Tuning with unknown injectors?

[Bucket]

Hi All. I have an 05 Ram 2500 5.9 manual truck with about 145k on the clock. I have tuning experience in the gas turbocharged and NA world, but never with diesel. I would dearly like to tune my truck but some one big unknown holds me back.

I am at least the third owner and the 2nd owner since the following modifications which were made for Hotshot hauling.
-Aftermarket injectors of unknown size / brand.
-Aftermarket turbo of unknown size. It is a Borg Warner. For the life of me I can't make the numbers on the compressor side match anything anyone sells.
-Smarty S-06 tuner.

I have a dyno graph from the previous owner that shows the truck at over 1100ft-lbf torque and 585hp.

How hard is it going to be to tune without knowing anything about the installed injectors? I have been wanting to ditch the Smarty and go with HPT, but this is really holding me back.

Thanks,

Buck

[Jim P]

Why is it holding you back? Just adjust the tuning to reach what you want out of it.

[Bucket]

In my experience, being able to accurately enter injector values such as latency and flow rate are very important to the tune. There are ways to fudge the tune around unknown injectors, but I would prefer to begin from a good data point.

I will probably jump in and do it. I was hoping someone might have an idea what injectors would support 585hp so I would have a better idea.

[Jim P]

Unless they are BBI injectors good luck on getting any information as far as flow rates and latency or any other information on them. Don?t let lack of knowing exactly what type of injectors they are hold you back. Some companies will tell you they flow x amount at 100MPa and whether they are VCO or SAC nozzles but that is all you will get out of them. Rest is on you. There is no perfect world in the diesel tuning community. Everyone that sells tuning experiments and learns, you are gonna have to do the same.

[Bucket]

Got it.

[Dom_c13b]

If you're around 585ish with a smarty turned up I would guess them to be around 60hp Injectors. Real common size for replacements. Hard to tell, but with those numbers there's nothing wild done to the truck. Start with a stock tune and work your way up.

[Bucket]

Thank you.

[Hardrvin]

Gas and diesel are quite a bit different.

One thing to keep in mind, instead of ignition timing, you’re going to play with fuel timing.

Forum has been great help, some really helpful people here. Start dabbling and you’ll pick it up.

[Jim P]

That?s the best thing to do, start playing with it. Datalog and see where things run at during operation and make changes in the areas it?s running in and see what it does.

[Bucket]

Will do. I got the tuner Friday. Going to ditch the Smarty and start tomorrow.

[Jim P]

Just make small changes and only change one thing at a time as you learn. If you change a pile of stuff at once and get bad results you?ll be chasing your tail trying to figure out what caused the bad results.