Got anything new on the buggy?
Was waiting to post until next week since I'm planning to go to sand hollow this weekend. I've done a couple things since KOH. First was moving the tie rod to the inner hole which increased my steering angle from 30deg to 42deg
The ram isn't quite maxed out but I had to trim so much shit, and the RCVs max at 45deg so it works out. I can't steer further without hitting the shock. Nearly a 50% increase in steering plus will speed up the steering ratio, though I still want to go to a 2 turn orbital.
Can't wait to try it out in the rocks! It's a considerable difference driving around normally.
And then the recent thing was I found cylinder 4 wasn't firing, as well as the blower was only making 2psi and the bypass valve wasn't fully closing. I think I found the issue being a plug wire that was cracked and shorting out. I replaced that coil pack and the plugs also, and changed the oil. The oil looked great, normal super fine metal shavings and no large chunks so the engine seems happy! I bumped to 10w-40 since the oil pressure seemed a bit low and that's a common thickness to run. I also welded a new filler cap on the radiator that's oriented (more) vertically since the previous cap was next to useless for filling it with how angled the radiator is. I also temporarily zip tied the bypass valve closed to test what max boost with the new engine setup is. I then started running into issues the past two days of the serpentine belt eating itself even though nothing seemed to change. I ended up welding a flange on the back side of the tensioner pulley since the serpentine was falling off the back side for some reason, and then next tracked down that one of the idlers wasn't in plane with the other pulleys so was pushing the belt slowly off of the power steering pulley. I have no idea why all of this started having issues, it was fine at koh and then I pull the belt off and reinstall it and then everything got hacked up somehow. I think I'll scan the front end and design some billet mounts for everything in the near future, I've wanted to do that for awhile since the belt routing and mounting can be improved.
With all of that said, last night was the first successful test drive since getting it running on all 8 and having boost and the serpentine surviving!
And holy shit it pulls like a mule now. Running as a N/A V7 it already made the 5.3 feel slow, but this feels like almost a double in power with it properly running. It pushes you back into the seat launching in 4wd pretty good, and that's only at 8psi from the blower and still with that original tune done at just idle and blipping the throttle. My Tundra does 0-60 in sub 5s and this feels not quite that fast but not far off. I'm really happy with how it feels now, and the engine is running great. This is also through the same worn out old 4l80e and torque converter. New trans and converter and maybe a smaller pulley and it has a lot of power left on the table. I'm also only spinning it to 6k, so theoretically it's just chilling and not working very hard.
Oh I also added a proper catch can!
Can't wait to see how it does this weekend, maybe do another test drive tonight to make sure the serpentine is fixed and also hook the bypass valve back up and get it adjusted, otherwise the semi needs a bit more work on the deck and then will do the first trip with the semi+buggy combo!