I hate them too but unfortunately dealers are not stocking parts for these old trucks. I will be replacing the aftermarket with OEM when I get home. I have learned that choices are limited in these middle of nowhere towns but thankfully the places exist.

 

I hear ya. That's why my truck weighs so much (spare parts), lol! (not really)

 

When I first got my 6.0 Excursion, it did a similar thing, blew black smoke at start off but to towed/ drove fine once going. It was completely stock at the time, but the PO used it pretty much exclusively to tow a travel trailer (he upgraded to a fifth wheel, and sold the Excursion).

When I pulled the turbo off for an unrelated reason (definitely not to do an EGR delete, that would be bad and frowned upon now), I pulled the turbo apart and found the VGT unison ring to be absolutely caked in carbon ,I mean WAY stuck in place, it took some pretty agressive tools and cleaning agents to even get it apart. After putting the turbo back together and replacing the actuator pigtail connector (because I broke that taking it off), truck ran great with no smoke at takeoff and felt smooth everywhere in the RPM band. Perhaps a few thousand miles of towing your trailer at highway speeds with the unison ring being in one position the whole time has resulted in a similar situation.

Of course I did swap in a canned tow tune at the same time (definitely not an EGR delete tow tune, again, those get a big frowny face now for some reason), so the perceived improvement in smooth acceleration could be contributed to the tune some too I suppose.
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Just took the truck about 100 miles without the trailer and runs great also picked up the parts. Right now it is 97 degrees out, engine is hot and wind is blowing hard. I will get out there later.

You would think a stuck unison ring would act up under normal driving too, fixing a turbo in a campground site is not in the cards. You would also think all of the mountain passes would have exercised the veins enough not to cake up. One pull was 20 miles from below sea level to 5000 feet in Death Valley, talk about testing the truck to the max! 5 people, 2 dogs and a camper in tow but she did it EOTs were 245 and ECT 232 when we hit the top. Turbo is 3 years old now so I guess it is time for a cleaning.

I do feel better knowing unloaded she runs fine, that rule's out injectors etc, definitely in the turbo system

 

Yeah, my stuck unison ring made the Excursion blow black smoke during acceleration from a stop even when unloaded.
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I installed the new CAC tube (using hairspray), EBP sensor, cleaned tube with trimmer string and carb cleaner, cleaned EGR valve and replaced the o-rings.

Here is a KOEO:


I then put my ScanGauge on VGT and took her out to a rural road and did some WOTs. On startup VGT was 85, on WOT I saw it swing back to 15 when I released the throttle, did that a few times, hopefully that Italian tune-up will help, got 600 miles to run tomorrow.

 

We are in the New Mexico Desert, when I asked for trimmer string I got weird looks, no grass around here, I used the term Weed Wacker and the guy got even more confused. The OReillys here sells small engine stuff too, they don't do that at home.

 

A few years ago I quit running fuel additives, not long after I had to pull the turbo apart to clean the ring and vanes due to sticking. I went back to using Diesel Kleen at every fill and have had no problems since.

 

Archoil works pretty darn good too 👍

 

Made it to Winona, TX, traddic around DFW sucked and it is a holiday weekend.

Truck did great! Still smoking some on take off but funny thing is after stop and start traffic, smoke is less, turbo veins are bein exercised. 600+ more miles tomorrow.

 

We made it home to NC yesterday. It was not a fun trip, CAC boot kept coming loose, had to stop 10 times to fix it, the worst one was it let loose in Atlanta traffic. I finally got one to stay on and we made it home. 7960 miles in total in 3 weeks.