The More Fuel, The More Waste Heat Part 3. Preventing The Exhaust Manifold From Cracking

Fernando DeMoura
March 2019

I’ve worked on a few projects with some owner operators who run marine HK cams and injectors whose goal is to run a Series 60 between 700hp and 900hp. That’s a lot of fuel and a lot of heat to deal with. One of these owner operators is on his forth exhaust manifold and he asked me why and what he can do about it.

The three-piece exhaust manifold used on trucks is the first component that’s exposed to exhaust gas that isn’t protected by the coolant system. The marine TK60 and marine HK60 Series 60 are designed to deal with all that heat and have a one-piece exhaust manifold with a water jacket. It doesn’t stop there however…the exhaust side of the turbo also has a water jacket and some vessels even have a “wet” exhaust after the turbo to further cool things down.

Marine applications have the luxury of water to water cooling and that’s much more efficient then water to air cooling which is what nearly all other Series 60 applications rely on, including trucks.

So even if you could get the marine exhaust manifold and turbo to fit in a truck, you’d still need one really, really, big radiator to cool your coolant back down.

If cutting back the fuel isn’t an option, then the most practical solution in most cases is a thicker aftermarket exhaust manifold with more thermal mass then the factory manifold.

Have you ever crawled underneath a truck in the middle of winter and pull an ECM only to have one of those little blue rubber mounts fall off and get lost in the snow? I have and if it’s happened to you it’s likely you had the same thought I did when it first happened to me. Are these rubber donuts really necessary? There are 7 more holding the ECM to the block and my fingers are cold.

The photos in this article show what can happen if you give in.

Nearly all ECM cases are made out of aluminum. The problem with aluminum is that it’s soft and when it comes in contact with a bolt the bolt wins. The vibration isolator mounts protect the ECM case from coming in direct contact with the mounting bolts. I did a DDEC case transplant last week on a P23519308 DDEC IV because of how much damage the mounting bolts did by coming in direct contact with the ECM case.

Fernando DeMoura

Diesel Control Service

412-327-9400

www.dieselcontrolservice.com

Captions:

If these mounts were installed, this wouldn’t have happened.

This was the only mounting point that was preventing the ECM from falling off.

​The More Fuel, The More Waste Heat Part 3. Preventing The Exhaust Manifold From Cracking

The More Fuel, The More Waste Heat Part 3. Preventing The Exhaust Manifold From Cracking