I did a search and found a few posts on this, but nothing that pointed to anything. So thought I'd ask.

Back story...Was up snowmobiling in northern NH. COLD. Last day, morning temp was -21 F. Fuel tank was probably at 7/8 full. DEF less than 1/2. I always use cetane boost (year round) and anti gel (winter months) additives with every fill up. I use the Ford stuff.

I was 3 hrs into a 3.5 hr drive home, outside temps now around +10, when I moved to the left lane to pass a vehicle. I was towing my 25' long trailer which weighs loaded about 6,000 loaded.

Got into the gas, turbo spun up, and then WHAM, "reduced engine power" on dash and truck all but died. Scared the every living crap out of me. Had to basically flip the hazards on, and slowly coast into the breakdown lane as traffic allowed. Seemed like I only had power to hold about 30mph. Check engine light illuminated, solid, not flashing. I shut truck off, took a look under the hood for anything obvious, and all looked good. Restarted and check engine light was still on but truck felt fine. I did not however really get into the throttle, I drove the rest of the way home nicely since the CEL wasn't flashing.

Made appt with dealer for tomorrow morning, but upon restart later in the day, on the day it happened, the CEL was out, and has not come back on. I checked my fuel filters and drained them. No water. Air filter looked good, but replaced it anyway. And added 2.5 gallons of DEF to fill it up to over 1/2 full.

Any ideas what might have caused this? The dealer says they "hope" a code is stored. Hope? I would want to know what the heck caused this, as I don't ever want that to happen again. Honestly, I feel like it could lead to an accident.

Any thoughts or previous experience advice is appreciated.

Thanks.

 

Not sure what could have caused that??? Maybe a tad bit of water in the fuel? Or slightly gummed up filter? Throwing this out there too, most additive companies suggest not mixing cetane boosters and anti-gel additives, even if they are made by the same company. This is why I switched to Stanadyne products....they say you can mix them with no ill effect,so far this winter it has worked well...and its been very cold here.

 

Thanks. Ford has always said no problem to mix their two additives. The service manager just told me the same this morning. They read the code.

Code was P259F "Turbo A hit high limit" or something like that. So he said the system shut off the turbo by closing the valve to protect it. He said the same, perhaps a touch of water, lower fuel level causing a high pressure fuel detection issue, possible gelling (which he believed was highly unlikely after being 3 hrs into a drive and back to more normal temps)...

 

Interesting, thx for sharing your info

 

I've been reading up on the code. Not making me feel very confident. I certainly hope this is covered, whatever it ends up being, covered under the powertrain warranty, as my bumper to bumper warranty is done.

 

Moving this to the 6.7L forum since it's an engine topic.

Side note: I *really* hope you don't put octane boost in your diesel pickup.

 

Thanks for moving! And correct, NOT octane. Typo. Cetane.

I went back to the dealer. He flashed my PCM, but told me I "already" was on the latest. Not sure how, as I don't think it's been flashed in over a year. Then he told me went ahead and just updated all the modules in the truck for me.

So no way to know really what version I was on, and am on now, but he told me it's the latest. So honestly, no idea if I'm in a better spot now than I was this morning.

 

I doubt it, to be honest.

Flukes can happen, and you may never see this issue again. Doesn't normally happen like that...something is probably a bit out of spec that threw the code and shut you down. Let's hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not let's hope it fails while you're still under warranty.

 

I'm out of warranty already. So I'd have to hope it's either considered powertrain (like my crankcase vent was last month), or emissions.

 

So you're NOT out of warranty?

Your engine warranty is 7 years/100,000 miles.

 

Correct. That's what I was saying, I hope it's considered "engine" related. Can't see how it wouldn't be, butt I've seen weirder things.