Bump.....

 

Wow, you really dug deep to bump this thread!

 

it wasn't THAT long ago !!!
Jeeze - less than 3 months - how quickly we forget
(too early to be rummaging around the house, so I play on the 'puter ;0

 

Just coming up to speed here...

One thing I think you're all forgetting is the most likely reason Ford disabled PI: it was helping kill the injectors. Notice how as soon as they released that flash, the rampant injector failures tailed off noticeably. I got that flash as part of the fix for my one dead injector, and I've had no more die since. It's not that all the bad C94 injectors got replaced with C95s, since Ford was only replacing them one by one as they died. And it's not that as time goes on a bigger percentage of trucks already has the C95s, since there are plenty of C94s out there waiting to croak, but it's just not happening so much any more.

I'm as ****ed as anyone over the whole affair. When I purchased my truck in Dec '02 it passed the fast food drive-thru test with flying colors. A year later, after a dead injector and a reflash, it no longer passes the test. Instead of fixing the injector design, Ford masked it by killing one of the primary reasons I bought the truck. (The other being improved fuel mileage, which I've never gotten either.) But I think if you just create an engine control system that has PI, you're going to find your injectors dying over time. And I wouldn't be so sure that the C95s are immune from the problem; I think they were just longer lasting, but still doomed with PI.

(I suspect if Ford has problems with parts breaking on the new suspension due to the increased turn angle, they'll weld longer stops on there to limit it, which will put the turning radius back where it used to be, and they'll call it fixed. That would be the same approach they took with the injectors!)

Duncan

 

Frobozz, you hit the nail on the head. What is the cost of replacing all C94 or C95 injectors with one that will withstand PI? Now, what is the cost of putting out a flash that needed to fix some other problem, but oh while we are at it, kill PI on all vehicles. It still is not THAT much louder. Of course it is going to be what costs least.

 

I understand why Ford handled it like they did, but it doesn't make me any happier about it. You've got Siemens/Sturman who designed an injector that doesn't do what they said it would. You've got International who designed that injector into an engine which now doesn't last a few thousand miles before catastrophic things happen. You've got Ford who hyped this new engine to the moon and isn't rolling in enough profits to possibly cover replacing every injector out there... if that would even stop the problems, which I guess they were convinced it wouldn't. Everyone can play the finger-pointing game to decide who is going to pay for the fiasco, but that doesn't stop the parade of broken trucks. Then someone figures out that simply killing PI is nearly a magic bullet. (I'm guessing the C94 injectors will still have a shorter life than originally expected, but all Ford needs to do is get them to last past 100K). And all the lack of PI costs them is 3dB, right?

Well from my standpoint, that 3dB is enough to cross the line from leaving it running in a drive-thru, to having to kill it. It's not the truck I bought. I took a chance buying a brand new product right out of the gate, thinking Ford would step up to the plate no matter what happened, and I was wrong. I certainly won't make that mistake again. They still make the best darn truck out there, period, but I'm going to drive my money out of this one for years, and even when they come out with the next "gotta have it" truck, I'll be waiting a few years for it to prove itself.

Where were we? Oh yeah, the original point: I absolutely sympathize with the folks who want PI back. I sure do too! But I think you should give up. It's much more involved than just pulsing the injector twice per stroke at idle, and even Ford and International gave up on the concept. If you want a truck as quiet as these were eventually, you are going to have to get a different truck. The latest Duramax and Cummins engines are astonishingly quiet. I get sad when I'm filling up and one pulls in, because I remember that my truck used to be that quiet. But it's not worth owning a GM or Dodge truck to get it, for me. Or you can wait for 2007 or whenever, when Ford comes out with The Next Big Thing in diesel engine technology, and see if that stays quiet as they tweak it.

Duncan

 

There are no "parades" of these trucks broken down. The problems lied mostly in the early production 6.0's. You will be HARD pressed, and I mean HARD to find a later production truck dead on the road. Granted, even the new ones will have thier issues, but so can any given vehicle, even brand new off the line, of any brand. The people who arent happy with them will go to any length to overplay the problems and make the truck/engine look bad just because they do not like it.

Alot of people think that Ford cheaped out with the deletion of the PI. I can assure you all brands of manufacturers are out there LOOKING for ways to cheap out of all sorts of situations every hour of every day. The reason we complain about Ford's PI issue more is because we notice it. If people noticed all the things that Dodge and Chevrolet cut costs and quality on, most would quit buying them altogether. The only difference is that the majority of the other things go unseen. An expression comes to mind here: "What mama don't know, don't hurt her." We can TELL off the bat that PI isn't there and we gripe.

If you really want your PI back that bad, buy a Predator, find a truck with PI, copy the program, and send it to DiabloSport or Superchips, or some company that can work with the CAN-bus system, along with a check big enough to back yourself up and ask them to tailor it to your vehicle. Im sure if the check is big enough they will see to it to get it done. That is, assuming that you want the PI back badly enough. Then wait for your injectors to fail.

 

PSD 60l FX4 Very well said. I couldn't done better!

 

I didn't get the drift of coming up to speed. I thought you meant catching up on the forum. Instead after your follow on post you meant getting wound up over injector and PI issues.

The 6.0L is based on the Navistar/International VT365. It is in the International 4200 series trucks. It is a real workhouse.

There are still many C94 injectors out there still doing the job.

Getting sad when you percieve another truck is quieter than yours is an extreme reaction. Perhaps you should seek some counseling on how to enjoy the more positive aspects of your truck. Ford replaced the one injector. So you can't go through the drive up window at the fast food. I usually park and walk in anyway because I find it faster.

 

[QUOTE=jdadamsjr]Nope - Pilot injetion is disabled on tip-in...


A PI equipped diesel utilizes the preliminary pulse up to 30% of the RPM range. It is an injector pulse of fuel roughly 10% of the main pulse. It occurrs 5 degrees BTDC and is used to preheat the combustion chamber and drastically eliminate the diesel knock that is so prominent at lower rpm's. At or above 30% throttle the cylinder is being fired at a much higher succession and heating of the cylinder is no longer an issue then PI is disabled.

 

I think that I will say more on this issue when I'm back at my desk, but I don't think I buy that PI was disabled solely due to C94's. It would seem to me that the decision to delete PI was a multi-factor issue. I strongly suspect that the computer is not powerful enough to do the required calculations in the required time.

By this, I mean that the various viscosities of oil and other foibles of this engine produced a problem of too many dimensions for the computer they had at hand.

To wit, I'll point out that the 05 features and benifits list a PCM that is 10x more powerful. This may mean it's 100Mhz vs. 10Mhz (I don't know the _real_ numbers) --- it's likely that they were not nor are they currently using a processor anywhere near as powerful as we can get off the shelf from Intel or AMD.

It may also be true that certain oils work and certain oils don't. I'm not positive, but I don't think Ford can specify specific oils --- they need to specify standards. We are not bound by that problem.

 

No, you were right the first time. I've always been wound up about injector issues, heh.

Absolutely. And I have heard it said, by people who should know, that International *never* did pilot injection. Which is just more proof that adding PI back, at this point, is risking your injectors.


I bought a '97 F250HD CC in late '96, still have it, love it. I added a 2000 X in mid 2000, also loved it. They were too noisy to order through the drive thru but hey, it's a diesel, so what. Ah, but here comes the new diesel technology! Quieter, more fuel efficient, more powerful, probably solves hunger and strife while it's at it. Gotta have me one of those! So I got rid of the X, which I certainly hadn't driven my money out of (38K miles) and ordered and received one of the first 6.0L trucks down the line (born 12/5/02) and definitely the first one at my dealer. It was *amazing*!! Fast, quiet, it was exactly what I had been hoping for. The mileage was not so good, but then it takes 10K miles to break these things in, that would come in time.

I won't bore you with the whole saga of oil weights and ICP sensors and reflashes and injectors and so on- I'm sure you've read it all here before. Suffice it to say I now have a truck that is many, but not all, of the things I bought it for, and it's not an overreaction to be wistful for what it once was. But (and to the point of this thread) all the wistfulness in the world doesn't make it a good idea to put PI back on these things! It kills these injectors over time, and that is not worth it.

To the person who quibbled with my phrasing on "parade of broken trucks" - yes, indeed, that was only the early trucks (I have one!). The C95 injectors helped, and the getting rid of PI was the slam dunk. Other than some mop-up of trucks that hadn't gotten the fixes, that whole period is behind us now, just a bad memory.

Duncan

 

That seemed like the obvious answer to me at first too. I've done a lot of embedded programming (perhaps more than whoever authored some of those early reflashes, ahem...) and it was clear to me that they simply weren't coping with unexpected inputs, couldn't feed back fast enough how they should time that second pulse, etc. But again, people in more of a position to know implied that the dirty little secret was that the injectors were simply not up to the task of PI. Did Sturman scam International, was there some disconnection between prototype and production, did Sturman not test these things under a wide enough range of conditions...? Who knows. But I believe enough of the fault lies with the injectors that even if you somehow improved the software, you're still going to kill injectors.

I *absolutely* wish someone would prove that wrong, but I'm just saying I'm not optimistic.

Ever wanted to see the guts of one of these injectors? Here you go.

Duncan

 

Wasnt aware that it was "quibbling". I have just gotten to the point of feeling the same way about the PI issue as others have with Amsoil.

 

If I understand you correctly, we're in complete agreement. I believe PI is a fantastic engineering concept, but is unimplementable in the current 6.0L engine, and no amount of hardware and software design is going to change that. Ford gave up on it and so should we - time to move on.

Now, can I sell you some Slick 50? (sorry...)

Duncan