every one says do not tow unless you have an egt gauge installed, when running a programmer. But noone says what the gauge should read under normal driving, or how much is too much or not enough. So does any one know what is too much or not enough or just right.

thanks all for your time and I am looking forward to reading your response,
Steve

 

if your egt's get up around 1200-1300 degrees, you are getting to hot. Keep it under 1100-1200 and let it idle till the egt is 400 or less for a few minutes before turning off. some of the tuners have high temp alarms/ auto defueling but keep a good eye on the guage. the running temps wil vary depending on load, road, and outside temp. a boost and trans temp guages are also a must when towing a heavy load/ running a tunner.

 

thanks very much for the response. so normal driving it should be around 1000 not towing a load?

 

My typical unloaded preturbo pyro probe readings on my truck are in the 500-600 deg range driving on level ground at 65 MPH type speeds. If the road grade increases or my speed goes up the temp will climb into the 700-800 deg range.

If I'm climbing a steep hill like the one near my house with my foot in it fairly hard I can see unloaded temps in the 1100 deg range with my SCMT set to High Performance mode. Max I've ever seen unloaded in any condition in the HP tune was about 1230 deg.

Towing my toy hauler a week ago with the Tow Safe tune installed I hit 1180 deg or there abouts. This was a sustained full throttle pull up a steep grade.

I've heard various numbers for temps that are OK but my personal preference is not to exceed 1250 deg preturbo. And so far that doesn't seem to be a problem as the truck doesn't seem to run that hot the way I operate it.

 

I'll second what Daryl said. I've always been told 1350 max temp, even that you can hit, but don't sustain that temp for any real length of time. I've also heard of others that have run it significantly hotter than that for long periods of time without any apparent problems.

 

Do these numbers only refer to the turbo condition, or do these numbers somehow correlate to the temperature of the engine?

In other words, is it possible for the motor to be overheating and the egt's still showing low?

 

Assuming you have your gauge mounted pre-turbo it would only show you the exhaust gas temps being fed to your turbo, this would be independant of the operating (coolant) temp of the motor.

 

This is where I get confused. I know that we need to know what the temp of the turbo is, but all of the 3 gauge pods all include the pyro, trans temp, and boost. I would think that knowing the engine temp would be as important as pyro temp.

Do I have something wrong here? Just wanting to keep tabs on my operating conditions because I tow a lot.

Thanks

 

Your stock coolant gauge should be your indicator for general engine temp, haven't heard of coolant overheating problems.

A pyrometer will give you your EGT's ... your turbo monitor

A boost gauge is more of a curiosity item, you really don't adjust anything for it.

Not sure if your '04 has the built in tranny temp indicator, the '05 does. On my '97 I put a big Tru-Cool LPD tranny cooler on it and didn't worry about it, didn't personally need a gauge. I talked to people that towed BIG loads through the desert in AZ with a gauge and with that cooler the temps were normal.

I've been told that the '05 has a big cooler on it, not sure about the '04. I would probably put a mag-hytech tranny pan and/or big cooler on it before I got a gauge. Thats just my opinion, some people really like gauges.

I will put the Mag-Hytech differential pan on, keeps the rearend 40 degrees cooler and holds quite a bit more fluid.

 

I was just wondering because I have the coolant puke problem sometimes. This causes my temp to get hot if enough coolant is removed. It has happened before where it has pushed out all the coolant in the bottle (viewable bottle).

They replaced the thermostat and now it just sits there in the middle range and does not move (not valuable information). I was hoping that the egt would give me some insight into the temp of the motor, but it looks like they are not directly related.

Thanks

 

No, the EGT's can heat up and cool down in seconds, no correlation to whats happening to the coolant side of the motor.

I wonder the same thing about the tranny gauge, from a cold start, let it idle for a few minutes and the tranny gauge shows it up to operating temp.....how did it heat up the tranny fluid without the truck moving ??? And if they really figured out a way to do that why don't they do it to the coolant side so you can have heat faster....

 

bricot, in you sig it says SCMT what is that? I have seen it a bunch and always woundered.

thanks for the great info about the egt gauge, now that I know what I am looking for maybe I can treat me truck somewhat better.

thanks for your time,
Steve

 

No problem, this is a great site for info.

The SCMT is the Superchips Micro Tuner - tried that one on my '97 and the Predator on the '05

 

if you were to recommend a tuner to me ( I do not haul anything) what would you say?
thanks for you time,
Steve

 

The SCMT will give you a lot of power on the HP setting, but you have to be glued to your EGT gauge with WOT for any amount of time, even when running empty, as I somewhat painfully learned.