy, even in the bone stock tune. I couldn’t afford to do a t4 swap so I dumped waaaay too much money and time into the stock turbo. Just a waste of time and money. Deleted the EBPV, used a deleted pedestal, removed the butterfly, installed a 4” exhaust and 3” dp, rebuilt the turbo, and spent quite a few nights porting the exhaust side on both the collector and turbo collector flange after running it without porting it. Put in a billet wheel and it also helped maybe 50-75 degrees across the board, but very minimally. So I added water injection. That solved but bandaided my heat issue in the stock tune. I would hit 15 psi without water and 18-19 with. Adding the 3” plenums did show a boost drop, but I’d think that would be expected as there is less restriction. I know the heads on these trucks with a stock cam are by far the most restrictive part of the charge side, but the 3” plenums did show a slight boost drop, and I personally do believe they restrict a little, but that’s is all based on what I recorded over a period of time doing this all in steps.

Simply put the stock turbo will not push enough air to properly feed stage 1’s let alone 2s. The d66 is a waste of money and garbage IMO. We did run a d66 on a friends truck, and ran my modded stock turbo at a later date in that truck. Actually found the stock turbo to run a bit cooler believe it or not, but it really wasn’t even close to a “stock” turbo at that point. There may have been a few other things affecting that result in the maintainence we did on it while we swapped over (stock injectors, fuel filter, sensors, etc.)

If you want a hot rod truck then you will be fine, it will be fun, run hot and simply be a hot rod in my opinion. It will be smoky as heck down low if you are into that, and take a while to lite. Nothing wrong with that, a lot of guys do that. I find the stock turbo/housing to be a bit laggy even with 4:10s in the rear. If you want to actually tow and do it without watching your pyro forget it. You will blow the stock turbo in a year at 30-35 psi IMO(driving as much as I do), but that’s my experience with friends I did exactly that for, at their request of course.

So what I’m eluding to, is there is nothing wrong with building your truck into what you want step by step if you don’t have the funds up front. In the long run it will cost you more money as I found out and I wish I would have just done it all right the first go around. If you want to do it right, get rid of the stock setup and jump to a t4 platform. I am running a tiny slightly modded s366 in my truck on stage ones with DIY efuel. I no longer have heat issues at all. I do not even use water anymore. It spools quicker, and flows quite a bit more air. I absolutely love it and couldn’t ask for more. If you are going to run 2s, I’d go up to a 400 series platform if you plan on towing, or have your truck live tuned in your tow tunes to keep the heat down. 2s and a s366 without custom tuning will run hot with a decent load behind them. Ask Glenn, he dealt with it I believe.

My experience is likely very different than what you want to use your truck for. I dd my truck 60-100 miles a day to my day job, and use it hard for our side business. 40% of its life it has 16k lbs behind it or more. I want it reliable and do not have time to be dicking with it every night. I live at high altitude, where the air is not near as dense, and affects egts quite a bit. I noticed a huge difference when we travel and are down below 1500ft of MSL elevation.

That’s my .02 cents take it for what its worth and what I experienced over 3 years of getting to where its at now. I still have a lot I want to do to it, and I am sure there are going to be people that disagree with things I said, but that’s what I have learned with this truck, and dozens of other 7.3s that have gone in and out of our shop.

 

+1 I have a story to share but am too embarrased to do so because of that.

Listen to Jim, he knows his chit on this matter!

Also, your motor might run like a banshee, but if you have an auto behind it, put your money there first, if you have a ZF, get a good clutch. I have been lucky with mine.

 

I am at loss for words. But damn that sucks.

 

Didn't suck, just learned a lot...and it was worth every bit to where we are at today! I always need to learn the hard way.

Forgot to mention the s366 sits right at 20psi on a stock tune without water, water it hits 25psi. Any other tune pegs my 35psi gauge, but I really don't need that much HP when towing to be honest. Does great even in a stock tune. Only time it can afford to be turned up is on steep grades or mountain towing, but we still have a tuning issue to solve this winter when I send it back into DP.