1250 is the spoken industry standard, but if you have ever ready fords documentation on this motor, it states 1050, so, even where you are, you are taking risks according to the factory. IT is all really what a person is comfortable with.

 

Agreed but keep it there long enough and bye bye PSD

 

...I'm going to pretend I didnt read that
Dave, I use my truck, and it has to last. I'm usually very watchful of my EGT's, that was the highest it's been in a yr since it occured. Engine is fine, and still running strong. I'm thinking it's intercooler time if I want to run those speeds uphill anymore though. That run wasnt even the worst. Had to bring 'er down to 3rd gear doing about 65km/h, and even slowed to 53km/h on a steep grd (GPS said we climbed over 500M, or close to 1600 ft in just3 miles of hill) coming back up Oregon. Ambient temps were close to 40 degrees celcius (100 F). There was a '79 Ford extended cab long box with a HUGE camper on the back halfway up the hill, with, I'm guessing a 400. I saw a guy walk out the back of the camper with a jug of water. At the top of that hill there were big rigs parked on the side, because they couldnt risk overheating their brakes. The coolant never went out of the 'NORMAL' range on the gauge, but we all know those are idiot gauges, so I have no idea how hot is was. The EGT's on that hill went to 1350 post turbo in 4th, and then had to gear down, and it went back to 1250. These non-intercooled diesels are almost like a double edged sword. I had the power, but I couldnt use it because I would have thrown the engine and everything else. Really need an intercooler.

 

1350 post turbo is like 1650 pre turbo, or way to hot.
Average drop pre to post turbo is 300 degrees.
Average is the reason I say that pre turbo is the only way to install a pyrometer, no calculations no guessing, what you see is what you have.
As far as non intercooled versus intercooled, yes it helps with EGT, but it is not a fix all solution.
Those big trucks that have big motors with big intercoolers could usually go up the hill a lot faster than they do as far as power goes. But they are dropping gears to keep the oil, EGT and water temps down, not because they are out of power.
You can cook your motor oil long before you boil the radiator over in a turbo diesel, any of them.
Wanna do a fun experiment, take some of your oil and put it in a pan. Set it on a hot plate and start heating it up. You also need a candy thermometer that can go to like 500 degrees. When it starts turning brown and smoking it has lost most of it's lubrication properties and shock absorbing properties. With dino oil I will bet a big pile of money that you can get the oil way hotter than that in your turbo charged engine no matter what kind it is.
The big guys sitting at the top of the hill were checking tires, brakes, streching their legs and taking a leak. The top of a hill is the best and easiest place to stop a rig, easy on the brakes stopping and easy to get going again. When you are getting ready to drop 40 tons off a big hill it is nice to walk around the truck to see that everything is looking OK first. Been there did that, many times.

 

Believe me, I know an intercooler is not a 'fix all solution', but it greatly reduces the EGT's...something like 300 degrees across the turbo. The main reason for the high temps was just the high temps outside the truck. An intercooler would have shined that day. Never been that high since, and dont have a wish to get that high in temp again.
By the way, checked out your gallery, very nice truck, good work on the mods to the intake, and the stacks look wicked.

 

Thank you for the compliment.
I am about as old school as it gets as far as diesel engines go.
That is one of the reasons I will never give up on my old truck and engine (86 truck and 94 engine)
Also remember the intercooler will add more heat to the air entering the radiator, so the gain in lower EGT is paid for in higher water temp and oil temp.

Right now I am working on a full flow oil cooler that don't put the heat in the coolant and considering an intercooler. Propane is also in the works, waiting on parts for that.
Fuel prices are putting a serious crimp on all my truck projects right now. 2.599 here in WV yesterday.

 

That was supposed to say the stacks look wicked on that last comment.
Sounds like you know what your doing. Fuel prices are a huge pain in the rear end up here too. Most of it comes from taxes from our gov't. We have an oil supply in our province, but pay a dollar a litre. A dollar a litre!

 

I was just looking at my fuel spreadsheet entering the last couple of fuel purchases.
I was only paying 2.099 for fuel in January this year. That is usually our highest fuel price time of the year. We have oil and gas wells all over West Virginia. I can see two gas wells out my back door across the creek on the hill.

I knew what you meant...I do get a lot of comments about the stacks and west coast mirrors. The dump bed catches a lot of people off guard as well.
Grew up on a farm with diesel everything.
Drove cross country tractor trailer for 13 years as a meat hauler, we had some fast trucks in that business. Lots of speeding tickets to go with the fast trucks.
Been in heavy equipment since I retired from the road.
A diesel engine is a diesel engine. They are all different, but they are all the same.

I just apply what I learned in one engine to the rest of them. I also use the same tricks I learned about one on the next one. The only trick is figuring out how to do the neat thing one engine has to the engine that does not have it.
I have some CAT and Cummins big truck engine tricks on my Ford, it keeps the Dodge boys wondering what is going on with that old Ford.

 

Geez. 1350 POST-turbo? That is kind of scary. I don't even like 1350 PRE-turbo.

 

You shouldn't like 1350 pre turbo, Maintained for any appreciable amount of time and you have the potential for significant damage ie: a hole in a piston and/or a destroyed turbo

 

No doubt!! I'm curious how an engine could even survive with 1350 POST turbo.

 

i have to agree with that... it just doesn't seem possible, not on a stock motor anyway... not without doing some kind of damage...

 

Just some thoughts on this subject. I've been using 1300 as a maximum sustained temp on long climbs, with a climb to 1350 occasionally as I back out of it further. I think I'll try to keep it closer to 1250 max, but more because of the turbo than the pistons. The temp of the exhaust gases is not the temp of the pistons, since in our four stoke engine the piston only sees that air temp part of the time. Plus, the piston is cooled by the oil and the incoming air. Melting and bending the tips of the turbo blades is a concern to me before melting a hole in a piston.

BTW, I was talking about this with my brother who is a pilot, and also an A and P mechanic. He said he ran 1750* EGT's in his twin engine plane when climbing. The plane motors use a high tech alloy for the turbo and exhaust parts, which can take the higher temps (he said they can glow red), but they still have aluminum alloy pistons. They also have a special cooling fluid that is used to cool the exhaust parts. Not the same as our diesels, but interesting.

 

Go down to the next truck pull and talk to the guys running the trucks. They run EGT's in the area of 2000 degrees on the big boys. They glow red under the truck also. Then ask them how many 300 foot runs they get out of an engine on the average. Then ask them how many dollars are in the engine in special parts that are not in your production engine.

That airplane engine will probably run upside down also, but I don't think I want to turn my truck engine upside down.

International, Cat, Cummins, Detroit Diesel, Mack, John Deere and Perkins to list a few all have the same limitations as far as EGT goes.

You can run you engine as hard as you want, you can get it as hot as you want. 1350 or 1400 or 1500 or 1600 or 1700 does not mean catastrophic engine failure instantly. But I can tell you that every time you go over 1200 you are shortening the life of your engine. The longer you stay there and the more times you do it the more likely you will walk home. Also all the heat you are putting in the oil may cause damage at places that have nothing to do with the pistons or turbo. Oil does have a service limitation as to high temp also, this is where synthetic oils shine over dino oil. But even synthetic oil has limitations. If you want to run it that hard, get an oil temp guage installed and reseach your oil as to the max temp it will support.
I put over 300,000 on my last engine, I intend to exceed that with this engine also.
I do not trade trucks every couple of years, I drive them forever. My son will have to finish off the one I have now, I won't live that long.
There is nobody on this board that like to dust the Dodges and Chevy's any more than I do, but I will not damage my engine to do it.

I am done standing on my soap box now, we return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

 

that's ok dave... you can stand on a soap box around here if you want... i would like to point out the obvious... heat is the enemy... heat can kill a turbo.. a motor... a tranny... you name it... we put additional tranny coolers on to extend the life or our trannys... we put egt gauges on and tranny gauges on so we can monitor temps and keep them within safe ranges... you are spot on when you say that excessive temps shorten the service life of things like trannys, motors... etc...