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Another 2 door Tahoe for me

jrsavoie said:
How many hp. Was that? There was 23 hp Mitsubishi L3E out of a Toro Reelmaster on Craigslist north of me. Had it in. Frame in runable condition.
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It’s a 37hp Wisconsin V4 VG4D. I have a good one for it, the project has just stalled out/taken a backseat/whatever else one could call it, and Husker won’t let me forget it. I appreciate you letting me know about the Mitsu though!
 
n8in8or said:
It’s a 37hp Wisconsin V4 VG4D. I have a good one for it, the project has just stalled out/taken a backseat/whatever else one could call it, and Husker won’t let me forget it. I appreciate you letting me know about the Mitsu though!
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I never got around to checking to see if the part numbers were the same between a Groundsmaster and Reelmaster L3Es. It seems to me the blocks were slightly different. Toro was pretty good at using proprietary parts.
 
n8in8or said:
It’s a 37hp Wisconsin V4 VG4D. I have a good one for it, the project has just stalled out/taken a backseat/whatever else one could call it, and Husker won’t let me forget it. I appreciate you letting me know about the Mitsu though!
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Because I was all excited following your thread on its restoration, only to be disappointed when the next installment never came in Skid Steer Saga, Nate. It's like never doing Part 2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows!🤣🤣🤣
 
Back to this one after focusing on some other stuff. When I got this together it was smoking from burning oil. It was so bad that there was raw oil coming out of the exhaust. I was pretty sure it was the turbo since I had no history with the turbo I put on it. So I put the turbo that came with the truck on….even though it didn’t spin freely, I hoped it would loosen up over time as it was run. Nope. It wouldn’t even spin, so no way it was going to free up, so off it came. I bought a rebuild kit, but it was a cheap one and when I put it together it wouldn’t spin at all. I ended up using parts from 3 turbos in addition to the rebuild kit in order to finally get the turbo together in good shape. Now that it’s back on the truck is running and not smoking like a pig….it smokes a little driving it around, but it has 318,000 miles, so it doesn’t really surprise me - it could even be that the valve seals are dried out…..it’s good enough to start driving so now I can go get it insured and plated and start driving it. I have an accumulator on order so I can get the AC working, that will be next.
 
Last week I installed the new AC lines, condenser and accumulator. I found a lot of junk on the radiator, so I vacuumed it off, blew it out with an air nozzle from the back side and then degreased it.


6457E4F1-8E08-4F0B-BD0B-35BD8B9D7A63.jpeg0FA0CBE7-CF0C-4DDF-85C1-426FB99CD339.jpeg

Put it in vacuum and…….it wouldn’t hold. Damn. Charged it to find the leak with dye and found the problem: and R4 doing R4 things. Probably sitting for 4 years didn’t help it.

DEFCD7CA-2B45-4B76-AC0D-80140EF13E3D.jpeg9F73D625-FA52-4235-9E62-3EF63B5C6CD4.jpeg

So I ordered an AC Delco compressor for it. Got it all installed last night and it held vacuum this time. I ran the pump on it for 3 hours today and then charged it. It has good AC now.

0A649859-B1BA-49B8-9781-09376AA22E3B.jpeg

I also put a muffler on the exhaust. When I bought it the body of the muffler was rusted off and sounded awful. Since it had a cat on it I figured it would be fine with a straight pipe. Wrong. It was loud and obnoxious, both inside and outside. I had a 4” Walker muffler I had removed from the black Hoe, so I adapted it to the 3” exhaust. It sounds nice now.

C3101FAA-9541-48AF-9331-66F764E1B387.jpeg

Those were the last two things I wanted to do before I started driving it, so today was the maiden voyage…..straight to the car wash. It didn’t clean up too bad.

CE6A6ECB-31EB-48FA-BAB5-EF24B0290D13.jpegC4F682AC-4B67-4FBF-9DC7-052B8D683711.jpeg

It smokes a little, but it seems like it may be getting better as I drive it. I forgot how slow a stock 6.5 is! It will be fine for a while as a third vehicle, but it will get hopped up at some point (surprising, I know).
 
The Tahoe developed a coolant leak that ended up being the radiator, so I put a new rad and hoses in it.

It was also starting to stumble some under load - I was suspicious of it being the lift pump so I installed the Max Tow gauge I had in the black Tahoe into this one. Sure enough, I had a fuel pressure issue, but not the one I expected - the lift pump itself was fine, but I had accidentally disconnected the feed wire from the OPS from the relay mod that Jeff put in, so it was only getting voltage to the pump while the glow plugs were on. Actually considering that, it was running pretty good still! I found the disconnected wire and I was back in business…..sorta….now that I have a gauge in it, I can see that it doesn’t take my throttle pedal for the pressure to drop to zero, so that’s not good. I’m suspecting the sock on the fuel pickup. This is a second reason for me to drop the tank because the gauge sending unit also isn’t reading correctly. I have the nearly new tank from the black Tahoe I can put in here, and that also has one of Leroy’s Metrum Rods in it, so that will be a nice upgrade…….but I think I should also change the draw straw while I’m in there to the 1” tube setup I did for the dually - that way it’s all ready for future upgrades without needing to be dropped again. So I guess I’ll start getting parts accumulated for that…….

I also installed a boost gauge in it so I could see how healthy the wastegate system is - it seems a little smokier under load than I think it should be. On a quick drive, it only made 2psi of boost, so I think there’s an issue, but I’ll focus on the fuel situation first.
 
n8in8or said:
The Tahoe developed a coolant leak that ended up being the radiator, so I put a new rad and hoses in it.

It was also starting to stumble some under load - I was suspicious of it being the lift pump so I installed the Max Tow gauge I had in the black Tahoe into this one. Sure enough, I had a fuel pressure issue, but not the one I expected - the lift pump itself was fine, but I had accidentally disconnected the feed wire from the OPS from the relay mod that Jeff put in, so it was only getting voltage to the pump while the glow plugs were on. Actually considering that, it was running pretty good still! I found the disconnected wire and I was back in business…..sorta….now that I have a gauge in it, I can see that it doesn’t take my throttle pedal for the pressure to drop to zero, so that’s not good. I’m suspecting the sock on the fuel pickup. This is a second reason for me to drop the tank because the gauge sending unit also isn’t reading correctly. I have the nearly new tank from the black Tahoe I can put in here, and that also has one of Leroy’s Metrum Rods in it, so that will be a nice upgrade…….but I think I should also change the draw straw while I’m in there to the 1” tube setup I did for the dually - that way it’s all ready for future upgrades without needing to be dropped again. So I guess I’ll start getting parts accumulated for that…….

I also installed a boost gauge in it so I could see how healthy the wastegate system is - it seems a little smokier under load than I think it should be. On a quick drive, it only made 2psi of boost, so I think there’s an issue, but I’ll focus on the fuel situation first.
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I don't believe the sending unit is the issue. That is the 2nd new sending unit I installed.
The first was a Made in China AC Delco. Neither sending unit fixed anything.
Actuate the sending unit and test before installing. I can't believe I forgot to do that twice.
The original sending unit may have been fine. Or all 3 may be bad.
 
If the gauge isn't accurate and the sending unit is known to be good, then it's either a grounding issue OR the actual gauge is bad. The aircore motors (the gauges are not stepper motors) have a calibration fluid that deteriorate over time. My '95 has been like that since I purchased it in 2016. Changing sending unit made no difference. You can try another gauge from a known working cluster, or try someone who rebuilds them. I've seen the rebuild advertised on Ebay, but have never taken the time to pull my cluster. I just go by my odometer to know when it's time to refuel.
 
jrsavoie said:
I don't believe the sending unit is the issue. That is the 2nd new sending unit I installed.
The first was a Made in China AC Delco. Neither sending unit fixed anything.
Actuate the sending unit and test before installing. I can't believe I forgot to do that twice.
The original sending unit may have been fine. Or all 3 may be bad.
Click to expand...

Oh, good to know! Do you also recall if you left the sock off when you installed the sender? Maybe I can wait a while to drop the tank after all.

DieselAmateur said:
If the gauge isn't accurate and the sending unit is known to be good, then it's either a grounding issue OR the actual gauge is bad. The aircore motors (the gauges are not stepper motors) have a calibration fluid that deteriorate over time. My '95 has been like that since I purchased it in 2016. Changing sending unit made no difference. You can try another gauge from a known working cluster, or try someone who rebuilds them. I've seen the rebuild advertised on Ebay, but have never taken the time to pull my cluster. I just go by my odometer to know when it's time to refuel.
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Thanks for the info on the gauge, but I must say that “gauge calibration fluid” sounds like something you made up…..where does one find that in the store, in same aisle as blinker fluid or is it in the one with bumper fluid??? I’ll try one of my other clusters and see how it behaves since that’s easy to try.
 
I'm going off the information in the description of this video. If you scroll down to the bottom it says the gauge is calibrated with "dampening fluid" so I misspoke when I called it calibration fluid.


I know you're a project wizard @n8in8or so if you can figure out how to rebuild the gauge let us know when you're taking customer rebuilds! 🤣

Here's a rebuild service

www.ebay.com

Repair Service (NOT PARTS) for 95-02 GM Air Core Motor "F" "C" "P" "T" "V" "S" | eBay

If the resistor is found to be out of spec, it will be replaced as part of this repair.
www.ebay.com

and new aircore motor

www.ebay.com

Fuel Gauge stepper motor , 95-99 old bdy Chevy 1500 Silverado ,Tahoe . F motor | eBay

F motor / Fuel Gauge - 95-99 old body (square body Silverado,1500,2500,3500. Tahoe, Suburban 1995-1999, Sierra, Yukon. Does not work on 1999.5 (new body model). Use the F letter on the original motor as a reference to properly install. ).
www.ebay.com
 
n8in8or said:
Oh, good to know! Do you also recall if you left the sock off when you installed the sender? Maybe I can wait a while to drop the tank after all.



Thanks for the info on the gauge, but I must say that “gauge calibration fluid” sounds like something you made up…..where does one find that in the store, in same aisle as blinker fluid or is it in the one with bumper fluid??? I’ll try one of my other clusters and see how it behaves since that’s easy to try.
Click to expand...
I do not remember about the sock. I think I used the sock from the AC Delco
 
I have swapped some of those motors out in my cluster in the past, I couldn't find a diesel cluster only a gasser. I took my chances and tried them. they worked! just make sure you use the same gauge motor like the oil pressure for the oil pressure. I think iirc each one has a calibration resistor mounted on the back of the motor and there are part numbers on the motors. when I took apart both mine and the one from the gasser I matched them up and didn't have any issues. but I must say everything in there will be VERY bitttle and the least bit of pressure on the plastic will break! I praticed first on the gasser cluster so I wasn't at a loss right at first.
 
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