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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7.3 PSD Fuel Mod by William

The 94-97 7.3 Power Stroke Diesels are equipped with a mechanical fuel pump and somewhat archaic fuel regulation system. It works good, but when you have things involving springs, they sometimes tend to get weak with age. There is a fix for this, lets go over it.

 

This is probably the cheapest modification you can do to your truck. It’s simple and effective.

First we need to start the truck up and let it idle down into a normal idle to measure the fuel pressure off the fuel bowl. These trucks are equipped with a Schrader valve for doing this. Grab an old stick style tire gauge you wont mind destroying and take the cap off the Schrader valve. Throw on some eye protection for this as well, fuel might come out the end of your gauge.

Hold it on their tight and get a reading. Double check your readings just in case.

If your in the 55-70PSI range, this modification is not necessary. If you still want to continue if your in the 50-60PSI range, it can still be beneficial depending on how weak your spring is.

Shut the truck off and get the tools out. We will need a 3/4 inch socket and a wrench to turn it. As well, we will need a magnet to pull the pieces out.

For quality of photo purposes from this point on, it will be demonstrated with the Fuel Bowl out of the truck. You do not have to take the fuel bowl out to do this mod, but I had mine out to clean it, so I took some pictures to demonstrate further.

 

 

The big brass nut on the right side of the fuel bowl is what we are after. Make sure you have the socket seated on it properly, because we don’t want to strip this out.

Break the nut loose and unscrew it the rest of the way by hand. There is a spring behind here, we don’t want it jumping out on us and having problems with ordering a new spring, because that can be kinda difficult.

 

 

Behind the brass nut there is a spring. Use a magnet to pull the spring out and hopefully the collar the spring fits in will come out with it as well. If it does not. Use the magnet to pull that out as well. Just a note here, be sure your magnet is clean. We don’t want that stuff sticking to the fuel pressure regulator parts and making it into your injectors.

Here you can see the parts that regulate the fuel pressure. Just a spring and this collar the spring fits in.

Now, we need a metal BB. They are really easy to obtain from that neighbor kid who keeps shooting your privacy fence up. Just go over there and give him a noogie. Then take some of his BB’s and run home.

 

 

Alright, this is our shim for the spring. We insert the BB into the collar, and then we insert the spring in after it.

We then carefully insert the assembly back into the Regulator on the fuel bowl. No picture here, to hard to hold camera and insert the parts in at the same time. Here is a picture of what it looks like inside though.

Carefully note the Nipple on the end of the Brass nut. (Yes, I used the same picture twice.) It is critical that you get this lined up with the spring. If the assembly is in correctly, this should be easy.

Replace the brass nut squarely with the regulator, and turn backwards till the threads line up, then finger tighten the nut back into place. Throw the wrench back on and snug it up good. No need to He-Man it back tight.

 

 

Now deal with the neighbor kids dad and explain to him why you took his kids BB’s and gave him a Noogie and how he shoots up your privacy fence. Drink a beer and watch the kid get a whoopin from his dad.

Alright, now that drama is all over and everything is back together, let’s start the truck back up and check for our new fuel pressure. Same way as before. Note, if you did not clean your Tire Gauge out, I find it pretty easy to clean it out by checking your tire pressure on your truck. Not sure if fuel in the gauge will effect readings any. But we are double checking anyways when measuring fuel pressure so, whatever.

If you are in the 60-70PSI range, your doing really good. Slightly over 70PSI is alright, but too much fuel pressure is bad. I would not suggest leaving the mod in if its over 75PSI. 65PSI is about optimum for our trucks. If you want to find other things to fit in there to shim it differently, go right ahead, just remember what materials your using and if they will get stuck in that collar. You don’t want that.

Close the hood and have fun with the cheapest mod you can do to your Mid 90’s PowerStroke Diesel!

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Truck Tool Box Repair by William

When I picked up this beast of a truck in 2009, it came with a tool box from TSC in it. I don’t usually much care for tool boxes, they rattle and tend to not work very well if they were abused. This one was abused and among other things. I have a lot of pictures for this article, but I didn’t take pictures of all the repairs I did, but you should get the jist of what I was doing.

 

 

You can see here that it looks okay, until I messed with it and a latch broke, so the pass side would not latch. This was unacceptable, so I attempted to fix it.

This is the passenger side latch that broke. I drilled out the rivets and tried to figure out how to fix it. It’s a simple design. A post with a latch that is mushroomed out on one end to keep it from coming out of the handle. I’m not really sure how to explain it better than that. You can see where the pieces connected, and it simply pulled though and no longer would stay in. With this one being broke, I checked the otherside.

 

This one was broke the same way at one time. It was also having trouble shutting, so I decided to investigate that as well. They welded a bolt onto the handle and assembled it back together. Trouble was, the bolt was not strait.

So, What do I do? Of course, I try to bend it, oh oops. Well, I immediately scratched that project and moved on to bigger and better things just removing the tool box all together to reveal 3 holes on each side. Somebody must have forgot how to measure.

All was good for this project still till something happened. Where I was keeping it ended up not working out very well. The person, to whom I don’t say anything good about, smashed it with the tractor to show how awesome they are I guess. I took pictures of it right away in case some junk was tried to be pined on me, and packed stuff up and got outa there. Here is what happened.

 

I know it doesn’t look to bad, but it is. Its aluminum, so it breaks easy under certain stresses. The next pictures are a bit harder to see due to the fact it was really late, and its hard to hold things and shoot with a 10 lb camera.

This gives you a bit more of what got smashed.

You can see the damage to the frame of the box in the first picture there. That’s not the only break, but the only one I noticed that night. The second picture shows the dent in the lid.

I really should have some pictures of this all finished up and fixed, but I was drinking Barley Pop and forgot to bring out the camera. I used some hammers and a torch to heat the metal up and hammer it back into place the best I could. Then I used some braising rod to braise the 5 cracks that I found where the seams had busted or welds had broke. Now, the hard part, the handles, those things are broke still!

A trip down to the hardware store, a long one in case your wondering, got me for 18 dollars in parts to fix 2 of these. I had come up with the idea on how to fix them from the welded bolt, but decided to do it the right way. I picked up some low profile, or button headed, cap screws. They fit right in though the hole, and I only had to slightly modify the handle to allow it to move properly. Two different bushings to make things work, and some washers and a nut. Strange sizes of the parts made them costy. Plus I purchased extras incase I got carried away. To the parts!

These are all the parts minus the latch and the handle, and then all of them in the next picture. Lets get it assembled.

First I took the one bushing that is next to the screw in the picture above, and pressed it into the hole on the latch. It was a pain, but a C-Clamp did the trick, then I cut it off with a coping saw. Managed to get my finger on the second one if your wondering, and boy are they sharp. The inside of this bushing is threaded. A wild guess on it to use that, but it paid off.

First insert the bolt, then on goes the nylon bushing. The spring works off this bushing, and it keeps the latch from squashing the spring. It was a bit to thick, by a small amount really, so I used the good ole cement to file it down for a few seconds. You can see this bushing in one of the above pictures stuck on the latch.

Next you argue with the spring as you thread on the latch, due to the threads in the bushing, and finally get it together, you hope, to find out you missed the spring and have to start over. Once you get the spring setup, you throw on the washers and the nut and grab the driver. You might notice I used a big and a small washer. The one is a 1/4 inch washer which was wider than the other one, but too big of a hole inside, I needed that spacer to not accidently pop out. It helped in the long run though with how it ended up actuating. I sprayed some fluid film on the bushing before I tightened it anymore to help it move, the fluid film will stick in there really good and keep things working.

You might not understand this one, but I saw that the spring had been sitting in a more loaded position on the part, so I loaded the spring next. In the first picture, the spring is resting on a stop for the latch. So I used the needle nose pliers to push it to its correct location.

I tightened things down until, well, really it only tightened so far and would spin after that, any tighter and the latch wouldn’t work. With all the washers, the whole pin spun instead of just the latch, which will keep everything tight the way it is setup. I dotted on some thread locker to keep it together. It will soak in the threads and keep it tight.

 

I noticed the actuator and the latches were not really lining up well and it was wearing groves in the actuator. So I beat them with a hammer till I was satisfied and celebrated with some Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips. Kettle Cooked of course!

Alright, almost done, time for some locks. The locks were the pricey part of the spend, but worth it. Stay outa my stuff! I don’t have a fancy camera to catch people like Brett. The levers were to long on the lock, and none that came with it were quite the right size.

I just hit it with the bench grinder, and dropped it on the ground and it popped right off.

I gathered the parts I would use and figured out what to do. Harder than you think! Really, it is!

I decided to use this crush ring to help keep it tight, and for looks. I figured out which way I needed to index the keyway on the lock as well, which was down for me.

The pictures don’t show it as well as I would like, but I crushed the ring down when I tightened the lock in.

I added the indexer to correspond with the keyway the way I needed the lock to turn after I lined it up on the outside the way I wanted too. Then added the tab and the whatever you call that washer. They always make me think of boats for some reason.

Some thread lock for the nut for the keyway, and some thread lock for the nut that holds the lock in. Almost done, sorta.

I lubricated the cylinders with some fluid film, which allowed them to turn and work better. This stuff is awesome in locks!

Okay, so here are the finished latches, but we are technically long ways from done. They are not doing much sitting on the ground.

So, lets advance forward in the magical world of technology till tomorrow so we can rush around to get the other stuff we forgot and get it together.

 

 

 

 

The gaskets were not so hot on these, so I racked my brain and came up with some packing material.

I traced it with a marker, then I free handed the inside line to correspond with how the older gasket worked.

Totally forgot to take a picture. I took all these on my phone by the way, they turned out pretty swell. Now, we have to run to the store, because during this whole project we forget that we don’t have any pop rivets and no pop rivet gun either. So, fast forward an hour.

Stupid camera phone. The flash made this hard to distinguish. I pushed two rivets in first to line up the holes, then I snapped them in.

All right, we got it in. I failed to mention that it is pouring outside and I’m glad I have a garage to work in. Then I noticed something.

I have a strong tendency to de-badge things. Then I had an idea and rushed to the tool box. I brought back some sand paper, tape and some elbow grease.

I started to sand and then realized that it will be hard to sand next to that logo, and I want to keep it. I used some clear tape to tape it so I could see what I was cutting.

It is really hard to tell in the pictures, but I cut the tape around the logo so I could sand around it. Then for the finishing touch, I brought back the brushed aluminum look with a stainless steel brush. Lets get things lined up.

This had to be perfect to work, so I measured it out and drew some lines.

I really wish there was a way to create more suspense with this, but its the internet, you could have just skipped all the way to hear and ignored everything else.

There is the cherry on top.  I reattached it to the box and added 2 more rivets on top to help keep stuff from getting stuck up there.
Now for some High Quality shots to top it off for everyone. I went and got the good camera for this, and upped the quality for the post.

Yea, repeats, trying to show off that brushed aluminum awesomeness.

Once I got the thing bolted in and the latch pins readjusted the second time.

I hope this helps to inspire anyone out there who has something that is a bit broken or bent up to get it back into working condition so you can enjoy it again.

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