Banks Vs. BD

00:00 hi it’s Gail Banks here number of you have sent me a video from a transmission shop up in Canada BD and you’ve told me Gail you got to check this out so let’s watch it together I think it’s time for a fact check what bro what are you talking about that’s not true try it

00:23 again all right let’s see what this is all about so this is a test rig to replicate um set in the truck uh we have the set up on the frame we’ve used oh man wait a minute wait a minute what’s with this Radio Shack test rig oh this is going to be good uh all right wiring looks like to

00:52 replicate GD heater relay right out of a ram truck relay that’s uh found in a truck the OE brid CU relay found in the truck when the wait wait wait wait wait this is their killer grid heater fix kit this is a new bus bar the previous version was a flat bus bar and that was a third version that

01:15 interfered with airf flow so this is number four the flat one was three there were two before that this is in less than a year what’s wrong with number one and number two we know number three has an airf flow problem and now we’ve got this one if you’re one of the guys that

01:38 discovered what was wrong with one of the first three versions what are you Lab Rats are they killing Lab Rats I don’t know what’s going on here okay we get stuck on on the Greek heater itself like extreme testing the killer grid heater okay they’re calling this extreme testing of the killer grid

02:06 heater kit whatever well there’s a grid heater doing quite well they’ve got some kind of fan blowing air on it test completed the really this guy died wait a minute so they they killed the yes gr they d what’s with the smoke so that’s good actually that’s really good oh it’s good

02:35 oh wait a minute wait a minute it’s good that they killed the relay they’re celebrating the relay failure what in the hell is with these clowns they shouldn’t be clicking like not so the K oh it shouldn’t be clicking like that there’s smoke the thing is chattering oh my God wait a minute

03:07 what’s with the end of the bus bar yes yeah wow yeah they’re melting their own bus bar whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa they’re melting the bus bar they’re celebrating the relay failure oh my God you guys better take this off you better get the this

03:41 video off of Facebook or wherever you’ve got it my god oh wonder what’s happening to the heat treat in that screw let’s see if they talk about melting the bus bar can feel the heat coming out that oh you can feel the heat coming out of it oh boy I’ll bet that’s what it

04:02 does ah you know what I need to see that again this is too good let me scroll back here all right here we go yeah I love the way that kind of you can see the smoke is that coming from the relay behind the setup I don’t know the relay this guy died oh this guy the

04:32 relay okay so the relay died before the before the relay died before the grid heater died so that’s good actually that’s really good yeah I can he clicking there’s it’s broken now it’s dead oh my God it shouldn’t be clicking like that so the killer grid heater will out oh the killer grid heater will

04:50 Outlast the relay I doubt that a melt incipient meltdown whoa okay okay I’ve had enough I have one of these is it designed as poorly as I think it is let’s go have a look this is what $200 gets you right here so where does this stuff go on the engine well it replaces the bus bar it replaces this

05:23 bolt which is known to fail and fall off into the engine and this bolt well we’ll get to that later here’s here’s a better look at where the heater plate goes on the cylinder head attached to the heater plate is the intake horn Ram whatever you want to call it it’s the lousiest

05:42 flowing piece of intake Hardware I’ve ever seen on any engine if it were any worse it would be a plug I’ve cut it away so you can see the intake bolt problem you can also see how the airflow pattern is strained by this dip in the in this outer wall wall which clears

06:01 stock injection lines but here’s the culprit here’s the bolt we’re talking about when that Bol are nut drops into the intake manifold and dances down and ENT cylinder number six ping you just spent about 10 grand to as much as 30 grand if you totally kill the engine so

06:20 when your stock bolt or your BD screw falls out into the intake manifold the engines clined on a 5° angle and even at idle it’s vibrating 30 times a second this guy is going to dance its way down the manifold and ultimately get to cylinder number six which is way back here and

06:46 boom you just spent $10,000 minimum on engine damage and just to add insult to injury they added an Air Flow Restriction so as the air flows through the grid heater nicely around the stock bus bar with a BD bus bar the air flow impacts the bus bar so how bad is that

07:08 well we measured it on the flow bench at 55 lb per minute of airflow which is your later model like hoos stuff like that you lose 9 and 3/4% of the Boost but automatically the ECU signals the variable geometry in the turbine housing and speeds the turb turbo up some more

07:31 to compensate will you notice probably not but the variable geometry veins in the turban are closing adding back pressure to maintain the Boost you’ve lost with this BD bus bar bar and right there you’ve just lost fuel economy and just when you thought it couldn’t get

07:50 any worse this cross-hatching grabs the air as it flows by and that’s another form of boost loss right there so now you know the failure modes with a stock setup the BD kit is supposed to fix that to give you a little failure analysis on the BD kit I’m going to bring in Quinn

08:11 Smith our mechanical engineering lead so Quinn what did you find well we found a few things so BD have replaced the most common failure Point by introducing this single piece bus bar this big steel bus bar and they’ve got a blind hole in there and what they’ve done is they’ve

08:29 replaced that M6 Fastener with an M8 Fastener now that’s carrying all of the current for the grid heater but it is a larger cross-section and it’s not at risk of melting and falling off into the intake track in the same manner as the stock what they haven’t improved is this

08:44 bolt right here we know that this Fastener can fail in the stock and in the BD there’s the bolt broken right there as you can see it’s just sitting there flopping around everybody says this side doesn’t break breake well here it is right there broken this one’s broken as well on the

09:04 secondary bolt is melted right there you can see where it’s cracked off and melted so there you go so here’s seven heater grids all failed in the last few months for all the guys that like to say it’s 1 and 10,000 trucks and they don’t fail here you go we’ve got a pile of

09:19 them sitting here you can see all of them failed B have introduced a new M6 Fastener two insulating washers and they’re reusing an annular bushing that fits around round the screw thread as it passes through this portion of the casting mhm as designed that Fastener

09:37 pulls that bus bar in and sandwiches the grid heater in between the bus bar and the steel washer on the back side now here’s where the problem comes in this M6 Fastener is supplied with thread Locker pre-applied that’s a gray thread Locker it appears to be a polymeric type

09:52 likely a nylon this is a high temp thread Locker however everybody knows if you need to get a bolt out that’s got thread lock on it what do you do you heat it up that’s what you do and where are we putting that Fastener right in the midst of all of this heat and you saw how hot that bus

10:14 bar got in their video it was melting some of the surface or the bus bar itself was melting with all thread lockers as you add temperature they don’t lock as well and at a 600 RPM idle the engine is shaking 30 times a second 30 htz so you’ve got a situation here where you’ve got a lot of mass you’ve

10:36 got a little screw your vibrating it at 30 htz vibration unscrews stuff too I mean we all know that that’s why there’s safety wire we’ve got a thread locker and a hot application shaking like no tomorrow so what can happen if that Fastener starts to back out and I start

10:56 to create some daylight right here now my path of electrical current has changed instead of passing through the bus bar through that nice face contact and directly into the grid heater what I’ve done is I’ve created a situation where now all of that current has to

11:13 pass through the screw thread that’s the same way that the stock grid heater fails Shazam we’re heat cycling the screw we’re killing the heat treat or the tempering in the screw effectively in kneeling the stainless steel and reducing its strength can this screw back out and

11:37 fall into cylinder number six like the stock setup does we’ve got a strong potential here of replacing a failure point with a failure point I don’t believe these cats in a transmission shop are good mechanical engineers or good electrical engineers so here’s our solution to the

11:60 elbow and the grid heater problem here we have the stock elbow you can see the outlet Dimension and here we have the banks monster ram for comparison the stock elbow has quite a bit of loss as the air travels through it boost loss this is brutal on airf Flow the monster ram has

12:24 minimal boost loss and a huge application of rocket science to get there secondly the volume when you hit the throttle of boost air available to go instantly into the intake manifold is hugely more than with this stock piece I want to show you our Billet high flow

12:46 intake plate this completely eliminates the grid heater and is replaced by our internal coil heater which does not measurably impede the flow I know because I’ve measured it and here’s the monster ram mocked up on the cing cylinder head there is absolutely nothing to impede the air flow into the

13:09 intake ports here’s the monster ram on your cumings engine but this is the end of the airflow path not the beginning let me take you to the beginning which begins right here this is our Ram air system we take cold Ram Air off the nose of the truck into the ram air housing

13:29 through our big ass filter out of the filter and down through our duct into the compressor Inlet on the turbocharger so here you have the turbocharger compressor housing turbine housing shaft wheel assembly inside so here’s where the improvements start the stock boost

13:48 tubes and intercooler are a choke they’re much smaller they’re real restrictive and the intercooler doesn’t cool as well as this so we’ve engineered much larger boost tubes on both sides a higher cross-section charge air cooler for you compound turbo guys all banks

14:07 charge air coolers have a much higher burst pressure than any of the stalkers continue out of the intercooler into our boost tube and finally through the monster ram into the intake manifold and this is all made possible through the use of our Custom Design number one cylinder injection line

14:29 which makes the shape of the monster ram absolutely sweet and best of all it’s emissions legal in all 50 states so if you’re considering any airflow improvements I would start with a monster Rim do that first it solves three problems it prevents the grid heater bolt failure cuz it just isn’t

14:49 there anymore it improves flow and throttle response and it increases fuel efficiency you’re going to get better mileage if you keep your foot out of it and lastly it’s got my name on it hey look the transmission guys left their stuff I know where this goes