Inside 650HP 12v Cummins After 350k Miles

Alright, this is the engine from my 98 12 valve that had 350,000

miles

on it. What I wanted to do was go over the combination of parts that were there with the factory engine and show what this engine looks like after 350,000

miles

with over a hundred thousand of them making 600 horsepower or more to the tire, so We're talking over 700 horsepower at the wheel of this truck. First, let's start here at the bottom end because we have the block open here and a little tight here. On this center bearing here, if you look at these bearing caps, there's no jitter or anything that means the main caps haven't been walking normally.

If the main caps are being hit by the power of torque, there will be jitter and movement. there are none so there is no girdle on this engine it has 12 millimeter mains so the little factory 12 millimeter bolts are no problem the bearings look beautiful honestly if you were taking this apart like it was a junkyard dog, you wouldn't even change these bearings, they look great. At the top, let's go to the bench now and look at the rest of the components on this engine. I just want to show you the little wear items that you see there, but they're actually not that bad. considering the mileage and the power level okay so I take the main limit here on the bench now if you look at this there is a little score on the bearing that's it it doesn't even show a cop or anything it's just a little punctuation, I mean.

Look at these little guys, so the older Cummins have 14 millimeter mains, this one has 12 because it's a 98, it's a storm block, so these little main caps have no problem with inline six

cummins

, I just want to see that the bearings are working well with that big power now. We used good oil in this engine, we used power driven oil, but still, the first 150,000 miles it just went to junk or box or whatever was on the shelf and it was at a lower power level, but I just want Just so you know you don't have to go crazy building an engine to make 600 reliable horsepower.

Look at the connecting rods here. You still see the factory crank bolts. We have separated the connecting rods and checked for friction, so the caps were not dancing on the rods and pistons yet. Looks pretty good, there is a little wear here. I've seen more wear than this on original trucks, so this is working well. The rings, I would say the tension has gone down, the rings are definitely tired, you can tell they just don't do it. They have quite a bit of spring, but they still spring, they're not like toast, but they're definitely not like new rings that, uh, they're there, the rod bearings, the only place that we're seeing a little bit where we get a little bit. of copper shown here on the rod bearings, my junk or drag truck when I took it apart had a lot more copper showing this, I just think it had 290,000 on it when I took it apart so it's minimal you know, really honestly use these pistons. they are fine, they don't melt, still read the part numbers on the top of Cummins, I mean the rods and the pistons are fine, go in here a little deeper here, we have the camshaft here now, the cam when I look at it, if we have A little tight here on the lobes, we can see that there is a little bit of wear on the tip of some of the lobes.

We are now using a much heavier valve spring on this stock so a little knock is to be expected but not bad like it would fail but I wouldn't put this cam back on a new engine if it was doing, but I mean, it probably had another 50 or 100,000 miles left, but there's something else. Many guys wonder how you can get a stock engine to handle 700 horsepower. The big problem is that the cam gear is trying to move, so if you look here you'll see these old welds I made on the frame. I soldered this so I took off the front cover to fix it. the killer pin and welded the original cam gear to the camshaft so it wouldn't move.

The reason I did it was when my junker drag truck hit about 650 horsepower the gear came off and this caused a huge oil leak which caused all kinds of problems so we learned our lesson so if you want Take off your original engine, you can weld it now for the new engine build. We have a new aftermarket cam, higher lift, longer duration, a bolt on cam retainer so the gear can't move but that's what you do in the stock setup but I just want you to know the stock cam is fine for 700 horsepower it would probably make more with the larger cam, but it worked, um, let's look at the rockers here, these are just little factory rocker pedestals.

There is nothing wrong, the arms are still free, as you can see, they move well at times, if you get bad oil they will get irritated, they hold up well, you can see they are fly cuts. It had head bolts on there so these were removed from the truck. before working on them, but like I said, these have over 100,000 miles on them with great power, great spring pressure, nothing is worn, they have a little wear on the tips where the valves work, but they are not finished, I mean , This is good. There are better things out there, but I just want to let you know that you know the factory 600 horsepower level works fine, so let's go over the turbo setup.

Many of you want to know how you get over 600 horsepower out of a stock truck compound turbo. You could absolutely use a large single, but it's lazy, smoke doesn't drive well. The compound turbo is where it's at so this is the power driven tow compound turbo setup it's a k27 and you can see this thing has been taking some oil I mean it's been on. the truck for a hundred thousand miles is almost beat up, it's been revved and barked at and it's got a little bit of play like it's definitely not happy with that 660 horsepower level, you know, I mean 100,000 miles yet, that's that.

Not bad, this has a 472. We started with the 369 that comes in the kit and as part of the R&D we put in a bigger turbo to see if it would gain power and it didn't pick up any power, but I left it there because I I was too lazy to change it, but normally this would be a slightly smaller 369, but we have dyno data back and forth. In fact, the highest runs with this truck were with the 369 when it had the larger fuel system, but um. It's still within 20 horsepower, so let's continue checking the crankshaft here.

This is the original truck crank. 350,000 miles. The only thing I had problems with on my junk or drag truck was the crankshaft gear starting to shear the crankshaft pin. the end of the crank here and it was messing up my injection timing and my cam timing a little bit so what I did was on the frame I tig welded the gear here but I sucked at tig welding there's actually some little marks here from um, because I had a fresh start anyway, long story short, you don't have to do that, but around that 700 horsepower level you start to have little problems with the crank you're trying to cut when we built something for a 750 horsepower customer or Higher up we welded the crank gear so it couldn't walk.

You see, I only have a couple of little rookie beads here, but the crank is fine, it's still straight, there are no scars on the magazines when we look at the magazines. I mean this. the rod journal looks perfectly polished, I mean it's probably smoother than what comes from the machine shop after a high performance polishing job, but you have to realize you know an oil bath bearing for that many miles Yes, it will polish the crank, but there is really nothing wrong. This truck to complete the setup guys are wondering if it had a built in power driven injection pump so to get that level of power we had a high end 215 pump.

Now you don't need as much pump to get this level of power, but that's the pump that was there and that's why we think that in the new engine we will have a lot more power when we put in bigger turbos and we top it off with some that I think had injectors five for 16 on the test bench. In run, this has ranged from a five by eleven to as large as a five by twenty and everything in between testing and with such a large injection pump, power only ranges around 50 horsepower from the fuel injector. smallest size to the largest, but that's because we're not really, you know, we have so much pump that it can force a lot more fuel through those little ejectors.

You wouldn't normally use a 5x11 for that power level. We just want to give you a quick rundown of my truck, this proven combination and the reason I'm showing you this, this is not a one hit wonder, uh, a dinosaur that I towed with this truck that I hauled, I've hauled the truck From Todd racing to Denver and back through the mountains, this is a proven setup that produces an honest 650 out of the tire for over a hundred thousand miles if you want it as a basically maintenance-free hot rod 12 650 horsepower with some small tow compound turbos it's amazing it runs good it starts this thing ran at 25 degrees timing it would still start in winter it would still start in summer it's not like a crazy race track now the truck is going to get more bloody radical cold it's not going to want to start but that's for the next video for this video I just want you to know that this is a proven combination to give you 650 horsepower to the tire that