That V8 tho...

[Chris GTO TT]

I think all F150’s are lobos in Mexico not just the higher trims

[aaronatstate]

I think all F150’s are lobos in Mexico not just the higher trims

Hmm. Didn't know about the Lobo. Looks like those are just higher trim F150s for the Mexican market? GM does something similar with theirs. They're called Cheyenne instead of Silverado.

Lobo's are XLTs and up. XL's are still called F150s in Mexico. It's cause Lobo is Wolf, so it has to be badass

[Jeff V.]

This probably won't come as a big surprise, but the ECU hacking community in the GM world is pretty damn small. It also doesn't help that GM has dozens of different engine and trans control modules and each one has to be approached a little differently from a hacking perspective. There's some guys that are pretty active in the Gen 3 hardware, but there's very little with the Gen 4 hardware my Hummer uses. There's basically nobody doing Gen 5 direct injection stuff.

Just figuring out exactly which values to change for a speedometer correction was a big headache. HP Tuners has a wizard to do it, but that doesn't help me find the actual values in a raw binary file. Their stuff only works with their proprietary formats.

Anyway, after a whole lot of digging and cross referencing, I figured out how GM does their factory calibrations for different wheel and tire combos. Turns out there's only 4 values you need to change.

I built a file and flashed the Hummer. Everything seems to have worked fine. Just eyeballing it against my phone's GPS, the cluster still shows ~2 mph high at 40 mph. The cluster probably has a little positive bias built into it as well, so I might actually have the calibration spot on. I tried logging the actual values with Torque, but I think there's some latency or something. The delta between GPS and OBD data was jumping all over the place. I might try logging the actual wheel speeds next and see how that checks out. For a first effort, I'm calling it a success.

[Jeff V.]

Did I ever mention the muffler fell the fuck off like, a year ago? I was driving on the interstate near our old office, and the exhaust started sounding weird. I got back and found the muffler hanging by a shred of rust. Pulled it off with my bare hands. I'm so lucky it didn't come off on the road and hit someone else.

Anyway, my plate is expired and I need to do a "safety inspection". They're normally a joke here. But I'm sure they'll fail me for having a bare pipe where the muffler should be.

I'm trying to decide if I want to make an attempt to buy one and weld it on myself, or if I should just pay someone. I can probably get it attached to the pipe, but I feel like I'm just going to burn through it when I try to attach the hanger pieces. It needs at least two. Probably three if I try to get it back to OEM.

If I do it myself, I'm going to hack out the rear resonator while I'm at it. It actually sounds halfway good with the muffler missing. I think with a resonator delete and a free flow muffler it'll sound pretty good.

What do you guys think?

[aaronatstate]

Have an exhaust shop do it. Probably do it for like $150

[Duck Vader]

Just be careful of drone

[Jeff V.]

Yeah. I'll probably just fuck it up.

[Jeff V.]

Just gonna have Midas do it for $200.

[ChargerX3]

[Jeff V.]

So much for that idea. Guess I'm doing it myself.

Midas can't find a V8 muffler for it. I told them to just put a 3.7 or equivalent generic one on there. They can do that, but it'll cost $700 now.

Fuck that.

[Chris GTO TT]

well that's dumb

[Jeff V.]

Either they straight up lied to me when I first called them, or it needed a lot more work than they expected. I get that, to a point anyway. The flange was in rough shape, and they said the clamp and gasket where it turns into a Y needed to be replaced. But how did we get from $220 to $690 (before tax)? What on earth were they basing that original quote on?

Vira won't be driving for a while after her surgery. I can drive her car or the Corvette while I figure this out. The late fee for my plate is pretty trivial. Maybe it'll be a good learning experience.

[DCIV]

What the heck.


Coop

[vr4]

About right for Midas.

[ChargerX3]

Id weld you up if we were closer. Any car buddies nearby with a welder? Small shop might be worth hitting up as well.

[Jeff V.]

I have a welder. I just didn't feel like dealing with it.

[ChargerX3]

I get that. Well depending on your comfort level, maybe you give it a go?

[Jeff V.]

As I said above, I plan to. It can be down for a while once we get back from NY. I can take my time and try to do it right.

[Jeff V.]

I wasn't kidding about taking my time. I've really been struggling to find fucks to give about this. Today I finally got down there and started taking it apart. There are two nuts on the flange on one side, and the other side is a slip fit with a clamp.

The two nuts snapped right off. I barely put any effort into it. That's probably a good thing since they were in a pretty awkward place.

The clamp side actually held up a bit better. The nut came off, but the actual adjuster part was still rusted solid. I got it to slide off the downpipe though.

Everything else was just rubber hangers. Those came apart easily enough. But the whole assembly is trapped by different parts of the frame and the fuel tank. I am not dropping that tank again. Especially for this.

There's a ton of room to get a sawsall around the silencer. I was thinking of deleting that anyway. If I cut that off, it'll basically split the whole thing in half and might give me the maneuverability I need to get the y-pipe section. Then I can replace the studs and add some flanges for when I go to put it all back together.

It sounds pretty mean running open downpipes.

[Chris GTO TT]

Still moving faster than me and my WRX