I tell ya that looks rough. I suppose I'm lucky. 162k on original tank. No issues. I was in the tank right after i bought the truck and had a few off spots but that's it. Two years later and still no issues. Mine is a F350 cab chassis not a 450 though.

 

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...VDFSRV&fsscr=0

Here is an interesting video. This goes back to a comment you made TooMany. The vent. I have not looked at this at all. According to this guy a short vent tube (like the one I have) sits in a depression (like I have on my tank) and that this depression fills up with water and dirt (yes it does) and the vent sucks this stuff down into the tank. Ford has come out with a longer hose that relocates the vent out of this area. It dang sure better not be something this simple. We carry dirt, sand, 8/9/10 gravel, everything in the back of our dump bed and yes stuff falls through some cracks right on top of the tank. The sending unit cap and vent are only as clean as they are because the tank was painted two weeks ago, I pressure washed all the dirt off, wiped it all down, brushed any remaining loose stuff that might have been under the old sending unit cover off and then installed a new sending unit. The video says this area gets full of water, mud, dirt and debris. He is absolutely correct about that. Certainly, crap isn't being sucked back into my tank through that short pipe. I thought that thing looked sealed/capped off. I will have a close look tomorrow. If that is where stuff is being sucked into the tank I'm going to be really irritated.

Got the new ficum board in, have 48v running now but the truck is still missing under acceleration. It still takes 4 seconds to start cold. Idles smoothly, runs along smoothly but is missing when accelerating hard. Bad injector, bad fuel pressure regulator. Is there any way to hook up some sort of electrical reader that can tell if an injector is not working and which one? There are no CELs. M1911

 

Seems I've read your truck has a polymer tank and if so you won't have these delaminating issues. Actually, I've never seen any delaminating in our tanks to begin with. Just rust/dirt/something. I'm not sure that stuff on the filters is rust. What do you guys think it looks like? Mud from landscaping dirt? We threw those filters away. Now I wish I had taken a very close look at that stuff to determine exactly what it might have been. Our tank was rusty and every two months we removed the sending unit and wiped it out, getting all the dirt, rust, water, whatever might have been in it and it still screwed up the filters/injectors.

I'm going to look at that vent thing first thing in the morning. I wondered what that was. Ford has never changed ours over to a longer hose. M1911

 

That's what I was surmising. I didn't remember a TSB for that.

Remember I grew up on a farm so I understand very well what collects up there. Lord I hope it's as simple as that for you. It's not a cap, it's a cover over the vent. The F250/350 has a similar situation which now that I'm thinking of it I changed back in 2005 when I pulled the tank down to Harpoon it. I also changed the balance tube setup, which the 450/550 doesn't have.

Many people believe all the tanks are sealed systems, but that's only true of the higher volatility gas tanks, diesel tanks are atmospherically vented.

With a TSB, a dealer who is having tank issues should have known about that. So should have a FSE coming in to assist with warranty work.

 

Nope mine is original metal but in the last post you talked about the vent tube.......would make me wonder for sure. I blanked out as well that i have a regular bed on mine keeping it more protected than yours with the dump bed.
First few months i had the truck i did have a problem with water in fuel which i haven't had after i emptied the tank and had the bed put on.
Pic is before the truck bed put on.

 

My son and I were going over the tank the other day and he was showing me all the dirt on top of the tank. He told me he had a sheet of thin plywood he put on there sometime to keep everything off the top of the tank. Said it got covered up with junk. No problem I though. The tank is sealed, what would that hurt? I do remember looking up at the bottom of the steel dump bed and there is about a 3/16" wide gap between the sheets of steel plate that make up the bed. Everything falls through that crack, water, sand, dirt....I never even though about that short pipe being a vent. My memory of it is it looked like a grey pipe with a solid cap on it. Now that I see the recess that it sits in, every night when the tank cools and draws air in it could be drawing in water, muddy water, sand and water if the depression is filled with water. And why wouldn't it be.

In one of the videos there was a good picture of the lining coming off the inside of the tank. It was a silver lining that looked like perhaps aluminum foil had been lightly glued to the inside of the tank and then someone had begun peeling sharply angled pieces of it off leaving the pieces in the bottom of the tank. I have never seen anything inside our tanks that looks like that. Like I said....I've never seen anything I called a lining inside our tanks. They all looked like plain old rusted steel to me.

There is another guy in the line of videos, looks like a Ford tech, he makes some really good videos regarding ficum, fuel pressure, oil pressure, oil pressure sending unit, rough running engine with loose wiring harness under the valve cover....fixed with a quarter coin. He hasn't addressed the vent issue though. He has a whole series of problem solving on these trucks. M1911

 

Pictures of delaminating tanks. None of our five tanks have ever looked like this. This tells me I didn't fully understand delamination, my dealer doesn't understand it......our tanks were all rusty, they never looked like this. I don't think any of the tanks I've owned have had any type of lining at all. M1911

 

My understanding is all the Ford tank interiors are coated by an aluminum silicon plating. And people in the industry believe bio-diesel Acts as a catalyst that can effect the molecular bond between the steel and aluminum. Aluminum and steel don't like to be together as the aluminum will act as an anode setting up galvanic corrosion. I know one person who has thought the corrosion starts at the welded seam due to the heat destroying the bond.

In your picture of the secondary filter to me it looked like some of the coating was caught by the filter at the bottom. As I mentioned before, I can't conceive of how an un coated tank would develop that much rust as the primary filter has caught.

 

Fulltext TSBs - Ford-Trucks.com


http://ww2.justanswer.com/uploads/ti...sb07-24-04.pdf

 

Raining here. Went out, raised the bed and guess what? The vent tube was under water. Clean water due to the fact that the bed and tank top were both very clean. But if I had have had soil or sand in the rear bed...it would have washed right down on top of the entire tank including the vent submersing it in dirty water. Our temp dropped from about 70f yesterday to 55 or so this morning and of course the air in the tank contracted and would draw in whatever it could through the vent. I expect there is some water in the tank this morning. I will say this.....Ford has been of absolutely no help...suggested I keep a record of all I'm spending. Lot of help that is with a $45K tuck sitting in the drive that doesn't run properly. From where I'm sitting, Dearborn Ford Customer service is worthless and the peeps on the phone are just for feel good. They have no authority to act on behalf of ford customers in any manner. M1911

 

TooMany.....I would bet you $5,000 my Dealership has never heard of that TSB, on fifth tank, all of them the exact same. No one has installed the longer hose and vent, nor mentioned it. I probably don't need to say I find this particularly irritating. Glad I at least have some folks at this Forum who will take enough time to help me sort this. Thank you all. I think were are on to something here. M1911

 

I'd get my own hose and end it somewhere under the cab to the engine bay by the master cylinder. Then I'd go see the dealer that did the work and raise a little hell. Maybe they will fix the injectors for free.........if their smart!

 

M1911,

It's hard to say why they were not aware of the TSB. Are they a dealership that sells a lot of commercial based trucks?

This would be an interesting legal situation. It would involve the dealer, Ford and the company who put the body on. I'm sure Ford would be saying we provide a chassis cab, it up to the body company to equip the final configuration in an adequate manner, we even provided a TSB to the body installer and the dealership to address the issue. A good engineer for Ford would probably make the point that the gap in the bed floor is a defect. If it was me, I'd argue what if it a stake bed with a wood floor that had gaps. That is what we always had, although it was a dump. The body installer is going to say we expect the chassis cab to be body ready. The dealer is going to say we don't re-engineer. But it goes back to what I said earlier about mechanics and technicians, looking at the problem and figuring out what is going on. Service advisor tells the shop foreman fuel system is clogged with rust; shop guys expect rust and replace the tank; insanity loop continues. While you as an owner are not expected to know that is a vent, it hard for me to understand how that was not understood at the dealership level. I also have a hard time understanding how Ford's visiting FSE didn't pickup on this with a recurring issue. A good friend of mine is my local FSE, and he's pretty sharp. Maybe they are just too deep in the weeds over the delaminating issue and just never considered anything else.

Anyway, you've got other issues too. The long crank to start is a problem and as you mentioned can be an internal oil leak. That's well documented and the guys in this forum can help you with that, but you need some instrumentation to read what is happening with the vehicle, like Scangage or other. With a 6.0L, this is a must have if only for monitoring voltage and coolant/oil temperature deltas. You just can't not do that. But even if you are not going to be going into the motor, it's a good thing to have so the people here can confirm to you what is happening so you have a handle on what the shop is telling you it needs.

As far as the injectors, the only way to check those is with Ford's IDS. You could buy a unlicensed copy for a laptop, but since the work would be completed by a shop I would recommend having a shop do that check.

 

Yes it is a big Dealer. One of the largest here. My salesman is great. The service manager isn't too bad and the mechanic working on my truck seems to have his head on straight. I don't think they run into too many customers that understand engines and fuel systems as well as I do. Every time they tried to skip over something I'd say, yeah but, what about this causing this? I totally missed the vent thing though and had actually wiggled it around looking for cracks etc. I though it was a sealed port that might be used on some other model of truck. This is a cab and chassis.

The body, tank and cab and chassis is 100% Ford. The Dealership handled installation of the bed and hydraulics....all I did was purchase the completed truck.

Regardless of body, open areas between floor panels.....plenty of water and mud and muck splashes up there from the tires. In the video the narrator points out snow, ice, frozen salty slush.....that fortunately we don't have any off around here. The brakes, lines, frame, etc. other than a bit dirty look like new. I lived up north 15 years and I know what that salt does. I hated it and the cinders that were spread along with it. Thought people that couldn't drive on snow should stay home and get off my roads.

I will ask my salesman and service manager what should they have done when they are seeing an issue that has a service bulletin out on it that directly addresses the issue. I know they have never read it. Simple enough fix...2' piece of rubber hose and a new rubber vent top. Should retail a good bit under $1,000 even at Fords ridiculous prices. I could have done the same for under $10......had I known about it.

There are several things that can be checked regarding the injector. I think I will see if I can get the Dealership to run a free check since I have replaced the ficum and am now getting 48v......just for all the trouble they and this truck are causing me. Hell, I'd be willing to forget all the money I've wasted if they would just take the truck, say sorry, let us fix it properly you once and for all. M1911

 

I must mention you have been very patient M1911.... You can contact Anthony at SuperDuty Service on his experience with fuel tank issues. Super Duty Service in Grain Valley, Mo