In my quest for reaching 500 HP I talked to Dave Diaz at BD Power. He recomended that I upgrade to Twins. BD had already hooked me up with a BD Super B Single, all I needed was the upgrade kit. I say “all”, but it is a big upgrade, well worth the money though. I was going to be totally maxing out my effectiveness with my Super B turbo because I had scheduled my truck to get the CrankShaft upgrade and Dyno-Mite’’s 150HP injectors. I gave Dave the monies, and he sent me the upgrade kit.
The upgrade kit comes in a big and little box. The big box has all of the tubes, clamps, gaskets, pipes, fittings, aFe Filter, Filter heat shield, boots, and the little box holds the primary turbo. The Primary turbo is the big one that tucks down and behind your smaller, secondary turbo. The secondary turbo is the BD Super B that I had already been using.
Before you begin the installation I strongly encourage you to look over and study the directions a couple of times. I have a tendency to just rush into things and end up getting myself in trouble. Also, if you have not already upgraded your exhaust manifold before upgrading to twins, you really should consider it.
I will give you a brief of the steps that need to be taken in this installation and maybe give more detail in some of the areas that I found tricky or the instructions to be confusing. Overall, the instructions are going to give you more information on the installation than I will. Whenever I came up against a bump, I found BD to be very helpful and supportive.
Preperation:
Disconnect the battery terminals. I recommend that you put some kind of protector over the passenger side fender so you dont scratch your paint while you work. I used a blanket.
Drain your coolant into a bucket to be re-used later. While your coolant is draining, remove your air intake assembly. Below your air filter, there are 3 nuts that you must unscrew to remove your air box. Next, disconnect your intake tube from your turbo. Remove the two 13mm bolts that connect your downpipe to your turbo flange and remove the cast elbow that is attached to your compressor housing. You will need a 7/16″ deep socket to loosen the V-Clamp. Be sure not to lose the orange O-Ring from the elbow.
Remove the black steel intercooler tube, you will need a 7/16″ deep socket for this. Remove the turbo oil feed line(top of the turbo). Place the line to the side because you will be using it again. Unbolt the turbo oil drain tube by removing the two 10mm bolts. Loosen the clamp on the bottom end of the oil drain and remove the oil drain tube completely.
Remove the 4 nuts holding the turbo to the exhaust manifold with a 15mm wrench. One of the shortest descriptions in the instruction manual, but I really found this to be a bugger. Definitely doable, because I did it. Not really sure that there are any tricks except that its probably good to have skinny tools because some of the nuts that attach the turbo barely allow for nut to be there, let alone your hefty wrench. After you remove the bolts, remove the turbo. If you are removing a turbo that you are not going to be using for the twins, like a stock turbo for instance, you can probably sell it on eBay, or maybe even Cummins Forum.
Remove the stock downpipe and intermediate pipe. I had a MBRP 4″ exhaust that I had to cut into. If you have an aftermarket exhaust, save the cutting for later when you can match the new downpipe with the new, primary turbo, and where it will meet your exhaust system.
There is a steel heater core line that is clamped in various places in front of the exhaust manifold. I removed this whole thing because it kept getting in my way. Remove the bolts and spacers from the exhaust manifold. Be sure to clean the surfaces of the engine block and the exhaust manifold so that they will seal good once you put them back on.
Now for the good stuff! We are at our first “Critical Step” in the instruction manual. The Primary Turbo is going to need its own oil drain and to make that happen, we need to tap into the engine in a new spot. About 6″ from the rear of the engine block towards the bottom, there is a frost plug that caps an oil drain port. To remove the plug, you will need to drill a small hole, using grease to coat the bit to collect any shavings. Then, insert a sheet metal screw into the plug and pull the screw, with the plug out with a pair of pliers. The only hard part for me with this step was knowing for sure where the plug was. I have taken some better pictures to help you future installers to know what you are supposed to do.
Coat the lower portion of the supplied block adapter(see the parts section of the manual) with loctite or anaerobic sealer and gently tap the spout into the block. I remember thinking, “what the heck? how is that going to be secure?!”, but remember its just a drain, you dont have to worry about any high pressure going through there and pushing out your adapter.
Reinstall the exhaust manifold in an inverted manner so that the manifold outlet faces upward. Be sure to put the new, provided gaskets back in. Torque at 32 ft. lbs.
Turbo Preperation:
Make sure that no packaging or anything are left inside of the turbos.
Be sure to loosen all the support bolts, housing bolts, and clamps on the turbochargers just enough to rotate the housing. This way, when you go to install them you can move them around and into the positions you want without too much hassle. You may find that when you put them back on you will have to adjust them once or twice.
Remove the old oil feed adapter from your stock turbo and put it on the new secondary turbo. Install the oil drain adapter onto the bottom of the secondary turbo with the supplied gasket and 2 lock washers and bolts.
Install the 90 degree brass oil feed adapter in the primary turbo and make sure that it points toward the engine with the compressor housing faced forward.
Install the short oil drain adapter to the bottom of the primary turbo with the supplied gasket, bolts and lock washers. This is the end of step 23 in your instruction manual.
Be sure to squirt fresh oil down the oil feed ports(where you just installed the fittings) of both turbos while slowly rotating the compressor wheel.
Remove the 1/8 NPT plug from the top of the oil filter head and replace it with the supplied JIC fitting.
Mount that secondary turbo to your exhaust manifold! Yahoo! Now we are getting somewhere!
At this point, the instructions give you some mounting instructions depending on wether you are using a stock or aftermarket exhaust manifold.
Using the appropriate, supplied V-Clamp, loosely mo
unt the Primary Support elbow to the secondary turbo. Make sure that the bolt/nut part of the clamp is on the bottom side to allow you to put the heat shield fabric between the support elbow and your truck body/wiring harness.
Use the supplied bolts, nuts, gasket, and attach the primary turbo loosely to the bottom of the primary support elbow. Before tightening anything, install the primary turbo support bracket as the picture and the installation guide show. Now you can tighten the four bolts, the v clamp and the support bracket.
At this point make sure that the center of the exhaust housings are vertical so that the oil feeds are pointing up. Tighten the exhaust housing bolts on both turbos. Install the oil drains and 4″ rubber sections to both turbos and connect them to the engine drain locations.
If your heater feed tube runs below your exhaust manifold, remove it and cut off the support bracket. Then, using the hardware provided and mentioned in the instruction manual, cut the tube in half and splice it like the pictures below.
At this point, install the oil feeds on both turbos to their appropriate places pointed out in the instruction manual.
Remove the boot and horn from the factory intercooler pipe and put them on the new one. Most of what you will be doing now is just installing all of the new tubes and spring clamps. Everything should fit well. Make sure that nothing will be hitting when the engine is actually running.
The only tricky thing that I experienced from here on out is the pipe that goes from the primary turbo into the intake. This took me a while to figure out and I believe I had to adjust the secondary turbo and some other tubes to make it work. One hint: the side of the tube that has a bend toward the end goes into the intake and holds the filter. That took me a while to figure out. If it feels like you are forcing something, slow down, go back and see if there is something you need to adjust. Everything should fit well.
I”m actually very surprised by how much room there actually is. I thought everything would be cramming in there super tight but its really not that bad.
As far as your downpipe goes, I kept going under my truck, making marks and then cutting my exhaust pipe and downpipe to fit. Then, I used the supplied 4″ exhaust splicer thingy to connect the 2 together. I actually went to NAPA and got one of theres that was 4″ on both sides. The clamp that BD sends is slightly larger than 4″ on one side and is too loose when I try to splice the two.
After you finish the installation be sure to put your coolant back in!
After Installation:
When you start your truck, dont hammer it right away. Listen for any funny noises. If you hear a farting noise, dont be worried, its not your turbo, its the chili dog that you ate for lunch. Dont be surprised if there is some slite smoking and even a weird smell after you run your truck for a while. This is the turbo breaking in and all of the factory oils being burnt off. The heat shield also burns a little after it is first installed.
My Review:
The first thing you will probably notice is the sweet spool up. It spools up quick and it sounds like a big jet turbine(if there is such a thing, I think that makes sense). I love the sound. Its almost relaxing to me. Another thing you will notice is the cooler EGT’’s. My EGT’’s lowered a lot. Its hard to tell exactly how much with just the twins because I hadnt pushed my truck very hard before I installed the aftermarket camshaft. I can tell you that with the 2 combined, I have a really hard time going over 1000 degrees, even when I floor it going up a mountain. In fact, when I get up to a certain boost, those turbos really kick in and start lowering my EGT’’s!! Its amazing to watch your EGT’’s actually start lowering when your boost is raising
As far as the power goes, I have not done any racing yet, but I TAKE OFF. When I want to get somewhere fast, I can. It seems that when going up slight hills, my truck just sails up them instead of downshifting first. The turbos from what I hear, should also last me the life of my truck. If you need some more power to tow or just want to make your truck more powerful and faster, I highly recommend BD’’s Twin Turbos.
Thanks BD!
