S06 Performance testing on my truck

[War Eagle]

So I use my '05 3500 SRW 4x4 w/SWB mostly for recreational purposes. I carry a LEER canopy when I am not carrying my slide in camper and I may haul things in the bed like building materials, rototillers and light machine equipment. I sometimes tow a trailer and I tow a boat sometimes with the camper on and sometimes without the camper on but I don't really use the truck as a work truck.

In March of this year I decided to work on my tranny in anticipation of carrying more weight with my truck. I wanted it built specifically for towing and not racing. I planned to install a PacBrake as well and knew it would be better overall to do some mods so I could get more out of the tranny and not find myself on the side of the road someday wanting.

So I went to Ultimate Transmission in Boise and had them work the trans over and make it a strong and safe tow transmission so that I wouldn't have to worry about any trouble in the future.

I got the triple disc low stall tc, all the special solenoids, roller thrust bearings and other internal upgrades, billet input shaft and modified valve body so the the e-brake will work in 2nd gear.

Driving it now you can tell things are very different. The shift is firm (but not hammered) and it just feels much smoother and seems like it is effortless to accelerate to speed.

Before I had the transmission work done I took the truck out and tested some performance parameters so I would have a before and after comparison. I run an Edge Insight that has some data logging capabilities so I ran a 0-60 and a quarter mile run with the smarty S06 turned off to get base line performance data so that in the future I could do a compare after doing any specific mods.

 

 

This files shows the 0-60 times at 8.6 sec. This was for a non boosted launch with the original stock tranny and no smarty.

 

This file shows the qtr mile run at 16.4 sec. This also was a non boosted launch with the original stock tranny and no smarty.

I have a little over 2000 miles on the upgraded tranny now and began doing a little testing to see if there was any factual performance improvement.

 

 

The first test I ran with the upgraded trans was a 0-60 non boosted launch and no smarty. It ran 8.3 sec so the gain was .3 sec in the 0-60 time over the stock tranny setup with no smarty. Of course this makes sense because with the low stall tc you would expect lockup sooner than with the stock tc stall speed. More hp to the driving wheels while under acceleration.

 

The next test I ran was 0-60 with the upgraded tranny in tow-haul mode. It was also a non boosted launch with no smarty. This run was 7.9 sec. The gain was .4 sec for 0-60 time over the non tow-haul run. Now I don't know a lot about transmission tow-haul parameters but it appears the shift points are changed when in tow haul. It feels like engine rpms reach a higher point before the shifts occur. If I am looking at this data correctly then I am seeing a .7 sec improvement in 0-60 times over the stock transmission performance in the non tow-haul mode. This should yield more crisper accelerations when pulling out in traffic with a load on etc. I don't know if I can specifically compare 0-60 times in a stock tranny to the 0-60 times in an upgraded tranny using tow-haul mode and say I am seeing a 8+% improvement in acceleration in my 0-60 times, but the what I feel is a nice improvement over what I had.

 

Now I haven't rerun the quarter mile test with the new trans but that may come sometime in the future. But I am now going to start testing with the smarty on and see what performance is gained by using the smarty. Since I started this series of tests I have now installed 19.5s on my truck. In theory I should see some performance decrease (as compared to stock 17" wheels and tires) because of the increased rotational mass I picked up with these new tires. I won't really have any data to compare the results to since I didn't really do any data collection while I had the stock 17" wheels and tires on the truck. However, these 19.5s have a very stiff sidewall and operate at a higher pressure than the stock 17" ones so I am expecting the rolling resistance to be somewhat less than the 17's but I don't have any way to really measure that. However, I am expecting it to help offset the rotational mass increase but I just don't know if that will be true or just wish full thinking.

 

On to some testing with the smarty hooked up.

 

 

I have a S06 PoD Smarty and set up my first run with SW3 with T on 2 and TM on 2.  This file shows the 0-60 times went down to 6.7sec.  This was for a non-boosted launch with my 19.5s on and the tranny in tow haul mode. 

 

 

My next run was with SW5 with T on 2 and TM on 2.  This file shows the 0-60 times have moved down to 6.1 sec.  This was for a non boosted launch with my 19.5s on and the tranny in tow haul mode.

 

So I am now over 2.5 sec faster in the 0-60 times than the stock configuration of my truck.

As a side note I just read the July 2014 issue of Diesel Power magazine where it had an article on the 2015 BMW Series 7 with a diesel and 8 speed auto.  The price tag on this car is over $80k and it weighs 4600 pounds and has a 0-60 time of 6.1 sec.  Hmmm...!  So my 8k pound truck will accelerate at the same rate as this beamer.

 

 

This same article listed the specs for the Audi A8 TDI (another $80k auto) and you can see it has a 0-60 time of 6.4 sec.

 

So I have only run the 0-60 times using SW3 and SW5 at this point.  I am putting my slide in camper on the truck this week because I have some recreation plans coming up and I will probably be keeping an eye on mpgs rather than 0-60 numbers for a while.  So further testing will need to wait for when I get the camper off the truck.

 

One thing I am still thinking about is the impact of the heavier rotational mass of using my 19.5s on the truck.  I am probably not going to take the 19.5s off the truck and re-install the stock 17" wheels and tires and re-run the tests to see if I can see a performance change in my 0-60 times but as we can see as I have gone up to higher SW levels on the Smarty I continue to see improvement in the 0-60 times.

 

 

 

 

[MnTom]

Having a transmission put the power to the wheels is quite a difference. It is amazing how much the "butt dyno" feels when things are working good together!