This is a continuation of a discussion going on in another thread that can be found here: http://dieseltowingresource.com/showthread.php?t=3460
In an attempt to not further hijack that thread, this one was created.
Michael,
You don’t know me, although we did talk briefly on the phone one time in 2005, but I am very familiar with your products as I did quite a bit of research on both yours and Christopher’s products in 2005. I also spoke with people that had your products as well as guys that worked with you in some of the development of your products. Afterall, I’m right here in Az, and I have a BFT. (big xxxxxxx trailer) I towed it with my ’05 LLY SRW prior to getting my ’07 LBZ dually.
So here’s my take on the LLY:
First and foremost, I understand what you have said ad nauseum about the cooling loop, but here’s the thing. The engine is going to produce heat. It’s a byproduct that must be dealt with. That’s where the engines cooling system comes in. That’s the whole and entire reason that every car, truck, or van, has a radiator. The heat must be shed. Sure, if you produce less heat, then less heat must be shed, but that’s not the way you engineer something. You design the engine to put out a certain amount of power, and you design things like the cooling system to deal with what the engine puts out in the way of heat. You don’t design a cooling system and say, “it’s good, now let’s adjust everything else to work with it.” If the cooling system doesn’t do it’s job, which is to cool the engine, then you add extra cooling capacity to the system. It really is that simple. You keep saying that the cooling system works well and I don’t debate that… The cooling system in my wife’s G35 works well too, but it’s not big enough for my truck. The same is true here. Yes the cooling system is good and works well, but the problem is, it does not have the capacity necessary to stop the engine from heating up when at, or near, max load. PERIOD.
Here is the problem with your products IMO. I don’t own any, so know that I am just going off what I have read from you and what others that do have your products say. I’m sure they all make things “better” for the truck and they are all good things to do that “couldn’t hurt”. But for guys looking for an overheat solution, you don’t have it. When I was doing my research, I was looking for one thing; whatever it took to keep my truck from overheating when pulling my trailer up a hill in the summer of Az. I found it with the V2. It’s a one stop fix and you’re done. You can add the fan to make it work even better, but the optional fan is not even necessary. V2… you’re done.
You, on the other hand, would have me do no less than 6 mods to the truck and then you have caveats about what you can and can’t do with the truck to ensure it won’t overheat. You say yourself in your 30+ page report on thermal feedback that you can’t adjust turbo boost or add power. The V2 has no restrictions. I have a built trans and I tow with a quite strong tow tune. There are no restrictions, you put it on and do whatever you want, pull whatever you want, and your days of overheating are in the past. That’s what people want. Not only that, the V2 does not require that you cut anything up. You would have us cut our front valance, cut a hole in the passenger fender well, to install some louvered air scoop, install shrouds and seals, upsize the CAC, and STILL we can’t bump up the power? That’s no fix, that’s a band-aid to the cooling system if you ask me. You are still trying to adjust the entire truck to work with the cooling system. The rest of us are simply fixing the cooling system to work with the truck.
In your own words you admit that all you are doing is minimizing what you believe to be the problem. You say “…all the elements that support thermal feedback and power decay must be removed. They can not be completely removed, so we must minimize them.” You want people to “minimize the elements” with 6 different steps and then still have restrictions. Chris says, “Put the V2 on and do whatever you want”. Honestly, which one do you expect people to go for? I didn’t buy a heavy duty diesel truck to take it easy, and go slowly up the hill trying to maintain the “sweet spot”. I’m sure it’s a fun project for you to continually come up with little fixes and finds, but the majority of us just want to not have to worry about the truck leaving us stranded. Again, all of these have their own value, but when I’m leaving on a trip up north with my family, the last thing I want to be worrying about is “was that last little fix enough?”
You say that the V2 “is not a fix for overheating, as load induced overheating is not caused by a deficient cooling system.” You want to reduce the heat load, I understand that, but then the argument could be made that turning the key off would remove the greatest heat load of all, thus preventing the engine from overheating. Doesn’t really make much sense does it? Seems it would be more practical to deal with the heat produced.
You go on to say “…all 5 symptoms can be removed with 1/5th the cash outlay”. The V2 can be had for $930. Are you saying that you can accomplish the same results for $186?
Now for the LBZ:
I pulled my trailer with my LBZ prior to putting the V2 on it. Rttoys, is mistaken, I never overheated my LBZ, nor do I believe it would overheat. It did get far hotter than I would like though, so I put the V2 on and now I’m very happy with it. The major difference between the LBZ and LLY pulling my trailer in the conditions I tow is, the LBZ CAN stop the temp climb while still under 100% load in high OAT. The LLY CAN NOT. When the engine fan comes on in the LBZ, the temp rise stops and most of the time will turn around even prior to removing the load (cresting the grade). The LLY ECT’s would continue to climb even with the fan fully engaged so long as the load was there until, alarms, reduced power, puking coolant… all the fun stuff every family vacation needs.
We are saying, the problem we want to fix is the LLY overheating. The V2 will keep it from overheating; thus, that is a fix. Does it fix all the REASONS the LLY will overheat? Probably not, but for most people looking for a “fix”, they want something to keep the truck from overheating and the V2 will.
In an attempt to not further hijack that thread, this one was created.
Michael,
You don’t know me, although we did talk briefly on the phone one time in 2005, but I am very familiar with your products as I did quite a bit of research on both yours and Christopher’s products in 2005. I also spoke with people that had your products as well as guys that worked with you in some of the development of your products. Afterall, I’m right here in Az, and I have a BFT. (big xxxxxxx trailer) I towed it with my ’05 LLY SRW prior to getting my ’07 LBZ dually.
So here’s my take on the LLY:
First and foremost, I understand what you have said ad nauseum about the cooling loop, but here’s the thing. The engine is going to produce heat. It’s a byproduct that must be dealt with. That’s where the engines cooling system comes in. That’s the whole and entire reason that every car, truck, or van, has a radiator. The heat must be shed. Sure, if you produce less heat, then less heat must be shed, but that’s not the way you engineer something. You design the engine to put out a certain amount of power, and you design things like the cooling system to deal with what the engine puts out in the way of heat. You don’t design a cooling system and say, “it’s good, now let’s adjust everything else to work with it.” If the cooling system doesn’t do it’s job, which is to cool the engine, then you add extra cooling capacity to the system. It really is that simple. You keep saying that the cooling system works well and I don’t debate that… The cooling system in my wife’s G35 works well too, but it’s not big enough for my truck. The same is true here. Yes the cooling system is good and works well, but the problem is, it does not have the capacity necessary to stop the engine from heating up when at, or near, max load. PERIOD.
Here is the problem with your products IMO. I don’t own any, so know that I am just going off what I have read from you and what others that do have your products say. I’m sure they all make things “better” for the truck and they are all good things to do that “couldn’t hurt”. But for guys looking for an overheat solution, you don’t have it. When I was doing my research, I was looking for one thing; whatever it took to keep my truck from overheating when pulling my trailer up a hill in the summer of Az. I found it with the V2. It’s a one stop fix and you’re done. You can add the fan to make it work even better, but the optional fan is not even necessary. V2… you’re done.
You, on the other hand, would have me do no less than 6 mods to the truck and then you have caveats about what you can and can’t do with the truck to ensure it won’t overheat. You say yourself in your 30+ page report on thermal feedback that you can’t adjust turbo boost or add power. The V2 has no restrictions. I have a built trans and I tow with a quite strong tow tune. There are no restrictions, you put it on and do whatever you want, pull whatever you want, and your days of overheating are in the past. That’s what people want. Not only that, the V2 does not require that you cut anything up. You would have us cut our front valance, cut a hole in the passenger fender well, to install some louvered air scoop, install shrouds and seals, upsize the CAC, and STILL we can’t bump up the power? That’s no fix, that’s a band-aid to the cooling system if you ask me. You are still trying to adjust the entire truck to work with the cooling system. The rest of us are simply fixing the cooling system to work with the truck.
In your own words you admit that all you are doing is minimizing what you believe to be the problem. You say “…all the elements that support thermal feedback and power decay must be removed. They can not be completely removed, so we must minimize them.” You want people to “minimize the elements” with 6 different steps and then still have restrictions. Chris says, “Put the V2 on and do whatever you want”. Honestly, which one do you expect people to go for? I didn’t buy a heavy duty diesel truck to take it easy, and go slowly up the hill trying to maintain the “sweet spot”. I’m sure it’s a fun project for you to continually come up with little fixes and finds, but the majority of us just want to not have to worry about the truck leaving us stranded. Again, all of these have their own value, but when I’m leaving on a trip up north with my family, the last thing I want to be worrying about is “was that last little fix enough?”
You say that the V2 “is not a fix for overheating, as load induced overheating is not caused by a deficient cooling system.” You want to reduce the heat load, I understand that, but then the argument could be made that turning the key off would remove the greatest heat load of all, thus preventing the engine from overheating. Doesn’t really make much sense does it? Seems it would be more practical to deal with the heat produced.
You go on to say “…all 5 symptoms can be removed with 1/5th the cash outlay”. The V2 can be had for $930. Are you saying that you can accomplish the same results for $186?
Now for the LBZ:
I pulled my trailer with my LBZ prior to putting the V2 on it. Rttoys, is mistaken, I never overheated my LBZ, nor do I believe it would overheat. It did get far hotter than I would like though, so I put the V2 on and now I’m very happy with it. The major difference between the LBZ and LLY pulling my trailer in the conditions I tow is, the LBZ CAN stop the temp climb while still under 100% load in high OAT. The LLY CAN NOT. When the engine fan comes on in the LBZ, the temp rise stops and most of the time will turn around even prior to removing the load (cresting the grade). The LLY ECT’s would continue to climb even with the fan fully engaged so long as the load was there until, alarms, reduced power, puking coolant… all the fun stuff every family vacation needs.
We are saying, the problem we want to fix is the LLY overheating. The V2 will keep it from overheating; thus, that is a fix. Does it fix all the REASONS the LLY will overheat? Probably not, but for most people looking for a “fix”, they want something to keep the truck from overheating and the V2 will.
. the only proper fix is exactly what they did in the lbz. rebuilt everything. frankly i am shocked that it all works because they imo hadn't planned on releasing the lly/lbz setup until 2007 as the lbz because it was the basis for the lmm engine. but because of the o/h concern that they thought they had fixed with the lbz air filter, the lbz was brought out into the "lly" in the 06 platform. they pushed the release up a year to avoid any more issues with o/h that they still deny is an issue. luckily it worked and there is no more o/h issues on the new ones. 
