My Pete rebuild

[Nostalgic]

I finally find myself with a long weekend and no huge pressing issues to address. What a relief - I can finally get my autos in for their overdue services and finally get the winter tires off lol.

I did my first oil change @ 300 miles, then ran my first week under loads. You could almost feel when the rings started seating, but with the oil my turbo was pushing through the cac, I still smelled burning oil when I'd slow down or stop. Last weekend I replaced the turbo, put in a new IMAP, and changed my black oil. My first few weeks, I think oil and filters are on par with fuel as my biggest expenses.

I was starting to think the turbo issues were all in my head, since the slobber was slowing down a lot, but the new turbo made it clear that something was off. With the cac disconnected, the volume of air was significantly higher, no oil sprayed out, and after my first run found that it made 3-4 psi more boost than the old one.

Running 40 qts of Rotella T4 and 1 gallon of Sta Lube. I'm not sure what the current consensus is on oil, but I've considered switching to Carquest 15w40 since it's about $250 a barrel cheaper than Rotella and I'm ready to be done with expensive 5 gallon pails. Not sure how much better additive packs in Rotella really are? and I plan on 10k service intervals and intend to keep using the gear oil.

Oil pressure runs 40-42 cruising, will drop into the low to mid 30's during a hard pull (I notice this happening lesser now that things are starting to break in a little more), and when first stopping to idle 15-18 @ 670 rpms off the gauge (I haven't checked gauge accuracy against insite yet). If I bump it to 900 for a couple minutes to cool, it rests at 20 and stays there when going back to low idle.

The first week I saw 900 a few times on the pyro, but now mid 600's even during a hill (though I don't have any nice long pulls).

Driving it like I stole it, first tank averaged 5.9 by hand, 6.4 via dash readout. Last tank was 6.5 by hand and easing up a little on beating it like a red-headed step child. Not sure if I have it in me to emulate Rawze's discipline in hyper milling, but I'm pretty sure with some achievable restraint and lowering my speeds a little, 7's should be pretty easy to accomplish.

Since I initially based my profitability numbers off $4 fuel @ 5 mpg going into this adventure, I'm happy to be ahead of the curve for something for once.

One thing that's been driving me a little crazy is the coolant tank, and trying to figure out how the compartments are supposed to work? The last set of compartments to the vent cap do not drain back to the system unless you take the tank off and shake it upside down. Should they never have coolant in them? I assume since I kept adding coolant on the fill side, I've overfilled it? Starting with an empty tank, where should I fill to? The Min mark? When it warms up and expands to the other compartments, they don't drain back, so then the main is below the Min mark. No leaks, caps test ok, and I thought maybe it was the dorman tank, so I checked the old OE tank and everything seems to work the same... Goofy system IMO.