Whew... What a last couple of days!

Hey all-
So I made a deal to sell my Dodge (only running vehicle) on tuesday, and wanted to get that dually I just bought running to get to work on saturday morn. Tuesday night I found an 85 std cab 6.9 4spd 4x4 273k that wouldn't stay running- they were asking $1500. I was 99% sure it was out of fuel, I told them they could put 5 gallons in the truck and sell it for close to what they were asking, or I'd give them $600 for it. They took the offer, so I towed it to the nearest gas station, filled it up, and drove it 40 miles home. By the middle of wednesday, we had both the dually and this new truck with motors sitting completely disconnected, but my bum friend had my engine hoist and I couldn't get ahold of it. I found another one to borrow thursday morning, so we lifted both motors out on thursday - but the hoist wasn't working right, so I had to disassemble the donor truck's front end while the motor was half out of it.

We got everything swapped around on the motors on thursday - the turbo, some new gaskets, the IP and injectors - My helper was a little excited about working on the fuel system, so he was swapping all this stuff around even though we didn't yet have the new copper washers, return lines etc. Sat the motor in on thursday night, hooked up some stuff, and called it a night. When we got back to his house, the return line kit was there (the $30 ebay special). We both had to work friday morning, so we didn't get back to it until 2 on friday afternoon. Got everything hooked up and got it started around 6, but it was running poorly at best. we spent an hour fixing visible fuel leaks with parts from the new return kit, and I let it run for awhile to see if it would smooth out - no luck, it kept dying when driving it. Everyone else had left the shop at this point, so I spent a good amount of time just trying to get the truck to drive into the shop - swapping batteries, jumping it, pushing it, pulling it, swapping starters - blech. When I finally got it in, I started pulling all the injectors to completely install the new return kit. Got it to start again, but it was still running like crap - When I was cracking injector lines, I found two that didn't make it run worse. So I swapped out two injectors, and It was finally running right! I still had some random stuff I had to do before I'd feel good about driving it anywhere - battery tie downs, etc... By the time I called it a night, it was 5:30 am. And I had to be up to go to work (a 15 hour shift) by 8:30. Total leap of faith, but I drove the truck about 60 miles to work in south denver first thing saturday morning, and back in the middle of saturday night, no problems. Here's some pics of the aftermath...

Finally got to enjoy driving it to breakfast this morning... I've got 12 lbs of boost, which I'm super psyched about. I never got my old '93 over 10 lbs. And I'm in an IDI again!

Great play by play, thanks for the story. It is good to have eager friends to help with stuff, and flaky ones to borrow stuff too. I might qualify toward the latter though

Looks like you have allot of neat stuff there, doesn't look like junk to me!

Yeah spend some time here and offer up some of that "junk" and I would bet you can make a lot of your money back for sure! Good luck with the new/used motor.

You get 12lbs out of a stock Ford waste gated turbo? How do you do that?
We've got new injectors and pump on my moms stock turbo truck and its only been getting 7 for QUITE some time.
Is there something wrong with our truck?

Well... "stock" - I already turned the pump all the way up, and the turbo was the "ford-style" ATS kit, so it has the full downpipe instead of the flat version. I also moved the vacuum wastegate control so the wastegate doesn't do much. I don't think there's anything wrong with 7 lbs... the last one I had only pushed about 8 stock, and it was the '93 model that came with the turbo.

Uhh, you mean that your turbo kit is the ATS style, unless someone already upgraded the smushed downpipe. The two kits are the same except for the pipe unless I am mistaken. Its the Ford version that has a downpipe that is somewhat flattened to help clear the firewall at the cost of a little performance. I think that's how the Banks turbo which was tested in the Banks literature vs. Factory turbo vs. stock was able to kick the factory tubo's butt.

Uhh, I think we're saying the same thing, just in different words. I call the ATS kit on my truck the "ford style" since it looks and bolts up the same as the OEM turbo on the '93 and '94 trucks. I don't know if ATS ever made a different kit than mine... I avoid that company at all costs, so I'm not to familiar with there product line.