So the 6.7 has been out a while now and lots of you have probably changed your air filters by now. Does anyone know why on the 6.7 Ford went back to the outdated pleated filter design? For 2003-2010 Ford used Donaldson PowerCore filters and they were a much better and longer lasting design. Those filters were averaging over 100k without replacement. Now the new 6.7 is not seeing more than 15k on a single filter in the same operating conditions. This is from a first hand experience as I'm the parts buyer for a very large private fleet. Its costing money, extra fuel and downtime! I talked with Donaldson and they said Ford may have to come up with a severe service replacement kit like they did with the 7.3 and swap it over to PowerCore. So from what I gather I am maybe not alone on this and Ford may have a solution? With all the down time and labor cost its running over $200.00 average every 15k to replace these when before we would spend $90.00 with labor and have a scheduled downtime for the truck and no loss and that was between 90k and 110k.

 

The filter is $21 through Ford. Are you saying it costs $200 to replace it or for the total maintenance?

 

It breaks down like this

Filter is $6.18
Shop Labor is an hour $ 54.20
Driver sitting around $ 38.67 an hour
The rest is an average of lost profit that truck sitting for an hour $100.95

Its the unneeded downtime that is killing us! We plan routine maintenance around slow work days and mileage to minimize cost and and stay competitive. The trucks are only planned to come in every 10,000 miles (non severe use trucks) and every 8,000 miles (severe use) .

 

Before you scream anymore about outdated practices by ford, maybe your company should figure out why it loses $200 when it takes less than $10 to buy the filter and all of 5 minutes to swap them out. I think your company is the one that is "old school".

 

And, it doesnt say to change the filter every 15K in the book either. Just like the donaldson, you have to watch the filter minder for when it is "plugged". Just looking at the dirt is not good enough. Cant tell from your above post if the filter is plugged at 15K or not.

and those donaldson filters, while nice, were a real B!tch to change out. I mean a real knuckle buster.

 

Yes filter minder is on and the filter is covered by about 1/16'' of material maybe 4-5 ounces of dirt tops. The powercore holds 56 ounces when full.

 

I broke the $200.00 down pretty well. I also was never screaming about it. You can not defend the fact going back to cheap pleated filters was a good idea in the least. Here is the benefits of the powercore design and its benefits http://www.donaldson.com/en/engine/s...ary/059806.pdf with so many companies moving towards them including the US government IDK why Ford has gone the other way?

 

Only 15,000 miles? What sort of conditions are you operating in?

I started a thread nearly a year ago when I discovered my damaged air filter that was likely caused by snow. This is what Paul said about it:

 

Man what environment are these trucks subjected to?

 

Peat dirt and lots of it. These are all line trucks that service utility lines in remote areas of CA's Delta region.It gets worse when the fan locks up and starts a dust storm under the truck and then the filter picks it right up. The peat dirt is very fine and almost looks like instant hot cocoa mix on the filter. The insides of the trucks match what the filter looks like

 

I'm going to agree with ruschejj on this one. If it takes more than 5 minutes to change out an air filter something is wrong. Also after you have factored in the driver's wages, how is that truck worth over $100 per hour?

If the 6.0 trucks were subjected to the same environment, there is no way you got 100k miles out of a Donaldson filter. I serviced 6.0 trucks that worked on construction sites every day and I guarantee you we never saw 30,000 miles before the filter minder popped.

I am not disagreeing with you on the fact that this filter design is a step back, but please be realistic with your "facts" and costs. I mean hell if you lose $200 every time you change an air filter, it must be bankrupting you with all the time you lose putting fuel in your trucks!

 

I am being very realistic with my figures. Yes it does take 5 mins to change the filter. But in order to change the filter the truck must be taken out of service and then driven in for the repair. Its all lost time and $$$ the trucks do make well over $100.00 an hour that is not hard to do. Our welding rigs tend to make over 1k an hour just sitting at the job working or not. All of the jobs these trucks are on are "Davis Bacon" projects so anyone involved is paid premium. The more more I have to spend each year is more money from the operating budget and less money in my pocket as my salary includes incentive for keeping repairs to a minimum. At the same time I will just hurt my self if I skip changing the filters and it ends up costing a new engine.

 

There are two possible reasons, one it costs less and two it works better in testing. But, what is dumb to me is how easy it is and that in the time you took to post on here you could have changed out probably two trucks air filters yourself and saved your company alot of money. Im not trying to start a fighting match but really!! You take the truck into the shop for an air filter. Do you also take it in for a tire pressure check or to get fuel put in because it takes longer to fill up the fuel tank than to switch the air filter.

 

Well first of all it's maintenance and not a repair, because there has been no mechanical failure.

Secondly I'm not sure if I would agree with Matt about it being a step back. Sure it doesn't last as long as the Donaldson units would, but the cost is FAR less. Many have told me that the Donaldson filter in the past model trucks lasted around 100,000 miles or so. If this one lasts 30,000 miles on average you're looking at replacing this $21 filter(MSRP) three times for every time you would replace a $100 once. That's nearly a $40 savings if you pay MSRP(which you shouldn't!). That's a huge operating cost reduction which would, IMHO make it a step forward!

I've driven fleet trucks before and I agree that changing filters is generally not considered operator-level maintenance. For those that I used to work for a driver's job was to drive and not work on the truck, and therefore maintenance functions cost an arm and a leg. To avoid downtime why not change the air filters when you do the oil change? It only costs you $6.18 for the part, right? I'm fairly confident you wouldn't lose an additional hour of shop time during the operation, so you'd save $194 by having this done every oil change.

How would that look for your year end bonus? Remember to give me my cut!

 

It would seem that in your environment, a pre-cleaner (similar to those shown in the Donaldson link above) would be a really beneficial addition.