Filter Minders for Dummies

[pgchin]

(03-26-2013 23:57)al perna Wrote:  "Now, what WOULD be interesting is know which year LXI had the "cap" on the inlet and look at those engineering prints for that year to see if the change was written there either in the form of a handwritten EC or a new exhaust print. If it was, then that would support your supposition that the factory was told about an air inlet issue and was trying to re-engineer the inlets on 500HP s60's to find a better mousetrap. "

Pete . the cap was on the 2001 , I find it interesting that your FM is in the green when I hear most are in the yellow or red . I wonder if there were changes made on later year S60 ?

as to paying Johnnie for a history lesson , why not ? I often pay a doctor to tell me what I know allready . LOL .

Hey Al,
I know of others that do not have an FM issue. It is NOT that prevalent to have issues. Some are 8v's or 500hp s60's DDEC IV, remember mine is a 475 DDEC III.....not sure what the differences are but David B and I once counted 150TSL's between his year and mine when the DD site was open to mere mortals. The only other 475HP I know of having issues is Kurt H's and he runs a stainless exhaust with a straight pipe so I'm not surprised. I learned a long time ago from some professional tuners that engines are nothing more than big air pumps, you can port'em, polish intakes, mess with jets or ECM's, chip'em, flow the heads,etc but it always boils down to one thing, the factory setup is designed to work in a "multitude of temps, altitudes, atmospherics, and use case scenarios. And the drive train it has. Every time you "touch" one of the parameters like intake, exhaust, etc you mess up another parameter in the factory use case. Air flows better in the area you touch, but NOT in the other areas. If it does flow better through the engine, then some other engine design parameter is out of whack like fuel starvation, fuel richness, air temp too hot, burn a valve, throw a rod, throw a crank bearing etc and so on. Example dragster run flat out, nothing else. Class 8 sled truck pulls, etc......... These are single tasks use cases, not everyday driving. Also the "guys" you Know having issues run with the "wick up" most of the time, I only know of 2 guys is those cases who run like grandma, all the others run flat out and driving style is a BIG deal here. Why are SAME guys having the SAME FM issues on multiple platforms when others are not? The only common denominator in this use case is the driver and his / her style, this is NOT rocket science, just common sense............the s60 ECM and most ECM's can accommodate small changes but the software has a limit and when you hit the limit, then issues arise. There is an old saying you don't kick a sleeping bull in the family jewels, you leave it alone, hence you feel his wrath! The wrath of an s60 can could cost you 30 large if you are not careful! I grew up on long island, NY and the "tuners" who taught me the business when I was kid lived in my home town and are legendary. Every time one of their cars come on the block at Barrett Jackson, the Limits come off and the American Express black comes out ..... Baldwin Motion COPO's Chevy's........ big time dudes back in the day! They'd help poor gas station kids like me tune small block Chevy's, obviously smart guys given what their COPO Chevys go for now! Those 340 Mopar guys were tough to beat back in the day, that thing was built from the factory to kick butt and required very little tuning. My best friend ran a 340 cuda and his ole man was "connected " to a Mopar performance dealer. Us Chevy and Ford guys needed help from Motion, other tuners AND geld to get it done and compete!Gas, Diesel, water, who cares.....always the same thing.......ya wanna run the factory use case, leave it ALONE!!!! Now, doing David's test would validate, invalidate the use case, history, the doctor deal is funny, thanks for the chuckles but go ahead and pay Johnnie and please let us know what you find out! Thanks for volunteering!!!!!!!

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(03-26-2013 22:59)travelite Wrote:  Ms. Bee,

I don't want to speak for Pete, but to me it sounds like Blue Bird gave some leeway to the factory staff on certain build assemblies. The tip of the intake inlet may have been one of those items. If there were several options that fulfilled the requirements for an assembly then the choice may have been left up to the factory staff. Just a SWAG.

Thanks David I appreciate it!,
Jen, yes David is correct, the birds are up to snuff, but in any manufacturing process you have "tolerances", leeway, flexibility, judging by the various reports of air inlet pipes, this appears to be one area they took liberties with. If I was being "inspector clueso" and reverse engineering the factory engineers, I'd speculate that BECAUSE they gave the factory build line flexibility in air inlet pipe tips, the engineers felt that there was NOT an air inlet issue so go ahead and be flexible. You know this as you are married to one but engineers are trained from birth to focus on Problems and finds solutions, when things work we ignore them because who cares, it works as designed!!!!!!! :-) If something isn't broke, we aren't happy because we have nothing to fix. You can see how I came to my "speculation", there is no air inlet issues as the engineers gave the factory line flexibility, they were focused on other things, REAL PROBLEMS, who cares the air inlet is more than capable and works as deigned. David's expert technical paper exercise points that out and backs up my speculation as well as the diesel traders engineers point of view David was kind enough to go research for the team! :-) thanks David! Short of installing the differential pressure gauge David suggested earlier, there's really nothing else we can do scientifically, that info would be data FACTS and we could then react to it. By the way, if they had found issues, then they would have made a hand written change to the inlet / exhaust prints for the line. As I already stated, no EC's on my prints on my 95 so 90-95 shows NO air inlet issues. I have both 8v and s60 inlet / exhaust prints in my factory deck.