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Diesel off road race conversion

7995 Views 33 Replies 17 Participants Last post by  justin13703
Well I tackled the off road race conversion today. My Oz tune and downpipe were ordered from Diesel Ops. They had the best price and honor military discounts. The downpipe was well built and coated very well. Corbin from Oz tune provides excellent customer service should you run into any tuner problems. An A number one product and customer service.

Many thanks to Starspangled6.0 for his post on installation, and to KpaxFAQ for giving me some pointers over the phone. With their help the installation was straightforward and uneventful. My only additions to installation advise already given is the following:

1. The nuts holding the DEF bracket to the engine can be reached with an 8" socket extension, universal joint, and a 13mm (if I remember right) deep well socket. Starboard (right) nut is fairly easy to get to, the (port) nut is not so easy. The way I got it was to take off all the heat shield bolts. With the heat shield lose you wiggle the extension up through a hole in the lower end of the heat shield. Once you get the socket on the nut do not let it slip off until the nut is removed.

2. Per instructions you must remove the plug to the throttle valve. It is very difficult to get to, especially if you have big hands or fat fingers. I found it easier to remove the throttle valve and flip it over to expose the plug. You will find the valve, valve body, and intake opening coated with oily soot. This is a great opportunity to clean out the gunk. My Cruze only has 13,000 miles and the egr had already coated everything with nasty oil saturated soot. When you see it you will cringe when you realize that crap goes into your engine.

Since the tune deactivates the DEF, I will be removing the DEF tank. As part of the test drive I unplugged the DEF pump/heater harness from the big main plug. There were no CELs and lighting did not strike me either. Engine runs great and there were no CELs.

I bought a Buick Verano donut spare and jack kit. Will be doing surgery on the trunk as soon as the guy in the brown shorts delivers the spare. The only problem I see are the brackets that the tank bolts to. They will have to be bent down to accomdate the donut spare. Will post some pics after the surgery.
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Great to hear you got her all sorted out!

Just another thing, if you don't have a 13mm socket laying around 1/2" is close enough. The bolts aren't very tight
Who came here hoping for a lifted rallycross diesel?
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Can't wait hear your first impressions


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Who came here hoping for a lifted rallycross diesel?
Maybe lmao

11 Cruze LTZ 1.4T
04 Ranger XLT 4.0 4x4
Before and after dyno numbers would be nice.
What other mods do you have?
200% over injectors, bigger turbo, higher capacity CAC, custom PCM tune:go:
Before and after dyno numbers would be nice.
What other mods do you have?
200% over injectors, bigger turbo, higher capacity CAC, custom PCM tune
Nobody makes a 200% over injectors the biggest they make is 100% and the biggest anyone has ran is 25% over. As far as turbo upgrade no one makes one but you can make a borg S1g turbo work with a few modifications.

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Can't wait hear your first impressions
First impressions are very favorable. I completed a 390 mile trip yesterday and averaged 55mpg going 65-70mph for the trip. The best 50 mile average on a flatter portion of the trip at 65mph was 62.1mpg. Will have to do a test at 55-60mph and see what happens.

Have not romped on it to test speed and power performance yet. Got the tune to accommodate modifications and mpg.

My new spare and jack kit was delivered to the house yesterday. When I get back home from my trip I will perform the trunk surgery to accommodate the donut spare. I did already disconnect the harness from the tank/pump. No codes whatsoever on the whole trip.

The peace of mind not having to worry about emissions codes is well worth the price of the tune and the down pipe.
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With 50k on the clock we are showing a life time average of 41.5-42 mpg and best of 65.9 for 50 miles.
My hand figures were always very close to the DIC.
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'Off road' is just a guise.
We know, but we really want a monster truck. :p
Glad to hear you joined the off-road club! With the additional work done by Oz, the car seems to behave as it should have from the beginning- great power, great economy, and trouble free for a very long time.
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At some point I'm going to get a tune for ours to get rid of the dead pedal problem.
As of yet I see no reason for a delete kit. Other than 2 phantom codes that came on early car has ran flawlessly with no emissions problems and it just passed 50K miles.

Personally I'd rather spend the money on extra fuel filtration to save the expensive injectors and HP pump.
At some point I'm going to get a tune for ours to get rid of the dead pedal problem.
As of yet I see no reason for a delete kit. Other than 2 phantom codes that came on early car has ran flawlessly with no emissions problems and it just passed 50K miles.

Personally I'd rather spend the money on extra fuel filtration to save the expensive injectors and HP pump.
filtration isnt the issue, crappy low lubricity fuel is.
At some point I'm going to get a tune for ours to get rid of the dead pedal problem.
As of yet I see no reason for a delete kit. Other than 2 phantom codes that came on early car has ran flawlessly with no emissions problems and it just passed 50K miles.

Personally I'd rather spend the money on extra fuel filtration to save the expensive injectors and HP pump.
That's what I thought until I drove a deleted one. I'd think the fuel filter was plugged if I switched back to stock. It runs that much better in every way.

Luckily our hpfp is cheap at 500 bucks...
That's what I thought until I drove a deleted one. I'd think the fuel filter was plugged if I switched back to stock. It runs that much better in every way.

Luckily our hpfp is cheap at 500 bucks...
the vw hpfp was cheap too

its that the hpfp sends shards thru the entire fuel system that caused the multi thousand dollar repairs.
That's what I thought until I drove a deleted one. I'd think the fuel filter was plugged if I switched back to stock. It runs that much better in every way.

Luckily our hpfp is cheap at 500 bucks...
the vw hpfp was cheap too

its that the hpfp sends shards thru the entire fuel system that caused the multi thousand dollar repairs.
The first gen Cruze Diesel uses the CP-1 vs the CP-4 VW used. The CP-1 is much more similar to the CP-3 used in the Cummins and Duramax trucks and is much more robust than the failure prone CP-4s of the VW and newer Power Stroke and Duramax engines. Fortunately for the 2nd Gen Cruze Diesel and new Duramax trucks they have switched to the Denso HPFP which I am told is also a very good pump! The Denso pump is also used on the Colorado Diesel.
The first gen Cruze Diesel uses the CP-1 vs the CP-4 VW used. The CP-1 is much more similar to the CP-3 used in the Cummins and Duramax trucks and is much more robust than the failure prone CP-4s of the VW and newer Power Stroke and Duramax engines. Fortunately for the 2nd Gen Cruze Diesel and new Duramax trucks they have switched to the Denso HPFP which I am told is also a very good pump! The Denso pump is also used on the Colorado Diesel.
the same hpfp was in the same cars in usa and canada

failure rate in usa cars was 20x that of failure rate in canada

that rules out the pumps being bad.

usa fuel has less lubricity in it.
the same hpfp was in the same cars in usa and canada

failure rate in usa cars was 20x that of failure rate in canada

that rules out the pumps being bad.

usa fuel has less lubricity in it.
The design of the CP-4 and the rest of the fuel system lead to VWs catastrophic HPFP system failures in conjunction with the US fuel quality. Other pumps are a more robust design that do not fail as frequently or take out other components downstream no matter what fuel is being used...

The Cruze Diesel does not have the same HPFP as the VWs so it is not as much of a concern as it once was with the VWs before they got caught cheating and had to buy all of them back anyhow...
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