I can floor the accelerator on either truck and I've never experienced "making it baulk".
You've got automatics?
I've only really noticed it under a specific set of conditions, on my manual truck - From a stop at idle, letting the clutch out in 2nd gear(4.10 rear end), while giving it throttle. If I let the clutch out too far as I'm giving it throttle, instead of the revs going up, they go down - so you start at say 800 RPM, as you give it throttle it hits 12-1400 RPM, then the clutch "grabs" and starts dragging the RPM down. The lower the RPM, the less torque, too.
Normally, what will happen is that the truck will get up to the 7 MPH or whatever it needs to be at idle in 2nd before the engine completely dies, and it'll just kind of lurch and take off. With a big fuel pump, though, the governor will respond to the drop in RPM by adding fuel... a LOT of fuel, and due to the design of the IP and timing, it'll feed it in really early. So you get a ton of fuel dumped in, extremely advanced, the truck clatters like mad and smokes, trying to die unless you put the clutch in a bit or let off on the throttle.
Remember, this is all within the 800-1400 RPM range during takeoff; Once you are moving, it's pretty hard to get the RPMs down that low.
If you rev it way up as you are taking off, or don't try to take off quite so quickly, it's not a problem. It's also something I've only /really/ noticed with /my/ RD2-110; It's pretty sensitive for the first 1/16 of the pedal travel. So the difference between "idle" and "too much fueling" right off idle(remember - little load) is just a hair.
(Once you are in a higher gear with a bunch of resistance on the engine, it takes a lot more pedal travel to give it the same "effective" amount of throttle input; simply because the total amount of fuel is higher).
I just tried to do it with my 200-hp stock-IP '92, and didn't have any issues; probably because the governor is still less sensitive down low.
I'd still like to get a SPL on there to reduce or eliminate smoke, especially when I have a trailer on.
A non gated turbo affects drive ability tremendously, you end up with a large turbine housing that the exhaust has to really grunt against to light off, its like having a clogged cat at low rpms only. If you look at dyno graphs non gated turbos will actually make less power than a na truck in low rpms because of the resistance to flow.
I'm... skeptical:
1. How is a wastegated turbo with the wastegate disconnected any different than a non-wastegated turbo?
2. I've driven my truck with my TE06H, wastegate disconnected... and the turbine /jammed/ with an allen key - it would not rotate, period.
I didn't notice any difference in power below about 1600 RPM, where the turbo was /supposed/ to engage - even with a bigger wastegated turbo, it would be providing some added air at that point.
3. I've also driven with a S360(non-wastegated, of course). That's a pretty big turbo; down low, it really doesn't feel any different. Except, actually, once I got the .63 housing on it, that was actually giving me boost far lower in the rev range.
I've also driven it with the charge air boots disconnected; it's pretty interesting. Again, you don't really notice the (lack of) power until hitting 1800+ RPM or 30+MPH; down low, it doesn't make much difference as far as I can tell.
On top of all that, I can't believe that any IDI-sized turbo would make more restriction down low than the stock exhaust system.