I see a lot of guys on forums and on social media talking about the BD Killer Grid Heater kit and as someone that deals with a lot of these 6.7 RAMs, I have to call BS. The BD kit doesn’t actually fix anything. It’s a band-aid on a problem that can still kill your Cummins. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be on the hook for an engine if one of my customers comes back with a failed BD kit.
The issue is that the kit only addresses the vertical bolt that fails, not the horizontal one. Yes, this bolt fails too. Here’s some examples.
Here’s what $200 gets you. A handful of parts, one of which can kill your Cummins. There’s a little M6 screw that we need to discuss. When assembled, it’s threaded horizontally into the bus bar.
Looking at the photo below, you’ll notice two non-conductive washers separating it from the body of the heater assembly. The screw’s job is to keep the bus bar sandwiched against the heater element. 220+ amps travels directly from the bus bar to the heater grid. However, if this screw backs out by even a single thread, the screw will carry all 220+ amps from the bus bar to the heater. How does BD plan to keep this screw from backing out, arcing, melting, and falling into the intake manifold? Threadlocker.
Everyone knows that when you want to remove threadlocker, you heat it. Well, this screw is threaded into a heater. This entire assembly heats then cools, over and over, while vibrating!
I mean… come on…
I found this video from Banks and it backs up a lot of what I’m saying for months. Say what you will about Banks, but the guy knows his stuff. The video talks about the engine vibration, the thread lock being an issue, the horizontal bolts – everything.
My friend Colton, a Diesel mechanic in Fort McMurry, turns away customers who come in with a BD kit. He says, “Sorry. I can’t afford to buy you a new engine if this kit fails.” He was laughing about it last night.
“I’ve gotten into arguments with some of them. They want the cheapest solution. I’m not gonna risk my business over it.”
Colton Lawrence, Lawrence Diesel
Anyone with any real experience with these trucks should know better than to install the BD kit. It being cheaper than the Monster Ram isn’t a good excuse – the BD kit is still overpriced for what it is – and the Banks Monster Ram is under $750 now.
I stick to the Banks Monster Ram because completely removes the grid heater and both of its bolts, eliminating the possibility of failure. True, the Banks kit comes with less heater power than the stock grid heater, but even where I’m at in Colorado, at altitude, my customers haven’t had issues starting with the one Banks 750w coil heater. The new version of the Monster Ram has provisions for two 750w heaters. And, they just released two new add-on heater kits for those in super cold climates like Colton up there in Canada.
If you’re working on your own truck and you want to risk a failed engine, then sure, maybe the BD kit makes sense. When it’s a customer’s truck, you’d be an idiot to install this time-bomb.