Houston TX LSTDR turnout & pics

[Archive]

We had an awesome gathering of Cummins powered
RAMS this past Sunday in North Houston.
Everyone met in the parking lot behind
the Cracker Barrel off I-45 and Airtex,
and bs'd for about an hour, hoods open
on almost every truck, bombing hints and
tips, stories and suggestions were the
main topic of every conversation.
After a little cold-soak, we all went inside
for a great breakfast together at the Cracker
Barrel.
Back outside for some more parking lot BS!
TX Ram had an Edge EZ as a test loaner,
some bombing by Shrimpy on Julio's 1st gen
fuel pump, and joyrides in Mike (MDW's) Red Ram (look out, HVAC! ) Dean (WeirCummin)
brought along some exhaust housings, turbine
asseblies, and an HX-40 for us to look
at, and a truely KILLER turbo assembly that
had a section cut out for viewing the insides
(perfect paperweight!) I got a couple dozen
digital images that will be posted on the
LSTDR Site in a couple of days (thanks Gitchesum!)
Joe P.(Cabntbldr) also had his digital camera
and I'm sure a lot of his images will be on
the site as well.

The weather was kinda cool with broken clouds
during the first part of the day. About 12 of
us played Convoy and headed to Pearland for
our dyno session. Fortunately nobody got
into trouble, since there was a bit of cuttin
up along the way!
While we were waiting for the owner to show
up (he made us wait almost 2 hours!) some
guys with Mustangs started to show up which
made it even more interesting! I got some great
video of MDW torturing his rear tires. I
thought my burnout in my duallie was cool..
until he started in 3rd gear and shifted into
4th..smoke was a-rollin out of his fenders!
(I'm working on converting the video to an
Mpeg for downloading).
The dyno was a tight fit for all the trucks.
The only way to get the QC duallies to fit
was to remove the rear bumper, tailgate and
outside rear tires, since the platform that
lifts the vehicle up to the rollers was
designed for cars, not our trucks!
Three RAMs got on the dyno. First up was
243's truck. His results are posted in this
thread: Lone Star TDR meets the dyno .

Gitchesum got his rig on the dyno after
removing the bumper, tailgate and outside
duals. I cannot recall his numbers, but his
12-valver was spinning that dyno hard!
Ray was up next and only had to remove the
outside duals since his truck is not a QC.
I cannot recall his numbers either; maybe
someone will post them in this thread later.

It started to rain at about 3pm, so the
crowd stared to thin out. All-in-all, it
was a great turnout. Everyone had a blast
and nobody broke anything or got in trouble
with the Law! What else could you hope
for?

LSTDR Group Photo-great turnout!

I am looking forward to the next one, guys!

-chris

[This message has been edited by Chris N5CWM (edited 01-25-2001).]