Totally agreed, but In the total of 600 miles I had two regens. One at ~250 miles and the other at ~350 miles. I would just like to understand the logic behind it so I can better understand/anticipate what is going on.

If both were at the 500 mark I would have expected it, but two in 600 miles while seeing low soot and high egt's seems odd to me. Is there another parameter to watch to get a better idea what's going on?

Thanks for the input!

 

Khena:


What do you use to monitor your truck? Have you had your truck's PCM flashed in 2015?


Ford doesn't want the consumer to get frustrated over this. It is common to have Active Regens before the 500 mile mark and they are probably started by residual ash. I believe without looking at my Ford documents that your truck uses an exhaust back pressure sensor and DPF pressure sensor to measure differential pressure and my truck uses a true differential pressure sensor. Sorry if I can't make this simple, but my truck has one sensor to measure soot (DPFPS) and another sensor (EBP) to measure ash.


I've been collecting data since my PCM was flashed and since then my Torque Pro values have been off. I have been monitoring the separate bits "A" and "B" from the SOOT PID response and hope to make a new equation soon hope to post it on the Torque Pro Thread. When soot builds up, Bit "B" counts up from 0 to 256, it increases bit "A" by 1. When soot decreases "B" counts down from 256 to Zero. My point is that 1 point on a graph is not as easy to understand as 256.


Sorry about the length, my truck seemed to act like yours before the flash and now 500 miles. It will deducted miles (150) from the 500 if I interrupt and not complete a Regen and the soot load is low.

 

My regens start shortly after reading full and show completion percentages ranging anywhere from 10 to 75%; regardless of what that number is, I still average 250 miles between active regens when not towing.

Al

 

PFM I say!!! Pure PFM. It is not for us non-Ford mortals to understand. It is just pure friendly magic!

 

Sorry, I should have mentioned... I have a 2016 that was flashed preemptively for the "jack hammering" issue.

i use a monitor called dashboss that works with an app on my phone.

The truck ran flawlessly on the trip and I'm very happy with it. I was just hoping for more insight which you shared!

i do believe the active regent just prior to the trip was interrupted due to the low fuel message coming on (active regen started on my way to get fuel). So perhaps that explains the one at 250 miles? Still confused on the second at 350, but your explanation of the ash has merit. Also, if you can shed some more light on the ash parameters, I'll reach out to the dashboss guys to see if I can get I added to the list on the monitor. Do you know the name of the ash sensor on a 2016?

Thanks!

 

Got my 2016 350 last week.....my adapters should arrive today. What value do I need to observe to determine the update level of my PCM? I've got ForScan Lite on my iPhone, but have an Android device if I need to get Torque Pro to verify.

 

Khena:
There is not an ash PID that I know of. The Ford programming looks at a lot of sensors at a period of time. From Ford documents the amount of back pressure with so much air and fuel put into the engine at a given RPM in a certain time period. The PCM also looks at the distance between the last two complete Regens, this tells the PCM if it needs re-caibrate the baseline for ash residual. simply the PCM is trying to figure out if the restriction of exhaust flow is caused by ash or is it soot!!


Carlhwv:
I'm not sure what you mean by the update level of your PCM. Your new Truck's PCM will take care of the cleaning of the DPF, it will let you know if it is having problems. I simply do this for fun. I have made custom PIDs that alarm to tell me when my truck is close to a Regen not so I won't interupt it, just to know it is going to. The truck will tell you if it needs to Regen with "Drive to Clean" message and I wouldn't ignore it.

 

I'm new to truck tech. With other technology I've work with, the software, or firmware, that controls the component usually has some type of number associated with it that indicates the version of the software. I was asking if there is a way to figure out the version of the code running the PCM to determine if I need it updated. I might be way off base here, as I said I am totally new to this and working to understand.

 

Carl:

Won't take you long to get up to speed. I have access to Ford software to know if my modules are running the newest version of software. I believe that ForScan Lite will also let you know what version the modules have. So enjoy the truck and I'm sure it will all fall into place for you.

 

47k+miles on my F250. I have the exhaust screen and monitor it pretty close. I have been on highway trips both towing and not and have not gone below 30% clean even with many miles to go after I reach that point.

 

I've got too much time on my hands right now, and I've become a bit obsessed with this.

Not only does the technology exist to do all of these complicated actions, people are developing the technology for us normal folk to see under the hood in ways that recently were possible only to vehicle technicians. I'm still not sure if this is a good thing or not....

The numbers we see on any gauge all have some kind of math behind them. The equation that controls the regen process has inputs from multiple sensor and for those developing their own gauge information can tell us, it's really complicated.

With the trouble VW got into over their diesels, I've got to think the vehicle companies, including Ford, are erroring on the side of over baking things so they never fail an actual test and are always in compliance.

As with any new technology, over time it will get better. I remember when catilytic converters and unleaded gas came out. How many people got their first used truck, cut the converter off and put theThrush tubes on? Now it's not even an afterthought. For me right now, if not for emissions tests, I'd be doing a delete.

I don't think anyone will dispute the regen process both costs us in performance and reliability. Heat kills. My blown 420hp CAT 3126's were good for only a fraction of the time a naturally aspirated version pushing 215Hp were.

The work the few are doing to understand what is happening behind the scenes is important, for if enough questions are asked, companies will respond, resulting with better products. Over time one will step up and get a competitive advantage for their product...there stuff will last longer, perform better, and sell more. I'm sure there is more R&D going on than we will ever know, but there is nothing like the voice of the customer to get real action.

If you think about it, we who openly care and obsess over this are but a pimple on the butt of the total ownership of the vehicles. Still, the work the few are doing to understand what is happening behind the scenes is important and I believe will have a positive impact. Maybe I'm just a dreamer.....

First and foremost, I want to understand for the sake of understanding....my wife tells me it is a disease. But I also want to do all I can to make my truck perform the best it can. I guess I could just drive it and not can, but that's not me. So, hear I am reading as much as I can before I jump in head first.

I did read a post yesterday on another board of a guy saying he gets over 1000 miles between regens. He does long distance driving and mentioned that to get the regen gauge to read as low as possible that he locks out 6th when a regen kicks off when hiway driving, and 5th when in th city if it kicks off. He says he get down to the 10-15% on the dash gauge using this method. For now, the gauge seems to tied to the event and hopefully getting it as close to zero will be an improvement for now.

 

Carl: I have the same disease then. My wife keeps saying that she has enough on me to lock me up and sell all my toys.