I think you might be right about this, a friend of mine has an Eco with 6000 miles on it and he hasn't had any problems yet. He doesn't run his truck hard all the time, but he gets on it more than most people would.

On a side note, I rode in his truck for awhile yesterday(in the rain) and he got on it a few times to show me how much power it has and I couldn't believe how much it goes. His truck is a Scab 4x4 with 3.31 gears and it easly blows away my 5.4 with 3.73's. He did a full throttle take off and we were up to 70 faster than any stock truck I've been in before.

 

I don't know. I did "baby" my truck for the past two weeks and about 250 miles to see if the issue would show up, but it has not.
As a result, I have averaged 19.1 mpg over those 250 miles, probably 50% highway 50% city, believe it or not. I am very surprised myself what you can do when hypermiling this truck, but I think I'll stop this insanity and have some fun again .... Not sure if I used my brakes at all during this, need to check if they still work, LOL.

 

i'm not willing to compare 250 miles over 2 weeks to 250 miles over 3.5hrs.

this problem seems to turn up with sustained driving, particularly in high humidity conditions.

i dont know if you guys are used to the vast open spaces we have here, but when we "go somewhere" we might have the cruise set at 70 for 6 or 7 hours straight, usually with only one stop to fuel or de-water, on an 8 hour drive we might stop twice, but that's it.

how many start/stops did you have in that 2 week period? I'm talking about 2. And i think that is what keeps the intercoolers "cleared out". heck, even a short drive around here is 20minutes of highway/interstate with only one start/stop .... it's pretty open for the most part.

i don't think this problem would ever turn up in a truck that only puts on 250 miles in 2 weeks ... not to offend, just that type of use does not lend itself to this type of problem, the way i see it anyway.

 

You could be right, I sure hope so. Yep, in those 250 miles (that mileage for me was low, too, for a two week period) I had significantly more stops than 2, LOL. Probably 20+.
Anyway, no problem here, and I hope it stays that way!

 

Just a couple hundred miles short of 15,000 miles on my Ecoboost...driving in all kinds of weather and conditions here in the midwest...I've never experienced this with my Ecoboost.

 

ok guys ive been doing some thinking and looking around the same theory used for air compressor lines to keep moisture out of your tools from the compressor could work if plumbed in right after the intercooler couldnt it? Check out the link the 2nd one down uses 2" fittings not totally sure thats large enough but how am i as far as theory and a starting place... Air Filter,Humid Air Filter,Air Filter Manufacturer,Air Filter from HYDINT

 

The issue is that those dessicant units cannot flow nearly enough air to work in the engine's environment. I bet the engine (at peak) requires roughly 700 to 800 CFM at full boost (assuming ecoboost maxes out at 14.7 psi). Those dessicant units can't handle anywhere near that capacity. The oil separators/dessicant filters used at my job's bus fleets are incredibly huge compared to those units and that's just for the onboard air compressors which don't flow anywhere near as much air as an engine would. However, the theory is sound, it's just that you can't find the dessicant filtration units that can flow that much air. I used to own a saturn sky before owning my 10' f150, GM added a little rubber hose on the bottom of the intercoolers. This hose was easily detacheable so you could drain out any moisture the intercooler collects real easily. I also wonder if the design of the intercooler for the EB engines encourages condensation. seems like the airflow would be really slowed near the top of the intercooler if there are no internal baffles in the end tanks. This would give the air more opportunity to sweat the moisture onto the relatively cool intercooler.

 

so essentially Ford would need to design their own water separator that would work or it would come down to making my own if i couldnt find one. Why couldn't we just drill and tap a whole in the bottom of the intercooler near the outlet pipe with a nipple to a catch pan of sorts that we would just drain periodically?

 

That would work as well. That's essentially what GM did with a rubber hose at the bottom of their intercooler (except no catch tank, just an easy to disconnect hose to drain it out), but you introduce more failure points into the intake system. If things are done right, it shouldn't be an issue. The thing is, I never had much in any way of buildup in the intercooler on that car, and the intercooler was only about 12" by 36". So it didn't have the tall rise that the ecoboosts' intercooler has. I'm wondering if the tall rise with the slower air at the top of the intercooler causes any phenomenon like more condensation. I'm betting that the slower air up top spends more time cooling, which means more opportunity for moisture to fall-out of the air. Because of the short stature and location of the pipes on the end tanks of the intercooler on my sky, air pretty much rushed evenly over the intercooler (no slow areas) so I never had much in the way of moisture buildup with that car. I'm pretty sure the big 3's HD diesel trucks tend to have the piping at the center of the intercoolers to have more even air flow and avoid a condensation issue. I know the Ram does this and I recall Chevy doing this as well. The Ford has a water to air unit so it isn't as big of a concern since the air flow through a fat core twice, very little area to flow through, so I doubt there's any relatively slow areas on the intercooler.

 

your theory washes with ford's TSB fix. IIRC, for the trucks affected, the TSB installs a shroud over the top half of the intercooler. To me this is a pretty poor fix. It may stop the problem, for the reasons you mention, but it is also reducing the efficiency of the intercooler in order to achieve that goal.

backwards thinking, in my book. the moisture problem is a sign that the intercooler is working very well. reducing efficiency of the intercooler is the wrong answer.

if one who did not drive often came in to complain about his fuel going stale in the tank(think chevy volt), would they fix that by reducing the fuel efficiency of the engine? engine uses more fuel, customer's fuel does not go stale in the tank .... fixes the problem in much the same way, IMO anyway.

I expect better.

a much better fix, and easy to implement, would be an electrically controlled drain valve. truck shuts off, drain opens to let water out. truck turns on, valve shuts to keep boost in.

this isn't rocket science.

heck, they could even have that fancy computer control the valve, and tell the truck to purge the valve under boost, which would be very effective at removing moisture.

like i said, i expect better. .. that's all

 

ok guys been working through diagrams, in theory only, on a repair for the best fix to make a repair to this with some friends who are techs at different dealerships. we are thinking that if we take the intercooler and invert it keeping it in its same current location so that the inlet is at the bottom and the outlet at the top then water build ups would stay at the bottom of the intercooler because there is not enough force to drive it upwards into the engine so it would only draw clean air with minimal moisture into the throttle body. we dont know will the boost be enough to push the water up into our outlet piping? what do yall think?

 

Yesterday we had a storm that dumped on average of 3 inches of rain per hour for several hours. Add that to the natural tidal surge that exists on the coast and you have extreme flooding.

I had to go to work yesterday since the mail seems to stop for nothing and I was literally plowing water for my entire 15 miles drive. I was going slow but made better speed when conditions permitted.

This thread had me quite concerned for my truck but I didn't experience any symptoms of any kind.

Was I lucky? Is the problem not actually that widespread? I don't know. I sure hope that a solution presents itself so everyone who has had symptoms can get a fix and those of us who haven't can get some preventative action.

 

The condensation in the intercooler isn't through water ingestion through the intake (although you can still damage a vehicle by sucking in water through the intake which is right above the driver side headlight), it's due to humidity in the air and the ability of the air to "Sweat" the water inside the intake. Seems to happen only in certain situations, most likely when humidity is high and the dew point is relatively high as well. I'm no meteorologist, so I can't dive into it any deeper than that.

 

I think this is to the point. It seems to happen when the dew point is close to the temp, not really related to moisture in the air or water intake only. That's why I have not seen this problem even in the wet NW winter here.

 

Yes sir, thanks for clearing that up but, this guy https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...-ecoboost.html had an issue while raining that presented the same symptoms as high humidity and condensation buildup.

My knowledge on the intricacies of intercoolers is sub par to carry on a fluent conversation but we have the same symptoms caused by two related sources of moisture.

This has been a great thread, I hope it stays rolling till Ford finds a fix.