Thread: Time to upgrade the TD5.

Originally Posted by Tombie

Nice list..

But ceramic coat the pipe, don't wrap it

Okay Tombie... you have me curious....why not wrap it???

Was looking to wrap down to where the piupe goes horizontal.....

Originally Posted by pohm66

Okay Tombie... you have me curious....why not wrap it???

Was looking to wrap down to where the piupe goes horizontal.....

Simply - Rust

The wrapping holds water and sludge against the piping causing damage.

The TD5 on short runs doesn't dry it out enough.

OK... thanks....

What's your thoughts on turbo heat shield covers again to keep engine bay temps down....

We’ll I haven’t got a Dico TD5 but a TD5 110 (2001). I’m not towing but was looking for more torque better economy or no worse. Importantly I also wished to enhance the longergivity of the engine and components with any modifications I do.

I also believe that the average person will not pick/recognise a 10% increase in HP. Going from 100 HP to 110 HP; a lot of placebo in many modifications.

One of the first mods I did was a chip upgrade and that certainly was a noticeable difference. Whether you get the “advertised” increase without before and after dyno’s? But my experience is their is a noticeable performance HP and torque improvement.

After I did mine I found that my fuel consumption improved about ½ L Per 100k’s? I do a lot of Sydney traffic driving so I believe the torque aided this improvement? I also found on the freeway the Def was more responsive and also up hills seemed to be a gear higher??

I removed the cat converter and the center muffler. Sounded a lot better. “Seemed” to improve performance (Placebo?) fuel economy no recordable difference.


I haven’t done an intercooler upgrade so other than the above I haven’t done any modes to alter the engines performance.

Crank case breather. Removed this and vented to outside. EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) removed along with removing the butterfly valve in the air intake. No noticeable effect. Now there is no hot contaminated air entering the air intake at all.


Engine mods. Following advice from the forum I modified the exhaust manifold ground out the webbing didn’t elongate the bolt holes but enlarged to 11m from memory the center to 10mm for the increased stud size.

I added a gearbox oil cooler to ensure the gear box is able to work hard and keep cool.

I increased the oil capacity of the transfer case to ensure the transfer case could maintain temp while working hard.

I removed the water cooler from the EGR system and rerouted the coolant pipes to reduce the number of joins and also at the same time it standardised a number of pipe sizes. At the same time reduced the workload on the radiator.

I’m now looking to exhaust wrap the exhaust /engine pipe in particular to reduce the cabin/engine bay temp. Some say this increases performance see first paragraph.

Just my2c worth