TECH: WHICH TORQUE CONVERTER STALL DO YOU NEED?

[Music] on today's tech video we're going to try and tackle torque converters with certain turbos and what's best for you first off there are many different torque converter manufacturers out there you have diesel performance converters in georgia you have suncoast in florida you have goran who i believe is in iowa you have ats in colorado ultimate transmissions in idaho you also have precision of new hampton then you have precision industries uh i think that and then um i apologize you also have bd diesel those are kind of at least in my opinion the bigger names that i have dealt with uh obviously i love phil's dpc converters out of georgia once you find a company that's willing to take care of you whether it's just getting it turned around quicker or they offer to help you out on racing stuff like that you kind of stick with that so i'm very familiar with the dpc uh and then just given my geographical location in the southwest region uh we also get a lot of ats converters some bd converters um we do have some suncoast converters i've even ran a couple of them but everybody has a different way they rate their stall speeds um of all those i think gorend is probably one of the hardest ones to understand for me just because he uses numbers and letters and it's just to me it's very confusing um not saying he makes a bad converter it's just his numbering system i know it's uh it's like how many blades are in the turbine and there's a couple of letters and like i said very confusing i really like the way phil does it uh bd also does it very easy to understand ats as well so most companies uh and suncoast does too they will give you just a it stalls at this speed and that's kind of the part number so phil uses a ultra low stall a low stall a stock stall a high stall then you have a v10 stall which is 2400 rpm and then you have 26 28 and then you have what's called what phil calls the stall which is like a 3 000 stall um and then ats has a couple of low stalls um some of their low stalls are actually like super low i think one of them is about 1400 rpm and the stall speed basically refers to how much engine rpm before the transmission starts to move under the brakes so the lower the stall the more fluid coupling that you have before lockup uh in towing applications stock turbo applications lower stalls generally yield a better driving experience the truck feels a little bit more agile a little lighter on its feet so to speak and it also keeps the trans temps down when you're not in lock up which is a big uh i guess a big battle that most 47 48 guys will agree on is that he kills these things very quickly whether it's the converter or the transmission itself so for stock and low stalls i will say the common rail trucks do a much better job we have electronic fuel injection therefore our trucks see that all right we put it in drive it sees how much load that transmission just put on that engine and it will compensate for it whereas you have your 12 valve whether it's a ve a p-pump or you have your um vp-44 trucks i try to not let guys get those ultra-low stall converters and the reason why is not because i don't want them to enjoy the truck but if you have a climate where you have a lot of seasons like pretty much anywhere but maybe like california arizona southern parts of texas maybe florida places that don't get very cold you're not as susceptible to the issues but what you'll have is you'll put it in drive and the engine will barely idle um and then you'll either turn the steering wheel which puts a load on either the hydro boost or the power steering you'll put your foot on the brake which can also add engine load or you'll turn on your air conditioning and all of a sudden the truck stalls or you give it a quick blast of the throttle and let off and the truck will stall these are all issues with really tight converters on those style of trucks so realistically the low stall 1800 rpm is kind of all i'd like to sell the guys like that especially if they live in cold climates like um the dakotas minnesota illinois like you get what i'm saying people that actually get a real winter where sometimes it will be negative however many degrees then you have your stock stalls and your higher stalls and those all have applications big things that i always ask people how they use the truck where they live and what turbo setups they have and what power goal because the power goal is really going to determine how many disks you need in that converter most factory converters with the exception of the 68 rfe are going to be a single disc with a bonded material and then you have a billet single disc which is something that dpc and i believe a couple other companies offer that's going to be a billet front cover and a single disk friction again usually it's an upgraded material but it's still bonded and then you move on to your dual disks which in the 4748 market i mean you'll have a couple companies that sell them i think precision industries does but other than that those converters are kind of i don't want to say out of style but you don't see them very much anymore usually guys will go to a triple disc which means you have three frictions in there to apply the lock up clutch uh and then beyond that you have a quad disc and then some companies even do five discs again it's just however much power you're trying to hold generally dictates that usually guys in that thousand to 1200 horsepower mark a triple disc is fine um and then the guys that are above that a quad or if your company offers the five days like ats's converter then you can go ahead and get multiple discs for instance on this truck we're going to go with a triple disc from diesel performance converters uh and then in my 2005 truck we run a quad disc from diesel performance converters so let's talk about elevation i live at 6 000 feet roughly i've seen some customers that are in colorado that are above that but i would say a majority of customers are at a much lower elevation than even we are here at cedar so that plays a big factor into not only how a truck drives but what converter you need to get on top of turbos so i'll try to give you guys some examples here um a very common setup that i see a lot of guys run is they'll do like a 467 7 or a 472 um and i always ask him is it a 5.9 truck six seven truck because a six seven truck will do that with a stock stall converter every day that ends in y whereas a 5 9 truck it'll still do it with a stock stall it'll just be really hard to get it too light at the line whereas a high stall would be much better for you and then you get into your bigger turbos like your 476s your 480 t4s those ones uh i've had really good luck in six seven engines with a high stall 2200 rpm and then you you move on from there your big t6 chargers your 480s your 485 482 488s basically those borgwarner 9688 turbines what you'll find is the 132 housings are very popular in sea level areas uh that would be like illinois indiana ohio pennsylvania um kentucky tennessee like a lot of these places that don't have huge elevation changes up here where we live kind of in the rocky mountain area we'll see a lot of guys substitute that for a 115 housing just to help the turbo spool up better have a little bit better street manners that's the housing that i ran on my o5 when i was had the single 488 it worked really well for me and you have a bunch of different options on converters that set up the 488 96 t6 115 i was able to light on a 2600 stall converter and i was also able to do it a lot easier on a 2800 stall now there's drawbacks to each one a 2600 stall i had to battle a little bit more which means you're putting more heat in the converter um but then when i went to leave the line or whatever and i hit lock up there's a lot less rpm drop there and that's what happens with these really loose converters um the bigger the rpm drop when you go on a lock up the more stress that puts on not only the transmission but on the engine the drivetrain like that's a huge rpm drop you'll like when i had a 12 l 5 9 i ran a stall which was 3 000 i would go to about 4 500 hit lock up and that rpm drop would be low 3000 rpm that's a huge torque spike as you suck that motor back down um so you just got to figure out what you want the truck to do the best the 2800 stall to me was a lot better for my driving style i was able to get on the turbo quicker so i didn't put as much heat in there and then i was also able to compensate for lock up and to a point where it wasn't as brutal on the motor um and this question is also very hard to answer just because of different driving styles like for instance meyer really likes a tight converter i don't i i'm fine with my converter being a little bit slushy down low just because i know it's going to keep the smoke down and that's that's a battle that you fight too with with turbo setups and different style engines um so the purpose behind this video is making you guys think about the full package um where you live how cold it gets what turbos you have engine displacement and then another big thing too is how heavy is the truck do you tow with the truck um and looking at the whole equation to make the best decision i always recommend so if a company call a company in a similar elevation to you we have a 5906 truck with a 472 87 t4 on the manifold as a stock stall converter um maybe a high stall and it'll work just fine in ohio and the surrounding areas like that where the geography is very similar let's say that customer moves to cedar city utah they're gonna fight like hell to get that turbo to light and act properly because of the elevation change whether you you believe in correction factors or not i'm not that's not up for debate at this point um i can tell you from living in illinois living in southern california living in virginia and also living in uh utah elevation is a huge huge problem for these turbocharged engines because the air when you start with thinner air at a higher elevation and then you compress it with a turbo charger yes you are creating atmospheric boost right you're manipulating that atmospheric area into a denser charge but if you're starting at a less dense air it will never be able to compress it as hard as if you start in a much denser area and you'll hear some of us talk about oh yeah i went down to cali or when i was in ohio my my 2011 made boost like really easy it was making boost 14 1500 rpm up here it's like 1800 rpm so i love going on trips to lower elevation because turbos just act better another prime example my triple turbo setup which was a 480 being fed by two 476s up here 2000 rpm 2200 i might be making three pounds of boost when we were doing the street drive in ohio which is like three four hundred feet above sea level i was making two to three pounds of boost at 15 1600 rpm that's a huge difference just by where you're at on the elevation scale the last thing i really want to touch on with torque converters is their use okay like most people with diesel trucks i feel like you built it for one thing but you wanted it to do a bunch of different things the common one i get is i want a hot street truck but i still need a tow that's a hard truck to kind of map out depending on how heavy they tow because the heavier you tow the tight excuse me the more on point the tuning and more on point the turbo setup needs to be now i have towed about 28 000 pounds gross over the continental divide with a 476 1.0 t4 on a six seven i've done it i would not recommend it to people but you can do it so it really comes down to the 95 of that truck use and you design it around that my 05 at the time it was a street truck plain and simple 95 of the time i was screwing around or just getting back and forth to work i only towed on very very rare occasions so to me dealing with that continental divide for an hour was it worth changing everything up um and when you do the big singles like especially the 5.9 guys you have to remember that rpm is your friend especially on that 5.9 truck because you guys are you're having to make more rotations per minute to move the same volume through that engine compared to a six seven guy so shifting at 2800 3000 rpm to prevent it from falling on its face every time that might be the new normal there's nothing wrong with it if you built the engine accordingly but everybody loves to short shift these trucks because they make a lot of torque they get better fuel mileage down there there's always sacrifices especially when it comes to turbochargers and torque converters the tighter it is the better it'll tow get off the line and it works great especially like modified he351s or modified vgts um those turbos work really well with low stalls or stock stall converters and then the bigger you go the looser that converter has to be uh and i will say calling companies that have that similar elevation is important i mean you guys call me or ask me for advice and you live in ohio or you live in pennsylvania or anything place like that i've lived in illinois for like 18 years i know how stuff drives there awesome i can help you out you move to denver colorado where it's a mile high cool give us a call give me a message shoot me a text i've lived in that and i currently drive in that and i've driven 68 trucks i've driven 48 trucks i've driven big singles small singles um and we're able to help you out so again the purpose of this video is not to be like okay i have a 472 what is josh's opinion on that it's more of look at the whole entire truck program of what you're building and then ask a company that either sells converters or makes converters and try to give them as much information as you can so they'll get you the right converter the first time that's the big thing for me too is putting a converter in a truck driving it realizing you've got the stall speed either too high or too low um too high you can usually live with too low it's kind of unbearable it just they turn into really smoky laggy pigs that don't want to spool well um so i always tell people to kind of err on the side of going a little bit looser uh kind of the example of my triple setup i could do it with a 2600 or 2800 the 2600 just takes a little bit more finesse so to speak um again i don't want this video to go on forever so hopefully you guys are kind of grasping some of the principles behind torque converter and with a turbo selection um if you have any questions or specific setups i need to know what turbo what engine what fuel system and where you live and i'm more than happy to give you guys a recommendation uh until next time guys stay safe

Channel: Horsetorques Diesel

Views: 4,690

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: OKS3JLs7O8M

Length: 17min 40sec (1060 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020