After several hours of wrenching, the project is finally done. It's certainly not as easy as Fleece bills it to be, but with basic hand tools and a friend or two, it's definitely doable in your driveway. There are no check engine lights to speak of, and the only differences now are gobs more power, a transmission that seems confused by the power boost, a little bit more growl at low RPM, and no regen nonsense to deal with.
My immediate impressions: the tune is magical. It's surprising that Fleece can hack into something that sophisticated, and turn off every nuisance emissions control system, without a single glitch or hiccup. Not once was a diagnostic code flashed during the tuning or during the 20 minutes of driving I've put on since the install. Around town, it's much more lively off the line, and the freeway power is just ridiculous. You'll easily be thrown back into your seat, especially if you're more of a hyper-miler like myself. I was able to chirp the tires several times in 1st and 2nd gear, and the roads are bone dry.
The transmission is shifting harder, and seems confused at which points to shift at, but I'm guessing it will take a few hundred miles (and some fresh AMSOIL) to sort itself out. The car was in regen mode when I started the install, and it was nice to see 60 mpg on the freeway again, instead of the usual 30 it gets during regen mode. There's a bit more noise off the line, but nothing substantial.
One major issue did surface during the install, which wasn't directly related to our work: the number 3 injector is melting. Like the housing itself it melting, and you can see where soot has sprayed out of the cylinder onto the fuel lines. That's a major, major issue, but so far I haven't detected any issues from the car itself, other than the discovery today. Based upon my knowledge of DPF systems, my best guess is that the DPF is to blame, since fuel is getting puked into one or more of the last cylinders in order to be burned off in the DPF to cook off the soot. While that won't be an issue from now on, the damage has been done. Even if the injector is performing as designed, there's still evidence of a small pressure leak, which means less power and economy.
Overall, I'd give the whole experience:
3/10- customer service. Fleece seems to only want to sell the product, and has next to nothing to offer in terms of advice or installation help
5/10- ease of install. The installation itself was a breeze, but with no instructions to either remove or install the hardware, it wasn't without issues
8/10- value. Given the issues I'm already having with the emissions systems already, I'm extremely pleased to have all that gone, plus the added power
9/10- performance. Diesels respond so well to tuning, and I wouldn't be surprised if the car is making the 50-70+ HP they promised
I will definitely update here as fuel and maintenance numbers come in, but I can give a brief tutorial now.
Tools you'll need:
- Jack\stands
- Gloves
- Assorted pliers, including Channel-lock pliers
- Flathead screwdrivers
- Assorted wrenches and socket sets, ranging from 7mm to 17 mm. 10mm and 13mm were in heavy use.
- 1 helper
- Flashlight
- Exhaust manifold paint
To start, I'd advise working on a cold car. My car was in regen mode when I pulled into my buddy's house, and given that it was 85 degrees and sunny, burned skin was a given. The turbo, DPF, and heat shield were all hot enough to cook your breakfast eggs on. Fleece didn't do so hot of job painting the downpipe, so I used a $10 can of high-temp paint at O'Reilly to fix their mistakes.
- Jack the car up on the passenger side, as high as your equipment will allow for, and secure with jack stands. The parking brake will definitely need to be utilized as well. Using a 10mm socket set, take the upper heat shield off, as well as the plastic engine cover.
- Pull the top two sensors from the DPF, and set these aside safely.
- Crawl underneath the car, and using your flathead and 7mm wrenches, remove the entire plastic guard on the underside of the car. You'll need that room to pull the DPF out later on.
- Working from below and in the engine bay, use your 10mm to remove the bottom heat shield. After this, use a socket (15mm I believe) to loosen the clamp on the turbo\downpipe connection.
- While you're working on the bottom heat shield, take the 3rd sensor out of the DPF. The 4th sensor stays in, as there's really no way to remove it with the DPF still on the car. From the bottom of the car, use your pliers to bend the heat shield so that it can be pulled straight up and out of the engine bay, being careful to thread the 4th sensor's wiring harness through the hole in the heat shield. Make sure you've already disconnected the sensor's harness from the loom that runs along the back of the grill.
- Now, you're ready to pull the 3 bolts from the exhaust pipe. They were rusty on my 55k mile car that's rarely seen road salt, but not too difficult. They're 13 mm, and the top one will probably take 3x as long as the other two combined.
- Next, remove the two bolts anchoring the DPF to the oil pan (what a terrible place to connect the DPF, GM!!!).
- This leaves two bolts that are anchoring the DPF to the engine block, through a horizontal bracket. DO NOT remove these bolts- it's a waste of time, as we found out the hard way. The DPF will only come off if you remove the actual bracket from the engine block. Each nut took about 10 minutes for the 3 of us, so be patient.
- With these last nuts off, your DPF is ready for removal. Well, almost. I was warned about two rubber vacuum hoses at the back of the DPF, and sure enough, towards the driver's side, you'll see two rubber hoses. These must be removed before the DPF can come off. It took some serious teamwork, but once the clamps come off, the hoses aren't too bad.
- With the car jacked up as high as you can go (safely), pull the DPF down and out of the engine bay. Be careful since it's probably going to shower soot on you.
- The installation will take 1\6 the time of the removal. Finger-tight the bolts on the exhaust flange down below, and connect the new downpipe to the turbo. That clamp will give you headaches, and it takes two people to open it up. After fighting with it for a while, we got it to fit over the turbo and downpipe, then tightened everything down.
- The 4th sensor needs to be removed with a Channel-lock pliers (it's something like a 22mm wrench, so we just used the pliers instead of buying a wrench that big). Reinstall all the sensors, and remember to place the wiring back into the little clips and zip ties that GM uses on the stock setup.
- Now that the hardware is done, reinstall the plastic shields on the underside, and lower the car down.
- Tuning the car takes about 10 minutes, and was drama free for me. The AutoCal tuner is pretty low-tech, as far as user interaction goes, but it certainly gets the job done. After it's done tuning, fire up the car and check for leaks. I did notice a small exhaust leak at the turbo-downpipe connection, but that may be because the clamp was warped during the removal.
I took several pictures of the install, but it's pretty straightforward. Definitely not for beginners, but it was a great project for a lovely Saturday afternoon with a few good friends.
You can see the cleaned-up engine bay, as well as that cooked injector.