Well, I have a 2011 250SD, with 17K miles, up to this point no problems, love the truck BUT, now the engine light has come on. Last friday had it in the Ford shop for 5 hours, said they could not find anything wrong. Light was out, but came back on today.

Is there anything from Ford out there that maybe the Tech's don't know about that to fix this issue.

I made a trip from Illinois to the west coast last year pulling a 5th wheel camper 11000lbs no problems. Stopped in Colorado for oil change and they performed the flash upgrade which I have not seen any difference afterwards.

 

If the CEL is on when you arrive, any Ford tech that knows anything can pull the code and begin identifying the cause. If it does not store a code and then the CEL goes out...

Regards

 

+1

And If you have a code reader, (they can be had for cheap... as little as $50) you can do it too, It isn't magic, You take the device, pull the code, and then do a google search on it with what your truck is IE "P0191 Jeep Wrangler 4.0" Or "P0187 Ford F350 6.7" and see what others have had come up with that code. Usually some one will have had the issue first... Can be a different story with such a new engine, but it will head you down the rite path.

 

Took my kid's '02 Sport Trac to O'Reily's a week ago because the CEL was on and the little truck's registration was about to expire. Was going to ask them to just read the code for me. Guy at the counter was swamped and asked me if I knew how to use the code reader. I said, "Sure" confidently (I was lying) and he handed me the unit and waved me off. Two minutes later it was plugged into the OBDII port under the dash and I followed the LCD's instructions. Whala! Two codes appeared. P0170 and P0171. Right and left bank lean. I'm thinking, "And this means what to me?"

So I'm sitting in the parking lot on my Android phone and I Google "2002 sport track P0170" and I land on a thread on... you guessed it, FTE. Read about 10 posts into it and the common theme seems to be bad PCV valve. The thread included a photo of it's location. [INSERT SOUND OF ANGELIC CHORUS HERE]. $4.97, 5 minutes later and one PCV valve replaced. Turn on ignition and CEL light flickers and goes out. [REPEAT SOUND OF ANGELIC CHORUS HERE]

The dealer probably would have wanted $300 and the car for a day. I think I'm just going to pick up one of those readers and shove it in my tool box.

On another note, is there any question as to why I am a happy SUPPORTER of FTE?

 

Lol, case and point! For those codes it could have also been o2 sensors.

 

Would be handy for the sake of simply documenting the codes in a case like this where the CEL isn't on for the dealer.

 

Well, went to service dept. this morning, spoke about the information onn this site, Service folks claimed they did not know anything about what I was sharing with them.

However about an hour later SM came to me and said they had ordered a NEW DEF tank and that should correct my CEL. I guess we will see.

Thanks to FTE.

As a side note, I also knew that if all else failed I could go to Federal Court to settle the problem. Before I get flamed on that and everybody speaks to the Lemon Law., I live in the State of Illinois (the land of corruption) , several years ago I strayed to a GMC with their diesel. For a year and a half this things would not run they could not fix it to run. I found a site/system that would represent me for free and off we went to Federal Court. Since that year GM had record profits, the Judge was more than willing to rule in my favor. So GM ended up funding a '99 Power stroke. Everything from then up til now has been really good.

 

Glad to hear they came up with a diagnosis. Be sure to follow up with us as to what the actual code was and if the new tank fixed the problem!

 

My CEL light came on during a 3 hour trip on the weekend. No power loss, engine ran fine, all was normal except light. Drove home with no problems. Monday morning on way to work, light was off, later that day it came back on. Went to dealer and it was a bad DEF pump, said it was only the second one that they had seen. Replaced pump, all is well.

 

So a couple of questions on these readers. Can they be used on any vehicle with an OBD (1 and/or 2)? I have a couple of plow trucks that are getting long in tooth and have had the CEL come on? And like Epic angelically said above, I want to hear the harps too!!

What brands are considered to be good? What would you stay away from?

 

if you have a lap top this one works well

OBDCOM Diagnostic Systems for ALL vehicles

 

Have you actually tried this one on the 2011 6.7 ??? Thanks

 

The one with the best reputation is AutoEnginuity. They have enhanced support for all manufacturers, as well as all the generic codes and sensor readings.

This allows you to read live data as well as record it. You have to pay extra for the Ford enhanced data, but it's well worth it considering how much functionality it has. This scan tool will read all sorts of trouble codes, not just standard P-XXX codes.

I wouldn't get a generic scan tool for these trucks, as they have too many specialized codes that many generic tools can't read. For example there are a series of codes with a letter instead of a number as a last digit; I think the generic tools can not read these.

Looks like a decent low-priced tool, but it says nothing about enhanced data. The generic stuff doesn't even cover one tenth of the data that is available with the enhanced data.

 

My first was an actron unit purchased from advanced auto parts... while you can get more advanced unit, my experiance has lead me to only needing thrpe code pulling/light reset function.. go for what you like, the acrptrons are fine units. I now also have a plx kiwi which I use with my android phone.

 

Thanks Crazy. I will check them out.