Trip with the Terminator by William

The time came for me to upgrade the High Pressure Oil Pump on my 7.3L PowerStroke Diesel. While I would have loved to do a modification like this on my own, I knew best to leave it to a professional in this case. A phone call later I made plans to hook up with Joey Omlin of Terminator Engineering out in California. I’ll spare the boring details, but Joey builds and modifies High Pressure Oil Pumps for 7.3 PowerStrokes. His most recent creation is the T-500. I’ll get more into that later.

Thankfully Joey offered to pick me up at the airport. Being a quick trip, this saved me some money as well. Time being of the essence we quickly got to work. Joey is pretty secretive about his stuff, so these are the pictures that he approved for me to show.

A quick warning as well, don’t try this at home. This is NOT a how-to guide on modifying your pump. Many of the steps are not shown here, nor will they be shown. This is a very quick overview. This is also not an HPOP install guide.

Here is my pump on the bench at Joey’s. These things get nasty just from normal use, Yuch! I probably should have cleaned it up better.

A healthy wash in the parts washer will take care of that really quick.

A picture with the seal removed and then out comes the snap ring.

Back cover snap ring is now removed as well and then some more internals  are removed.

The internals are pressed out. This is another one of those times where I warn you not to do this yourself, you could easily damage your pump.

Stock internals now out of the pump. If you have never saw the inside of a pump before, now you know what they look like. Now, where is my 6 s.. I mean 7 shooter. Some new parts are all installed here and not pictured.

Reassembled internals. Then the internals are being pressed back into the housing. This is another one of those really easy to screw things up moment and another reason to leave it to somebody who knows what they are doing.

New bearing being pressed in. Then back cover is reinstalled and snap ring to hold it in.

New front seal installed and off to the bead blaster for some prettiness and a good looking finished product.

Every pump is branded and given a Serial Number. That way Joey can keep track of every pump he makes so he knows where its been, what group of production it is in and so on. Very smart idea.

And now to apply… Oh of course he just HAD to be out of stickers.

It was a great trip out to Joey’s. I got to learn a lot about High Pressure Oil Systems and got to check out his projects and help a bit.

 

Now for some install pictures.

A tip for cleaning up the front bolt cover for the pump. I just got the sander out and used the vice. It worked really well.

It made an excellent beer coaster while installing.

Its an 18mm socket. I know people forget this one so I thought I’d throw it in there. Lots of people talk about the washer falling it. As far as I know, it cannot go anyplace. I don’t think you’ll want to fish it out of there either, so pay attention when pulling this out. Pretty strait forward.

I installed the IPR on the bench. Made it so much easier. There are torque specs for the IPR, if you want to apply them in this situation, the bench is going to be the easiest place. I used the snug method. This is a part that doesn’t need to be arm-stronged.

Installed pictures. Kinda self explanatory there.

Getting ready to RTV the front cover and put in place, boy is it a pain to get it lined up. Everything is in the way down there. Not fun! Have some paper towels around to clean up the mess your going to make.

 

This project was done over a month ago and to show what the sticker looks like, Joey sent me a picture of a finished pump with a sticker on it completely assembled. This is a Super Duty pump, notice the HPOP fittings.

And for some fun, a randomly approved picture from a project he is working on that a few people are waiting on.

Oh boy is that thing pretty!!!!!

Dealing with Joey was excellent. I’d like to thank him for all the info he shared with me on the project. I was quite surprised he was okay with doing this. If your looking for an upgrade to your 94-97 7.3, or your Super Duty 99-03 7.3 for more performance, this modification will upgrade your 15° HPOP to a 17° and make it flow better. There are some other things that happen to the pump as well, but those are secrets, so you’ll just have to believe me and the other users of Terminator pumps that it works. The pump performs great and has no troubles keeping up with my injectors now. For the Super Duty guys, this gives you the flow mods and the other new mods for the pump, so don’t count yourself out.

Terminator Engineering also makes dual pump systems for people looking to make more power with their 7.3 PowerStroke. Dual systems are 2 modified HPOP’s, paired up, that will produce more oil volume than a single pump.

The T-500 is also affordable as well. $449 for the upgrade to your pump. You just send it in, and he upgrades your pump. There are other options available as well for you and that is something you would have to discuss with him. Joey is easy to deal with and has a great product and stands behind it.

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7.3 PSD Fuel Mod by William

The 94-97 7.3 Power Stroke Diesels are equipped with a mechanical fuel pump and somewhat archaic fuel regulation system. It works good, but when you have things involving springs, they sometimes tend to get weak with age. There is a fix for this, lets go over it.

 

This is probably the cheapest modification you can do to your truck. It’s simple and effective.

First we need to start the truck up and let it idle down into a normal idle to measure the fuel pressure off the fuel bowl. These trucks are equipped with a Schrader valve for doing this. Grab an old stick style tire gauge you wont mind destroying and take the cap off the Schrader valve. Throw on some eye protection for this as well, fuel might come out the end of your gauge.

Hold it on their tight and get a reading. Double check your readings just in case.

If your in the 55-70PSI range, this modification is not necessary. If you still want to continue if your in the 50-60PSI range, it can still be beneficial depending on how weak your spring is.

Shut the truck off and get the tools out. We will need a 3/4 inch socket and a wrench to turn it. As well, we will need a magnet to pull the pieces out.

For quality of photo purposes from this point on, it will be demonstrated with the Fuel Bowl out of the truck. You do not have to take the fuel bowl out to do this mod, but I had mine out to clean it, so I took some pictures to demonstrate further.

 

 

The big brass nut on the right side of the fuel bowl is what we are after. Make sure you have the socket seated on it properly, because we don’t want to strip this out.

Break the nut loose and unscrew it the rest of the way by hand. There is a spring behind here, we don’t want it jumping out on us and having problems with ordering a new spring, because that can be kinda difficult.

 

 

Behind the brass nut there is a spring. Use a magnet to pull the spring out and hopefully the collar the spring fits in will come out with it as well. If it does not. Use the magnet to pull that out as well. Just a note here, be sure your magnet is clean. We don’t want that stuff sticking to the fuel pressure regulator parts and making it into your injectors.

Here you can see the parts that regulate the fuel pressure. Just a spring and this collar the spring fits in.

Now, we need a metal BB. They are really easy to obtain from that neighbor kid who keeps shooting your privacy fence up. Just go over there and give him a noogie. Then take some of his BB’s and run home.

 

 

Alright, this is our shim for the spring. We insert the BB into the collar, and then we insert the spring in after it.

We then carefully insert the assembly back into the Regulator on the fuel bowl. No picture here, to hard to hold camera and insert the parts in at the same time. Here is a picture of what it looks like inside though.

Carefully note the Nipple on the end of the Brass nut. (Yes, I used the same picture twice.) It is critical that you get this lined up with the spring. If the assembly is in correctly, this should be easy.

Replace the brass nut squarely with the regulator, and turn backwards till the threads line up, then finger tighten the nut back into place. Throw the wrench back on and snug it up good. No need to He-Man it back tight.

 

 

Now deal with the neighbor kids dad and explain to him why you took his kids BB’s and gave him a Noogie and how he shoots up your privacy fence. Drink a beer and watch the kid get a whoopin from his dad.

Alright, now that drama is all over and everything is back together, let’s start the truck back up and check for our new fuel pressure. Same way as before. Note, if you did not clean your Tire Gauge out, I find it pretty easy to clean it out by checking your tire pressure on your truck. Not sure if fuel in the gauge will effect readings any. But we are double checking anyways when measuring fuel pressure so, whatever.

If you are in the 60-70PSI range, your doing really good. Slightly over 70PSI is alright, but too much fuel pressure is bad. I would not suggest leaving the mod in if its over 75PSI. 65PSI is about optimum for our trucks. If you want to find other things to fit in there to shim it differently, go right ahead, just remember what materials your using and if they will get stuck in that collar. You don’t want that.

Close the hood and have fun with the cheapest mod you can do to your Mid 90’s PowerStroke Diesel!

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