Are aftermarket intake elbows all that their cracked up to be, or are they more less a fancy engine dressup?

Fancy engine dressup. I saw maybe a 50 degree drop in egts when I installed mine. You can spend your money elsewhere for better gains 

Once you get over 550 HP or so, they may help some. Just as a reference, 3rd gen trucks use the 2nd gen elbow for a gain.If you want to notice a gain for less money, look at Crazy Carl's tunnel ram intake plate. Or, more expensive is the pusher setups that tap the IC tube & connect to the rear area of the intake plenum.

 

 

Ed

Edited December 6, 201410 yr by Yankneck696

  On 12/6/2014 at 2:31 PM, Yankneck696 said:

Once you get over 550 HP or so, they may help some. Just as a reference, 3rd gen trucks use the 2nd gen elbow for a gain.If you want to notice a gain for less money, look at Crazy Carl's tunnel ram intake plate. Or, more expensive is the pusher setups that tap the IC tube & connect to the rear area of the intake plenum.

 

 

Ed

 I found those Pusher kits after starting this thread last night, after reading some about them I'm tempted to buy one. Is there any real benefit to a setup like that on a stock truck? As far as that tunnel ram goes, does that eliminate the grid heater?

Check out Crazy Carl's website for details.

 

Ed

It would be money better spent on other things on a stock rig as Ed said anything under 500 hp would be a waste of money.

Looking at carls site he goes from pretty good prices of individual parts to down right flat out outrageous prices for some of the kits without turbos.

I'm in no rush to buy anything,  just trying to figure out what I want to do with the truck. My goal is to be around 500 hp but still be able to tow when need be.

Does your 02 have a manual or auto tranny?

 

When I was in trial mode as it progressed on my old 02 I can say a great combo for driving and towing was the BD super b turbo with edge comp hot unlock and I had 90 HP BD injectors but they would push the limits of egts, I suggest to most to stick with 60-75HP sticks and also upgrade the VB and converter on an auto and you would have an awesome running tow beast.

With that setup I was in the 450 hp / 750 tq range IIRC, been quite a few years ago already. This was on an auto with SO pump.

Over time I progressed to an II silver 62 turbo, 155 hp BD injectors ATS intake and exh manifolds and II HRVP44 I was at 560 hp / 989 tq and ran that for several years with lots of smiles and no issues at all although for towing I would suggest the II PS62 versus the Silver 62 for better low end boost and ease of controlling lower rpms egts unless one had 4.10 gears then the silver would have been perfect with the higher rpms.

My truck is an auto. I was planning on upgrading the valve body and going with a tripple disk converter before I went to crazy with the power. At what point is a billet input shaft required?  As for injectors I was looking at the rv275's but open to suggestions. Is the BD exhaust manifold  that the 3 piece one? Its been a few years since I've had a diesel so I'm having to relearn and dust off what I do remember.

Most are 3 piece manifolds unless going with the one piece stainless ones. For what you are looking at I wouldn't worry about upgrading manifolds. Spend the money on tranny upgrades first and foremost.

I also would not go with a triple disc converter, a high quality single disc will be more than plenty. I ran the BD single disc that has a rating of 450 hp and 750 tq behind 560 hp for many years of sled pulling and it held up perfect.

If you want to spend the extra money for a tranny tear down for a billet input that's fine as long as the tranny is already out, I have seen stock inputs break on stock power levels that's a wild card item there I never had any issues with my stocker but I did snap my output shaft at a drag race once, replaced it with a billet.

Matt, I have a good friend that is in Zimmerman that can fix up your tranny and give you straight up advice as to what you should do to your truck. He just rebuilt my tranny.

  On 12/7/2014 at 1:22 AM, MnTom said:

Matt, I have a good friend that is in Zimmerman that can fix up your tranny and give you straight up advice as to what you should do to your truck. He just rebuilt my tranny.

 

 

 I'd be interested in talking to him. What happened to the Dave G. transmission? 

Kind of a long story, but I broke the input drum in lower Mich., got hauled to NE Ohio, had it repaired and the guy used a cheap pump bushing. 1300 miles later the bushing failed and took out the pump. We also found that the idiot that worked on it used a grinder on the front steels. It wound up costing me about $2K to get it fixed plus all the down time.