Ok, next project. Started this one before my trip, didn't get to finish till this week. Damn rain & humidity delayed me as well, but theyre done. So I bought a piece of 2*3, .250 wall, 16' long, at the scrap steel yard for $50. So I decided to make some steps for the diesel. Looking at fitment Deciding where to cut them off at Cut down Basic idea Has to fit around the bolt for the fender: Both cut, notches to clear fender bolt closed in Mocking up legs: ...and all welded up ...and bolted to frame Next up, steps: ...and for the finishing touch, 2" grip tape. I know its not ideal for a rock crawler to have that step hanging down, but this thing only gets wheeled if we need a trailer offroad, so it shouldnt be an issue, and they definitely make it easier for my vertically-challenged wife to get in & out, so im calling it a win! So the water injection works great. It makes a huge difference to EGTs while towing. So a little bit about the system, now that ive had time to use it. First up, its amazing. I consumed almost 20 gallons towing the bronco to VA, however I was loaded way heaver then I normally am, and that was with the cruise set at 65 for the whole trip. It works amazing, I was tuning it on the way down, and found at 100% duty cycle, it will drop my EGTs from 1200 to 900 in ~ 30 seconds That's going uphill, at 65mph. Yeah, it works awesome. Of course, tuned that high consumes a ton of water, so I throttled it back a bit for the ride home. But yeah, awesome. Being able to tune it on the fly with the CMGS was awesome, it would've been a major pita to pull over after every hill to adjust a manual boost switch until I found a setting I liked. So yeah, i bought the CMGS kit because it is the most tunable. Its my understanding that the basic kits which use a boost switch, merely turn on when you hit your desired boost level. The CMGS & VC2 are both progressive controllers. This means you set a start point (say 5psi) where they start injecting, and progressively ramp up injection rate as boost increases until it gets to 100% duty cycle, which you also set. For example, I have mine set to come on at 5PSI, and to run at 100% at 20 PSI. The controller will progressively inject more until it gets to 100%, whereas the simple boost switches are just on/off. This actually allows me to inject more water since it doesn't inject at 100% at 5PSI like it would if I only had a switch. The main difference between the CMGS & the VC2 is the controller, the CMGS is a shaped like a standard 2 1/16 gauge whereas the VC2 is a big square controller. Functionally they are the same. Both the CMGS & the VC2 can use the Failsafe Control Box (FCB or FSB, same thing), which is basically a brain that stores info about your system. It is designed as a secondary failsafe because if it senses something out of the ordinary it also will shut the system down and tell the controller to display a specific error code. I like it because it is basically a second system monitoring the injection, to make sure nothing goes wrong. Not required unless you go big with 2 injection pumps and 2 nozzles. But that's the big boy stuff, like 350 HP and up trucks, not what i have, so not a requirement. My kit also has a solenoid instead of check valve. The idea here is, the controller must turn on the solenoid in order to inject water; this means there is no chance of the system dripping into the intake when the engine is off or im parked on a hill, etc. Basically eliminates the chance of accidental hydro-lock. Also nice is that if something goes wrong, the controller drops the ground, which shuts the solenoid down preventing the pump from injecting anything. The cool thing about their kits is you can buy a basic kit now, and then just add components to it later if you wanted to upgrade. Id recommend either the CMGS or VC2 even if you get a stripped down system because the progressive injection is badass. No matter what kit you get, upgrade to the solenoid for the comfort of knowing there is no check valve to potentially fail or leak through. I would not bother buying a tank from them, id get one elsewhere since you can get more for your money that way. You can run up to 30% methanol which adds a decent amount of HP, altho you dont necessarily need to. Methanol is fairly expensive per gallon, however i recently discovered this: msds.walmartstores.com. Turns out their cheap Super Tech Windshield Washer Fluid is apparently just over 30% methanol, with the rest being water and a dash of food coloring. So that's what im running in the tank. Since i dont need the HP boost, all summer im running straight water and then in the winter ill add methanol to the tank as needed, to keep it from freezing. This year's RoundUp was held on June 27-29 at Big Dogs Offroad down in Virginia. We decided to make the trip, so we packed heavy for 4 days of camping and wheeling! Camping was at The Cove Family Campground in Gore, and was a pretty nice place to camp. We didnt get a ton of pics; we ended Friday early due to throwing a caliper clean off the front of the truck, but fortunately we were able to get parts locally and fix it for Saturday. After our trail guide's rollover me & dawn switched seats and she drove for the remainder of the day which was a nice change of pace. Theres more pics from the event in a thread over on FSB. |
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