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Maroon CCLB SAS
- Thread starter Not A Bronco
- Start date
1994 c3500 6.5 Diesel 4L80e, plans include a flatbed, re-paint and solid axle swap 2-4" lift with HD D44 and a 205 t-case.. and eventually a cummins swap
Looks like a good starting point for a build.
Awesome stuff!!!
I do like me some gmt400 sas'd rigs
So since I’ve had this I threw some newer tow mirrors on it and fixed a few things that bugged me, The grill was looking pretty crappy it had a lot of broken tabs on it so I hopped on Amazon and bought a new one in black.
After putting all back together I decided I didn’t like the brush guard so I haven’t put it back on since.
While I was in there I also swapped the harmonic balancer to a fluid dampener since my old one was wiggly as hell and I didn’t want to mess with it ever again. Also did the Duramax fan swap and ditched the old steel blade, and also changed to braided stainless steel oil cooler lines to replace the leaky rubber hoses.
also did some odds and ends on the electric side of things, i noticed what seemed like a fuel starvation issue when i got into the throttle. after a bit of checking i figured out my lift pump was turning off after i got up to operating temp so i was running from the injection pump sucking the fuel by its self.. no bueno. so i replaced the oil pressure switch that activates the LP and bought a wiring harness that uses a relay to take the load off the oil pressure switch and has a toggle for turning the pump on if you need to bleed injectors.
i also put a switch panel in with some random parts i have from old projects, i figured it would fill the the empty spot on my dash so why not?
i also did the 4 high relay harness to the headlights to get a little more light out of them while i was in there.
also heres a before and after of the engine bay when i got it. i dont know what the plastic on the firewall insulation is but it crumbled to dust if you rubbed it between your fingers, i guess heat wasnt kind to it. but i ended up just tearing all the insulation out since most of it was shredded and all of it was muddy or dusty.
i get kick out of clean engine bays, even though they never stay clean with me.
a little while ago i volunteered my truck to deliver some parts to a customer since the company half ton bottomed out its bump stops with only half the parts. my truck did good with the load, but i did miss the headache rack a bit. it was 1200-1600 pounds but this pictures mostly to show the difference between mismatched rims and tires compared with the new set up.
next big thing on the list thats gonna cut in front of other projects is the fact that i just got a 5th wheel trailer from my mom cause she cant afford to store it or maintain it. so i need to either get a hitch installed in my bed, or just bite the bullet and go get a flat bed like ive been wanting to do. ill figure out something though, and ill have to learn how to use the trailer since ive never used or owned one. but im looking forward to it!
After putting all back together I decided I didn’t like the brush guard so I haven’t put it back on since.
While I was in there I also swapped the harmonic balancer to a fluid dampener since my old one was wiggly as hell and I didn’t want to mess with it ever again. Also did the Duramax fan swap and ditched the old steel blade, and also changed to braided stainless steel oil cooler lines to replace the leaky rubber hoses.
also did some odds and ends on the electric side of things, i noticed what seemed like a fuel starvation issue when i got into the throttle. after a bit of checking i figured out my lift pump was turning off after i got up to operating temp so i was running from the injection pump sucking the fuel by its self.. no bueno. so i replaced the oil pressure switch that activates the LP and bought a wiring harness that uses a relay to take the load off the oil pressure switch and has a toggle for turning the pump on if you need to bleed injectors.
i also put a switch panel in with some random parts i have from old projects, i figured it would fill the the empty spot on my dash so why not?
i also did the 4 high relay harness to the headlights to get a little more light out of them while i was in there.
also heres a before and after of the engine bay when i got it. i dont know what the plastic on the firewall insulation is but it crumbled to dust if you rubbed it between your fingers, i guess heat wasnt kind to it. but i ended up just tearing all the insulation out since most of it was shredded and all of it was muddy or dusty.
i get kick out of clean engine bays, even though they never stay clean with me.
a little while ago i volunteered my truck to deliver some parts to a customer since the company half ton bottomed out its bump stops with only half the parts. my truck did good with the load, but i did miss the headache rack a bit. it was 1200-1600 pounds but this pictures mostly to show the difference between mismatched rims and tires compared with the new set up.
next big thing on the list thats gonna cut in front of other projects is the fact that i just got a 5th wheel trailer from my mom cause she cant afford to store it or maintain it. so i need to either get a hitch installed in my bed, or just bite the bullet and go get a flat bed like ive been wanting to do. ill figure out something though, and ill have to learn how to use the trailer since ive never used or owned one. but im looking forward to it!
Lookin good. That brush guard was pretty fugly. I usually like them but that one was just not right. The truck overall is looking really nice. You will love the fifth wheel here in Utah so many places to go.
Yeah I’m looking forward to getting it ready and using the trailer, My grandpa bought the trailer new in 96 so it has sentimental value. I just need to get a flatbed, but I’d like to get the truck painted before I do that so now I’m on the hunt for a shop that will paint it and not break the bank haha
Making some progress on some things I wanted to get done, just got the new diamond Eye exhaust put in. And man it does sound good now I can actually hear the turbo whenever I go from a stop!
I also set up an appointment with a flatbed dealer, so this Friday she’ll be getting a new CM flatbed. But before I take it up there I want to POR 15 all the places I won’t be able to get once they do it. So tonight I got it off tomorrow I’m going to pressure wash and prep it
I also set up an appointment with a flatbed dealer, so this Friday she’ll be getting a new CM flatbed. But before I take it up there I want to POR 15 all the places I won’t be able to get once they do it. So tonight I got it off tomorrow I’m going to pressure wash and prep it
Exhaust looks good! Same system I have. I love it.
More motivation for me. Looking forward to your build
Here are some pictures I took this morning before work, Soon as I’m home from work I’m going to wire brush it with an angle grinder and then pressure wash it and hit it with some POR 15. One weird thing, it looks like someone changed the fuel sending unit at some point and completely covered the access hole with some type of adhesive. At first I thought it was just mud built up on there.
Well I got it all painted up yesterday. Got off work an hour ago and drove it straight up to the shop installing it. I was worried a cop was gonna get me for no mud flaps/fenders but I made it ok!
Poulsen Trailer sales I see. I just put an all aluminum Bradford bed on a truck I built here at work. They were cheaper than anyone else for the bed.
Not a heavy deesel guy, but I love me some gmt400 eh
Got it all finished, they did a good job installing it.
I think it looks damn nice, I can tell it’s heavier than the original bed but it’s not anything too bad. When I went to pick it up they commented on how they liked that I actually took the bed off and painted the frame. They said most the time unless it’s a new truck they’re installing beds on trucks with muddy rusty frames
I think it looks damn nice, I can tell it’s heavier than the original bed but it’s not anything too bad. When I went to pick it up they commented on how they liked that I actually took the bed off and painted the frame. They said most the time unless it’s a new truck they’re installing beds on trucks with muddy rusty frames
Built some bedsides and then finally got around to getting my grandpa’s old trailer off the storage lot it’s been sitting on for like five years. My brother-in-law drove it back though since I’ve never pulled anything bigger than a bumper pull, he was kind of giving me a lesson on how to drive it and how to work the brake controller.
This morning I’m going to go get some tires mounted on it that I bought off Amazon. And also going to change my front right tire since it’s got a bulge starting to show but warranty covers it
This morning I’m going to go get some tires mounted on it that I bought off Amazon. And also going to change my front right tire since it’s got a bulge starting to show but warranty covers it
Wow it’s been a while since I’ve updated this build!
Lots has happened though. After I got the tires mounted on the trailer I parked it in storage until about March. Around the same time I got a girlfriend whose family’s favorite thing was trailer camping. April came and I took the truck and trailer out on a 100ish mile trip out into a desert scrub kind of area with some decent hills and found out my truck wasn’t up to the task of pulling a 9000 pound trailer
can’t really see to well but my trans was at about 240° The entire time with me not being able to go faster than about 55mph and on the hills I was hitting around 1200-1300 ° on my egts at only like 5psi. Engine temps were the only thing that didn’t spike but it was mid 50s that day which helped. Camping was fun and I ended up making it home without breaking anything but had an expensive plan forming.
Lots has happened though. After I got the tires mounted on the trailer I parked it in storage until about March. Around the same time I got a girlfriend whose family’s favorite thing was trailer camping. April came and I took the truck and trailer out on a 100ish mile trip out into a desert scrub kind of area with some decent hills and found out my truck wasn’t up to the task of pulling a 9000 pound trailer
can’t really see to well but my trans was at about 240° The entire time with me not being able to go faster than about 55mph and on the hills I was hitting around 1200-1300 ° on my egts at only like 5psi. Engine temps were the only thing that didn’t spike but it was mid 50s that day which helped. Camping was fun and I ended up making it home without breaking anything but had an expensive plan forming.
After that trip I made a list of things to upgrade, first one being transmission cooling. I picked up a big Hayden fin and plate cooler and got it set up with a Hayden fan on a manual switch 
I should say though I recently removed the electric fan, I found it made little to no difference having it since the clutch fan already pulled so much air.
One day at the junk yard I happened to find a B&M deep aluminum 4l80 pan under a wrecked k2500. They’re over $100 new but I picked it up for $20 and got it mounted on mine. Also changed the filter while I was in there.
After these changes the transmission doesn’t get over 170° Even Pulling 12k unless I pull a long hill. Even then it usually only gets to 220-230° And cools fast after.
I knew my engine would be getting hotter as summer came along so I moved onto the engine cooling system. I bought a flow cooler balanced flow water pump and a champion 3 row aluminum radiator plus all new hoses.
I was torn on a new radiator vs my stock 2 core but since gm stopped putting caps on the radiator I had no easy way to check out inside the radiator without pulling it so that’s why I went ahead and did that.
While I was in that deep i did injectors fuel lines and a new and improved lift pump and filter setup.
I wasn’t impressed with how they packaged my decently expensive marine Injectors but they were ok. I figured with the fuel system I’d go big, so I bought an adapter the increased the injection pump inlet from 5/16” to 1/2” and ran 1/2” from there to the airdog 100 pump
Also threw in the later style air filter box with the round filter vs the flat filter
after all was put back together and double checked it took a bit of bleeding the injectors. But it started up and was loud! I guess marine Injectors are pretty loud when they’re new due to the higher pop pressure on them.
Took the trailer out for the second time and it did so much better than before. Up next was the turbo.
I should say though I recently removed the electric fan, I found it made little to no difference having it since the clutch fan already pulled so much air.
One day at the junk yard I happened to find a B&M deep aluminum 4l80 pan under a wrecked k2500. They’re over $100 new but I picked it up for $20 and got it mounted on mine. Also changed the filter while I was in there.
After these changes the transmission doesn’t get over 170° Even Pulling 12k unless I pull a long hill. Even then it usually only gets to 220-230° And cools fast after.
I knew my engine would be getting hotter as summer came along so I moved onto the engine cooling system. I bought a flow cooler balanced flow water pump and a champion 3 row aluminum radiator plus all new hoses.
I was torn on a new radiator vs my stock 2 core but since gm stopped putting caps on the radiator I had no easy way to check out inside the radiator without pulling it so that’s why I went ahead and did that.
While I was in that deep i did injectors fuel lines and a new and improved lift pump and filter setup.
I wasn’t impressed with how they packaged my decently expensive marine Injectors but they were ok. I figured with the fuel system I’d go big, so I bought an adapter the increased the injection pump inlet from 5/16” to 1/2” and ran 1/2” from there to the airdog 100 pump
Also threw in the later style air filter box with the round filter vs the flat filter
after all was put back together and double checked it took a bit of bleeding the injectors. But it started up and was loud! I guess marine Injectors are pretty loud when they’re new due to the higher pop pressure on them.
Took the trailer out for the second time and it did so much better than before. Up next was the turbo.
Back again with the sporadic updates
So after that last trip I knew I’d be taking some longer distance trips up into the 300 mile round trip range and that there’d be hills. Egt’s we’re still not great and the highest boost I could get out of the gm-4 was around 5psi. So i checked quadstar tuning for a new high flow intake and and custom built super 60 turbo that has a 1:1 drive pressure vs the 2:1 of the stock turbo, problem at the time was they were back ordered 2ish months on both. With a trip coming up in 3 weeks I went with what I could get fast. I ended up getting a KB diesel high flow intake that shipped out quick so I put 2 1/8” npt threads for my boost gauge and incase I needed the other someday and got it put on.
I also got the PT wiring solutions hx40ii (Chinese) turbo kit that came with everything needed to swap it out.
Again I got unlucky with shipping, the kit came with a bigger filter to turbo intake/elbow but coupler got tweaked in shipping and I couldn’t get it to straighten out perfectly so I reached out to the company and they basically said that sucks.. so I went to an exhaust shop and got a 4” exhaust scrap piece to be my new coupler.
The turbo install went fairly quick, the kit came with a better oil drain to which was nice.
while I had the down pipe out I wrapped the whole thing exhaust wrap to help keep things cool under the hood
new vs old
One thing quadstar was able to get to me before the trip was their multi position tune which was talked about in forums to make a big difference being able to have a tow specific tune. The tune I got had 8 modes on it. 1-stock 2-enhanced stock 3-economy 4-performance 5-light tow 6- heavy tow 7-quiet idle 8-lope idle. 8 was just for fun
after all this was done it was crazy to me how these upgrades could wake this truck up so much. Now I can be up to 70mph BEFORE merging into the freeway traffic. And the new turbo sounds great when you get on it. I consistently hit 10 psi (empty) on my boost cause this turbo makes it easy. And egts dropped by 200ish just unloaded driving.
So I got bold and said I think my truck can pull doubles from ogden utah to fort bridger Wyoming (onto bridger lake) for the upcoming trip.
So after that last trip I knew I’d be taking some longer distance trips up into the 300 mile round trip range and that there’d be hills. Egt’s we’re still not great and the highest boost I could get out of the gm-4 was around 5psi. So i checked quadstar tuning for a new high flow intake and and custom built super 60 turbo that has a 1:1 drive pressure vs the 2:1 of the stock turbo, problem at the time was they were back ordered 2ish months on both. With a trip coming up in 3 weeks I went with what I could get fast. I ended up getting a KB diesel high flow intake that shipped out quick so I put 2 1/8” npt threads for my boost gauge and incase I needed the other someday and got it put on.
I also got the PT wiring solutions hx40ii (Chinese) turbo kit that came with everything needed to swap it out.
Again I got unlucky with shipping, the kit came with a bigger filter to turbo intake/elbow but coupler got tweaked in shipping and I couldn’t get it to straighten out perfectly so I reached out to the company and they basically said that sucks.. so I went to an exhaust shop and got a 4” exhaust scrap piece to be my new coupler.
The turbo install went fairly quick, the kit came with a better oil drain to which was nice.
while I had the down pipe out I wrapped the whole thing exhaust wrap to help keep things cool under the hood
new vs old
One thing quadstar was able to get to me before the trip was their multi position tune which was talked about in forums to make a big difference being able to have a tow specific tune. The tune I got had 8 modes on it. 1-stock 2-enhanced stock 3-economy 4-performance 5-light tow 6- heavy tow 7-quiet idle 8-lope idle. 8 was just for fun
after all this was done it was crazy to me how these upgrades could wake this truck up so much. Now I can be up to 70mph BEFORE merging into the freeway traffic. And the new turbo sounds great when you get on it. I consistently hit 10 psi (empty) on my boost cause this turbo makes it easy. And egts dropped by 200ish just unloaded driving.
So I got bold and said I think my truck can pull doubles from ogden utah to fort bridger Wyoming (onto bridger lake) for the upcoming trip.
The trip started well, we left at 5:30am and I was taking it really easy. These pictures were about the average reading on all my gauges during the trip.
I asked around and people said 1000°Egt was fine for towing and wouldn’t kill anything. I wasn’t very happy with the engine temp though. It sat around 210° most the time but going up the sisters got her to maybe 220° which made me nervous. Going down any hill would drop temps to 180-190ish.
she made it in one piece though and the camping trip was a success!
the last upgrade I wanted immediately after this was a dual thermostat housing cause I felt all my cooling upgrades were bottle necking at the single thermostat. There’s a surprising amount of arguing among 6.5 owners on which is better though. some say dual thermostats contribute to overheating, but I figured a slightly bigger radiator and a hugely upgraded water pump probably weren’t working to their potential with the restriction of a single. So after I got back I ordered a used housing.
After getting the new/used housing I put a new temp sensor, heater connector and restricted bypass that forces more coolant through the radiator rather than sucking it straight back in to the engine
about a 1/4” hole vs the 1/2” or 5/8” that it was.
it took longer than I had expected. Turns out the heater quick disconnect on this housing perfectly hits a sensor on the a/c compressor so had to cut the aluminum line short, put a hose barb in the housing and run a bit of hose. Still hits but I’ll fix it eventually. Also I did switch hose clamps later lol
And the alternator bracket needed grinding which I knew beforehand but underestimated just how much I’d have to take off.
and I had to tweak my injector return lines a bunch which sucked.but quadstar tuning is actually about to release a kit to relocate all the returns to the rear of the engine! So that’ll solve my problem nicely.
But there’s the difference, and I like it
I asked around and people said 1000°Egt was fine for towing and wouldn’t kill anything. I wasn’t very happy with the engine temp though. It sat around 210° most the time but going up the sisters got her to maybe 220° which made me nervous. Going down any hill would drop temps to 180-190ish.
she made it in one piece though and the camping trip was a success!
the last upgrade I wanted immediately after this was a dual thermostat housing cause I felt all my cooling upgrades were bottle necking at the single thermostat. There’s a surprising amount of arguing among 6.5 owners on which is better though. some say dual thermostats contribute to overheating, but I figured a slightly bigger radiator and a hugely upgraded water pump probably weren’t working to their potential with the restriction of a single. So after I got back I ordered a used housing.
After getting the new/used housing I put a new temp sensor, heater connector and restricted bypass that forces more coolant through the radiator rather than sucking it straight back in to the engine
about a 1/4” hole vs the 1/2” or 5/8” that it was.
it took longer than I had expected. Turns out the heater quick disconnect on this housing perfectly hits a sensor on the a/c compressor so had to cut the aluminum line short, put a hose barb in the housing and run a bit of hose. Still hits but I’ll fix it eventually. Also I did switch hose clamps later lol
And the alternator bracket needed grinding which I knew beforehand but underestimated just how much I’d have to take off.and I had to tweak my injector return lines a bunch which sucked.but quadstar tuning is actually about to release a kit to relocate all the returns to the rear of the engine! So that’ll solve my problem nicely.
But there’s the difference, and I like it
And I’m happy to report this brought my highway temp down to 190ish while cruising. It’ll still get warm on hills and such but now it’s average temp is much better. I also hit a CAT scale on the way back from a trip pulling doubles and my gross weight was 18,340 
I didn’t think I was that heavy, but it took it pretty well!
the thermostat was the last major upgrade I’ve done in a few months. I did add a fuel pressure gauge since then and I have a air intake temp gauge that I need to put in. And also I still want quadstars super 60 turbo but that’s not a rush. Since the photos above I’ve taken the truck and trailer to island park and Simpson spring and it’s all been working good! And now I’ve caught up this post. Now I’m trying to focus more on the solid axle swap, I actually bought the ORD leaf spring hanger kit so I’ll be messing with that soon. And I’ll try to actually post pictures of it as I’m doing it to.
I didn’t think I was that heavy, but it took it pretty well!
the thermostat was the last major upgrade I’ve done in a few months. I did add a fuel pressure gauge since then and I have a air intake temp gauge that I need to put in. And also I still want quadstars super 60 turbo but that’s not a rush. Since the photos above I’ve taken the truck and trailer to island park and Simpson spring and it’s all been working good! And now I’ve caught up this post. Now I’m trying to focus more on the solid axle swap, I actually bought the ORD leaf spring hanger kit so I’ll be messing with that soon. And I’ll try to actually post pictures of it as I’m doing it to.
