Midnight Mods: Fun

Showing posts with label Fun. Show all posts

Trip with the Terminator by William

The time came for me to upgrade the High Pressure Oil Pump on my 7.3L PowerStroke Diesel. While I would have loved to do a modification like this on my own, I knew best to leave it to a professional in this case. A phone call later I made plans to hook up with Joey Omlin of Terminator Engineering out in California. I’ll spare the boring details, but Joey builds and modifies High Pressure Oil Pumps for 7.3 PowerStrokes. His most recent creation is the T-500. I’ll get more into that later.

Thankfully Joey offered to pick me up at the airport. Being a quick trip, this saved me some money as well. Time being of the essence we quickly got to work. Joey is pretty secretive about his stuff, so these are the pictures that he approved for me to show.

A quick warning as well, don’t try this at home. This is NOT a how-to guide on modifying your pump. Many of the steps are not shown here, nor will they be shown. This is a very quick overview. This is also not an HPOP install guide.

Here is my pump on the bench at Joey’s. These things get nasty just from normal use, Yuch! I probably should have cleaned it up better.

A healthy wash in the parts washer will take care of that really quick.

A picture with the seal removed and then out comes the snap ring.

Back cover snap ring is now removed as well and then some more internals are removed.

The internals are pressed out. This is another one of those times where I warn you not to do this yourself, you could easily damage your pump.

Stock internals now out of the pump. If you have never saw the inside of a pump before, now you know what they look like. Now, where is my 6 s.. I mean 7 shooter. Some new parts are all installed here and not pictured.

Reassembled internals. Then the internals are being pressed back into the housing. This is another one of those really easy to screw things up moment and another reason to leave it to somebody who knows what they are doing.

New bearing being pressed in. Then back cover is reinstalled and snap ring to hold it in.

New front seal installed and off to the bead blaster for some prettiness and a good looking finished product.

Every pump is branded and given a Serial Number. That way Joey can keep track of every pump he makes so he knows where its been, what group of production it is in and so on. Very smart idea.

And now to apply… Oh of course he just HAD to be out of stickers.

It was a great trip out to Joey’s. I got to learn a lot about High Pressure Oil Systems and got to check out his projects and help a bit.

Now for some install pictures.

A tip for cleaning up the front bolt cover for the pump. I just got the sander out and used the vice. It worked really well.

It made an excellent beer coaster while installing.

Its an 18mm socket. I know people forget this one so I thought I’d throw it in there. Lots of people talk about the washer falling it. As far as I know, it cannot go anyplace. I don’t think you’ll want to fish it out of there either, so pay attention when pulling this out. Pretty strait forward.

I installed the IPR on the bench. Made it so much easier. There are torque specs for the IPR, if you want to apply them in this situation, the bench is going to be the easiest place. I used the snug method. This is a part that doesn’t need to be arm-stronged.

Installed pictures. Kinda self explanatory there.

Getting ready to RTV the front cover and put in place, boy is it a pain to get it lined up. Everything is in the way down there. Not fun! Have some paper towels around to clean up the mess your going to make.

This project was done over a month ago and to show what the sticker looks like, Joey sent me a picture of a finished pump with a sticker on it completely assembled. This is a Super Duty pump, notice the HPOP fittings.

And for some fun, a randomly approved picture from a project he is working on that a few people are waiting on.

Oh boy is that thing pretty!!!!!

Dealing with Joey was excellent. I’d like to thank him for all the info he shared with me on the project. I was quite surprised he was okay with doing this. If your looking for an upgrade to your 94-97 7.3, or your Super Duty 99-03 7.3 for more performance, this modification will upgrade your 15° HPOP to a 17° and make it flow better. There are some other things that happen to the pump as well, but those are secrets, so you’ll just have to believe me and the other users of Terminator pumps that it works. The pump performs great and has no troubles keeping up with my injectors now. For the Super Duty guys, this gives you the flow mods and the other new mods for the pump, so don’t count yourself out.

Terminator Engineering also makes dual pump systems for people looking to make more power with their 7.3 PowerStroke. Dual systems are 2 modified HPOP’s, paired up, that will produce more oil volume than a single pump.

The T-500 is also affordable as well. $449 for the upgrade to your pump. You just send it in, and he upgrades your pump. There are other options available as well for you and that is something you would have to discuss with him. Joey is easy to deal with and has a great product and stands behind it.

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Down Time by William

We don’t ever really have down time, but if we do have time where much is not going on, we got something going on.
Today, we are going to modify some Dull Pencils, to Sharp Pencils. All in the eye of the beholder.

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Blast from the Past by William

This is kind of a special treat for everyone here. I figured everyone would enjoy a smart toy, and maybe it would fuel some comments from an older crowd. This is the Big Trak, a programmable toy from a long time ago. I’ll save the date for a while, but, this is when toys were made in the USA, not china.

See, right here, says “Made in the USA.”

Okay, so really, what is this thing? It’s a tank, simple as that. And this tank takes 4 D batteries and 1 9volt. It’s got motors, it’s got lights, it’s got sounds. I’m not sure what happened to toys for the next 40 years, but man, what gives toy manufactures? I never had anything like this when I was a kid, and this was made before I was made.

My big track has the transport as well, an add on toy if you will. It is a fully functional dump bed that attaches to the Big Trak. It takes a D battery or 2.

It just uses a 3.5mm jack to attach to the Big Trak. It receives its commands though here. The wheels just roll, and there is a motor and battery box in the bottom.

Okay. I’ll stop the suspense now. This is the Big Trak. It’s basically a tank. Reminds me of something that would be in GI-Joe. It is a fully programmable unit. It accepts up too 16 steps in the programming. Forward, backwards, turns, fire the guns, and a few sounds as well as dump the bed.

The transport even comes with a book telling you how to hook it up, and install the batteries.

The book for the Big Track is very well planned out and detailed in the programming of the unit. There are a few programs in the book to help teach you how to program the unit as well. I know your wondering when this thing was made still. This looks like a newer toy! Come on, we haven't’ hit the computer age till just recently.

the speaker is on the front under the “laser” which is a flashing bulb in the front, and it makes sounds when it “shoots.” The battery door is on the back of the unit. only 2 of the wheels are drive wheels, the rest of the wheels float and can travel up and down for different terrain.

I put it together for a quick picture here with an example of goods to transport. Finally we get to the year this awesome toy was made. Wait, what, 1979? Your kidding right? Nope. This was my grandfathers toy that his 3 kids chipped in and bought for him a long time ago. I never even seen it until my grandmother remembered that I was supposed to get it 5 years ago. Ooops. “Better late then never, right?” she says to me.

It even included a few different programs he wrote with it, and the Smith and Wesson 7803 Halogen Spotlight packing slip on how to change the bulb and warranty information. Wonder how that got in there.

I hope you were able to enjoy this old toy. I haven’t even got to play with it yet. I don’t have any batteries for it, and for some reason that dump bed is screaming “put a battery pack in here so you can power the unit.” Maybe next time.

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Show us your Desk! by Brett

You think your desk is bad? Show us what you got! At home, at work, doesn’t matter- we want pictures. Here is what you have to do:

Dig out your camera (hint: it’s probably buried in your desk somewhere.)
Put www.midnightmods.com on your screen so we know it’s actually your desk and not just something you found on Google images. (cheater!)
Snap some good photos (you might need to use flash if you have the jitters.)
Upload them somewhere online. twitpic, Flickr, 2PAD, ImageShack, and Google’s Picasa Web Albums are some of our favorites. (optionally you can just email them to comments[at@]midnightmods.com if you’d like)
Post links to your pictures along with a brief description of what we are looking at (home, work / dungeon) in the comments section. We will go through and add them to the page if they are worthy.

That’s it!

If the pictures end up being good enough, we might even award prizes. I’m sure there is some MM giveaway stuff on my desk somewhere… I just have to find it :-)