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Old 05-25-2009, 03:46 AM   #11 (permalink)
Irie Jedi
EcoModding Lurker
 
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Vail, CO
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Current facts on this truck

Ok first I want to introduce myself, I'm Jerry Olson and I live in Vail Colorado..... I was surfing the net tonight looking for information on a new or used turbo (mine is shot) when I saw a picture of my Tooper on this site. I think the truck is a lot of fun but I have been seriously rebuilding it this spring. Front end was totally rebuilt last week and the veg kit I bought is going in next.

Now I know I paid less than $3500 but I wont get into that, main thing is it has never gotten anything close to 55 mpg gallon let alone 63mgp. I averaged about 28mpg driving the 100 miles between Vail and Denver going the speed limits, and yes it smoked like a pig on the big uphill climbs. The high flow air filter helps a bunch and when I cleaned that filter last fall it had a lot more power=less smoke, still smokes like a pig uphill though. Fact of the matter is this truck which had just less than 180,000 miles on it when I bought (90,000 miles since the factory recall and rebuild) it has damage to the manifolds and turbos from excessive heat. Currently having a hell of a time finding a replacement for the turbo. The warped manifolds were easily machined.

There has never been guages for this in the cab or anywhere else or a turbo boost adjustment valve which is controlable from the cab that I have seen. I am kind of curious about what you are refering to on these mods because I know you mentioned them before I bought the truck from you, I really don't see these parts on the truck nor their reminats. I suppose if you drive the thing around at 10 to 50 mph you'll get better gas milage but not those figures. Smart cars barely get that and that's brand new technology not stuff from 1986!

My plans are to install an intercooler soon to prevent further turbo over heating, god knows when or it happened in the last 90,000 miles but my truck runability hadn't changed. I took the turbo and manifolds off originally to fix the exhaust leak on the exhaust side. The extent of the problem was not realized until that point.

After I get the veggie oil burning potentially adding a propane injection set up to make up for power losses on the veggie end. That is much later though. Once again I like the truck though is needing a lot of love, also I think the bigger tires do more harm than good unless I'm mainly driving slow off road. I think the next set of tires will be the BF T/A's in a 29 inch instead of those 31's you see in the last picture. They kind of bounce around too much, skinnier is better in the Rockies. If anyone knows of someone selling a TB209 Garrett turbo hit me up, the best I've found is a similar but not exact one aftermarket for $465.

Jerry
PS. I have pictures of this turbo's waste gate which is cracked deeply on both sides but the photos are to large to upload and I can not resize them right now.

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