Here's some more pictures. Regretably, I didn't get that many of the install. Towards the end, we were getting frustrated since some things weren't clear in the instructions and parts were missing (minor stuff like crimp connectors, I had some at my place, but we were doing it at my buddies) and stuff wasn't fitting.
The car up on ramps and the volant starting to come off.
Volant off, front fascia off, heat exchanger mounted. You mount it with 4 self tapping screws into the bumper. The whole thing is made out of aluminum and isn't really that sturdy IMHO. I'd have liked to see the top bolted to something. It still should last though. The front fascia is somewhat of a PITA to get off. Mostly it's just two plastic pop rivets waaaay up under by the headlights. I was hanging off of one using pliers before the center finally gave way so I could get it out. There are some long bolts that take forever to get out too, but only because they are long. The wiring has a connector, so you can move the whole thing out of the way. I cut away some of that plastic part where the oil cooler line? is to make room for the new water hoses. The instructions give no indication how to route the hoses - one of my complaints. Lots of trial and error to figure out something that will work.
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One of my buddies doing the wiring for the intercooler water pump. It taps off one of the fuses. It uses a little add-a-fuse clip. I would have preferred to splice into the wire coming out under the fuse box instead. Tapping in on top required dremelling out a slot to get the wire out of the fuse box cover since it's got a lip on it. The tap turns on a relay that is wired to the jump start terminal (the big red cap). They don't tell you which wire is ground on the water pump. Choices are green and brown. Had to hook up a battery to it to figure it out.
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Water bottle reservoir and pump. You are looking at the driver side front bumper. The reservoir had one of the holes still plugged when I got it, so I had to drill it out. (the reservoir has lots of pre-formed holes for different applications, the bottoms still have plastic in the unused ones, if that makes sense) The directions weren't clear how to mount the pump (a mounting screw is in the wrong location on the drawing). We guessed and turned out we were correct as shown in the picture, aside from rotating it on the vertical axis some. You are supposed to run the rest of the water hose now, but we put it off till later.
The oil drain hose went on next. No pictures of this. I was planning on using worm drive clamps instead of the crimp kind GSM supplied. It works on the bottom part of the hose, but not where it connects to the blower. So I had to go buy a crimper for it. Home depot didn't have an actual crimper, so I just bought some huge wire cutters instead.
Next, oil lines were run to the supercharger while my friend got started on changing out the plugs. Changing 16 spark plugs takes forever, but not difficult. My friend said he probably wouldn't ever do it on his Ram if he can avoid it. But running the oil lines turned out to take much much much longer. GSM gets oil through the oil pressure sensor port. This is a total PITA to get to. It's hidden up behind the alternator, so that has to come off. You also need a 1 1/16" deep well socket to get the sensor off, so we had to go buy one of those. That wasn't our problem though. The electrical connector has a little red sliding lock that has to be slid over. It's the same type as on the stock injectors, and just about every other connector in the car. But this one didn't want to slide no matter what. After much cursing and struggling, we finally got it. I'm not sure why they didn't tap off the oil temp. sensor instead - at least that's what I think it is. It's much easier to get to. A hose runs from the pressure sensor port up to a T adapter which mounts to a bracket on a free bolt hole near the EGR hose. The oil pressure sensor goes into one side of the T, and another hose goes over to the blower. No pictures of this, I can get some later if someone asks. I do have a small leak at the T adapter. I need to redo those connections.
New coolant bottle went on next. The new one is slightly smaller. It's all aluminum, so it's really hot when the engine is warm. The overflow hose just runs down the engine bay, not like the stock one that has a small catch bottle. Shouldn't ever overflow though. The left top mounting flange caught on that lip on the engine compartment. Hard to tell in the picture though. The blower's on already in this picture since it was taken later on. Be sure to have help here, or you'll leak coolant out the stock bottle everywhere. We managed to get the new one without much of a mess at all and went in pretty easy, except for the flange hitting.
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Next, the blower goes on. This means taking off the stock belt and power steering pump. Then the blower bracket goes on. You're supposed to start on the fuel injector plate but we put the blower in now too and belt. The blower went in easy. The belt was another matter. This took over and hour to get on. It's sized way too small. We even made a trip to several parts stores to look for a new one, but the one supplied happens to be the biggest size stocked and ordering a new one would take a few days to get. I think this is why I got what I got, it just happened to be the biggest one in stock close to the size needed. My tensioner is on the stop, and the belt still had to be pryed on. I already have a nasty noise that sounds like bearings going bad. Going to talk to GSM when I finish this. On top of that, the belt comes within 1mm of the metal crimp part of the power steering hose. The directions call for you to bend that hose, but I couldn't bring myself to do it and risk breaking the line.
Next the oil lines were ran to the blower (we put the return line on before mounting the blower - that's when I realized I couldn't use a worm drive clamp on the hose). Don't run the oil line like shown. It's supposed to be a straight adapter there, not a 90. I called GSM before the install since they sent me the wrong part (according to their parts list) and they said it would work anyway. It interferes with the intercooler in that position. It needs to run along the blower mounting bracket. I have a big rub mark from the intercooler sitting up too high and hitting my hood. I had to get back to my town for work on monday, so we didn't have time to fix it.
This picture was before we got the belt on, you can see its not on the blower yet. It's tight even in that position. You can see the tensioner in the middle position, where it belongs. BTW, the injector plate is shown (the two yellow things are the injectors). I think we gave up on the belt for a while and moved on to other things while my friend went to look for a longer belt.
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The intake hoses went on sometime in there too. The big black plastic "U" thing goes on the blower and a flexible hose runs down to that hole where the stock silencer and stock air box meet. You mount a metal plate there to connect the flex hose to and the K&N under it. The K&N is too fat and requires you to really mash it on there. The PCV hose runs to a little nipple on the plate and vents to the atmosphere - not sure I like that. I thought it was supposed to go past the air filter like the stock one and my volant. You drill a hole so it can breathe - though that plate is raised since the big air hole has a slight flange on it from the factory - you can't get a flush fit.
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Sometime in there the injector plate went in. This injector plate caused several hours of delays due to problems with it. First, it wasn't machined properly. The stock intake manifold has two locator pins that poke out. The plate only had one notch cut out. We had to cut the other one off the intake manifold so the plate would fit up to the intake manifold. The other problem was a bigger problem. After getting the install done, I turned on the ignition. The injector plate started leaking gas out the side (the top when mounted) of it. The GSM assembler hadn't properly sealed it. There is a long counterbore that forms the fuel rail for the two injectors. They seal it by putting in a set screw and teflon. After calling GSM (luckily they were there on sunday), they explained how they sealed it and had me check if they forgot to put in the set screw. I called them back and said the set screw was there, it was just leaking. They asked if I had fixed it yet. After all the other problems, I wasn't looking forward to fixing it. Indeed, it took several tries to get it to seal properly. The set screw is tiny and difficult to get teflon around it. Plus it's a pain to take it apart to get the set screw in only to have it leak again once you get the plate put all back together again. Poor design in my book, I would have made a small, deep counterbore diameter for the fuel rail, then a larger, shallow counterbore diameter so the set screw has a base to press against and press the threads to the block tightly. GSM gets points for being available on sunday, but loses lots of points for having a injector plate that leaks fuel.
BTW, that's the blow off valve. They supply a short 90 hose, but we couldn't figure out how that mates with the intercooler, and at that point didn't care and just jammed the thing on after some trimming. It's a bosch part I think. It's not ricer loud, but still audible and sounds like a cross between someone blowing a raspberry and the typical blow off valve.
You can see the injector plate leaking gas.
The intercooler. It's a tight fit, but after a little struggling we got it in. No pictures of it. I have to redo the routing of an oil line to get it to fit properly. GSM doesn't include any sort of grommet for the intake air temp sensor (the little blue thermistor). I called them about this and they said they just tie it off near the radiator. Um, ok?
Last thing was the fuel controller. It mounts on the bumper, passenger side. It can adjust timing and controls the injectors as well. You run a vacuum line down to it from the injector plate. They supply all the crimp and splice terminals you need (well, almost, I was short 2 I think and had to buy more). I wished they used the coaxial ones instead of the T shaped splices. It would have been easier to get the ECU connector covers back on. I never got them back on with they type they supplied. You do have to cut two or three ECU wires. The signal comes out the ECU, through the new fuel controller, then back along the stock wire. Locating wires and doing the wiring was very clear in the instructions. Well, there was one error. They had one wire color wrong, but the pin number right. Or I just couldn't see the grey stripe on the blue wire.
After struggling with the fuel controller software, we finally got the supplied tune from GSM to download to the fuel controller and went out for a spin without installing the front fascia first. Big mistake. The wheel wells don't have anything to attach to in the front and the wind blew them into the tire. It looks like a bear clawed them now. Whoops. My friend said he was shaking after the ride though.
It was running really strong that night.
Instructions Summary: GSM forgot to include the instructions in the box. Minus points for that. I called them up and they sent them UPS express so that was nice. It's 45 pages long with color photos which is nice. They are for the most part clear. I wish there were more pictures though.
Installation Summary: Too much stuff didn't fit. Not very happy overall with it.
Of course you guys want a SOTP performance review. That'll have to wait another day. I spent several hours doing this post. Sorry to keep you waiting but I have other things I need to do. It's fast though, I'll say that.
