Sound coming from airbox.

[715Hunter]

Really interesting stuff here Delta.speed. Good to know about bad quality from Socal. All I've ever heard on them has been stellar.
Also, I feel your pain on the turbo drain. I have the exact scenario going on in my LBZ. I'm pulling the engine again soon, so I'm just living with it till then.

 

[ikeG]

Does that grain at the breaks alarm anyone else? I'm no expert on metallurgy.

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[2004LB7]

Does that grain at the breaks alarm anyone else? I'm no expert on metallurgy.

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It does. The grain looks way to large. I'm calling bad heat treatment

I'm going to guess too high austenitizing temperature but without knowing the alloy used it will be hard to tell. Grain structure should, regardless of the alloy be so fine as to be hard to see the individual grains otherwise it will be more brittle

Here is a blade I accidentally broke after quenching, before I was able to temper the steel. You can see that the grain is almost too fine to see

 

[Delta.Speed]

Really interesting stuff here Delta.speed. Good to know about bad quality from Socal. All I've ever heard on them has been stellar.
Also, I feel your pain on the turbo drain. I have the exact scenario going on in my LBZ. I'm pulling the engine again soon, so I'm just living with it till then.

Yeah same man. All I'd ever heard out of SoCal was: top notch stuff, best in the business, top shelf, etc. That's probably why I made the mistake of buying the motor. It never occurred to me that a solid metal part from SoCal that they claim has seen engines built to 1,700+ hp would fail at idle on my stockish LB7.

On the turbo drain, just fyi, I ended up getting to it without removing the turbo, only the y bridge and it wasn't too bad. I did need a buddy and a pry bar to get it though.

We used a pry bar to push down on the accordion section of the drain tube just enough for the tube to stop pressing the gasket against the turbo. Then, with my arm through the valley where the y pipe used to be, I felt around and lined the gasket up with the edges of the drain tube flange. My friend released the pressure on the prybar while I had my hand in to line it up, and the bolts went straight in from there. Didn't even have to buy a new gasket. Hope that helps if you decide to get to that leak. I know mine was leaking badly. Puddled up in the valley, and it was way too much to drive with.

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[Delta.Speed]

It does. The grain looks way to large. I'm calling bad heat treatment

I'm going to guess too high austenitizing temperature but without knowing the alloy used it will be hard to tell. Grain structure should, regardless of the alloy be so fine as to be hard to see the individual grains otherwise it will be more brittle

Here is a blade I accidentally broke after quenching, before I was able to temper the steel. You can see that the grain is almost too fine to see
View attachment 112005

If that's how its supposed to look then there's definitely something wrong with the metal in these cause it looks nowhere near that smooth... check out this better closeup photo of one of them.

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[2004LB7]

Definitely large grain. You can clearly see the point the fracture started. It doesn't look like a slow propagation but an instantaneous failure

 

[2004LB7]

Here are some samples I did when I was adjusting my heat treatment parameters to try and reduce grain structure.

In this photo. The 1st test was a lower austenitizing temperature. I think it was around the 1450° range. The second I believe was about 50° higher and the difference in grain was huge. Temperature plays a huge rule in the quality of the final heat treatment


In this sample. I was told the grain was too large to have adequate toughness for knives. And yours I would imagine should have been much tougher then most knife perimeters have. I didn't see anything about what steel was being used and a quick Google search showed that others are using "alloy steel" which could mean anything as all steel is an alloy. Kinda meaningless.


If your vendor gives you the finger and you have trouble getting replacements that don't break. I'd be inclined to at least reach out to Larrin Thomas at Knife Steel Nerds to see if he is willing to look at your hold downs and give his opinion. That guy is the smartest guy I know when it comes to metallurgy. He freaken designs his own steels and has the largest breakdown and testing of various steel testing. He is also an active member on the blade forums so he is always giving out information for free and helping others

 

[Delta.Speed]

Here are some samples I did when I was adjusting my heat treatment parameters to try and reduce grain structure.

In this photo. The 1st test was a lower austenitizing temperature. I think it was around the 1450° range. The second I believe was about 50° higher and the difference in grain was huge. Temperature plays a huge rule in the quality of the final heat treatment
View attachment 112008

In this sample. I was told the grain was too large to have adequate toughness for knives. And yours I would imagine should have been much tougher then most knife perimeters have. I didn't see anything about what steel was being used and a quick Google search showed that others are using "alloy steel" which could mean anything as all steel is an alloy. Kinda meaningless.
View attachment 112009

If your vendor gives you the finger and you have trouble getting replacements that don't break. I'd be inclined to at least reach out to Larrin Thomas at Knife Steel Nerds to see if he is willing to look at your hold downs and give his opinion. That guy is the smartest guy I know when it comes to metallurgy. He freaken designs his own steels and has the largest breakdown and testing of various steel testing. He is also an active member on the blade forums so he is always giving out information for free and helping others

Damn, thanks for all the great info! That's a pretty sick hobby you have there.

Everything is on pause right now for the holidays, but I'm certain my vendor will help me out. I've been getting help from BDSankey for everything relating to this truck and he hasn't let me down. He's the one that got SoCal to send me the full set. I'm hoping that they'll just acknowledge their screw up and gimme back my funds so I can peacefully be on my way to another vendor.

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[2004LB7]

Brad will take care of you for sure

 

[1FastBrick]

Sure thing! All 4 that have broken from the first set.

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That Grain structure is so bad, it looks like cast material!!!

 

[Delta.Speed]

Well, I've been busy so hadn't been able to get to this, but as I figured.... broken hold downs again.

I took some pictures of #7 before pulling the nut and injector for those of you that know more than I regarding metal work.

From these pictures any other thoughts?

These things have been such an absolute nightmare.

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[Bdsankey]

Damn, thanks for all the great info! That's a pretty sick hobby you have there.

Everything is on pause right now for the holidays, but I'm certain my vendor will help me out. I've been getting help from BDSankey for everything relating to this truck and he hasn't let me down. He's the one that got SoCal to send me the full set. I'm hoping that they'll just acknowledge their screw up and gimme back my funds so I can peacefully be on my way to another vendor.

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Your PDM hold-downs will be to me on Monday and will be headed to you on Monday

I'm glad I ordered both sets they had in stock.

 

[TheBac]

I cannot believe that Guy has allowed his product quality to fail miserably like this. Its not like him.

 

[Bdsankey]

I cannot believe that Guy has allowed his product quality to fail miserably like this. Its not like him.

They (SoCal) wanted to send another set. Supposedly the set he was sent (full set #2) was "hand-tested" for hardness which only gives the surface condition. They said they had a known issue with heat treatment but thought it was limited to one batch. It appears that is not correct or their batches are massive.


I've provided them with my engineering opinion on what is wrong (same as above, improper heat treatment procedure) but haven't heard beyond that. In classic SoCal fashion, it is like pulling teeth to get an email response from Gabe but that has been the common theme since 2018. It seems the only way for me to get an answer is over the phone which is not ideal as it's not formal nor does it offer any sort of text confirmation of what was said.

 

[Delta.Speed]

Your PDM hold-downs will be to me on Monday and will be headed to you on Monday

I'm glad I ordered both sets they had in stock.

Thanks Brad! Really appreciate you man. If it wasn't for your help I woulda been dead in the water tackling this project.

I'm looking forward to finally being done with these hold-downs from SCD and just getting a product that works.

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[Delta.Speed]

Well here's something interesting. Got done pulling all the SCD hold-downs earlier and found #8 about to break, but with a completely different failure area from the rest.

I thought that of the second batch they sent only 7 and 6 had failed because those were my cylinders with low compression, but as it turns out, had I idled a bit longer 8 would've gone too.

All others have snapped at the stud hole, but this one was going to shatter at the fork. Pretty odd considering all others across two sets have broken in the same spot.

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[LBZ]

Wow!!

 

[1FastBrick]

Thats an interesting break...

I also noticed things seemed to have changed at SoCal just before the move to the new building.
The last time a friend took an EFI Live V2 over there, They took it in Knowing that he was working in the area and hoping they could expedite the repair. He stopped in on the way home to see how things were going and if it was something that could be fixed easily.
Apparently Guy came out with his unit, got shitty with him and told him the unit wasn't repairable as there are no parts left to fix the V2's and to just buy a V3...

The unit works and flashes, But the LCD screen was damaged in an accident.

 

[Bdsankey]

Thats an interesting break...

I also noticed things seemed to have changed at SoCal just before the move to the new building.
The last time a friend took an EFI Live V2 over there, They took it in Knowing that he was working in the area and hoping they could expedite the repair. He stopped in on the way home to see how things were going and if it was something that could be fixed easily.
Apparently Guy came out with his unit, got shitty with him and told him the unit wasn't repairable as there are no parts left to fix the V2's and to just buy a V3...

The unit works and flashes, But the LCD screen was damaged in an accident.

That's unfortunate. SoCal has always been one of the "pillars" of the Duramax community. It's sad to see this happening more and more.

 

[turbovan]

How can those hold downs be called billet? They look cast.

Maybe I missed it, what's wrong with the stock hold downs?

I feel your pain, had to rip into mine a few times, not a nice job by any means.