I've been watching the site since i bought my truck and it has been very helpful. today coming home from the lake pulling my 3000 lb. boat i came to a stop and when I pulled away my turbo would'nt spool up. after shifting into third it finally started spooling but it was very sluggish below 10 lbs. The rest of the ride home same thing no boost till 3rd gear. goes to dealer Monday, but does anyone have an idea what it might be ? Truck is stock 04 59000 mi., 1500 on new air filter, no CEL

 

What build date is it? Your symptoms sound very very very close to what I had with my 04 but mine is a Late 04.. My problem was a bad Throttle Valve that wasnt allowing boost until certain times.. Finally it failed completely and I was running just a standard 6L V8..

 

Didn't look at the build date before I took it in, no boost = a sluggish pig. This morning on the way to work same thing- no boost till 2000 rpm in 3 third gear, but after work on the way to the dealer was working fine. I'll post results after it's fixed..... I hope it gets fixed.....

 

Sounds to me to be a bad Throttle Valve.. If yours is a late 04 then you are in my boat, you have a Throttle Valve.. the early 04 (with 03 engines) had the Throttle Valve disabled..

 

or nothing in it at all like mine.........

 

my 03 does the same,but usually when its warmer out 85+ and in heavy traffic or pulling my trailer up a long grade or stop and go traffic. It seems to be heat related to me. I have installed a banks exhaust system and replaced the turbo myself(over 100,000 no warranty)checked the egr valve,even ran with the egr unplugged,but all of this made no differance.early this month I installed a snow performance water/methanol injection kit to try to lower the exhaust gas temps.this last week in so cal the temps were up and the truck did it again, no power,but the one day I ran with the water/meth kit on the full boost mode(max injection) the truck ran awesome.I'll see how it does pulling my trailer early next month. also one thing I have noticed when my truck acts that way (no boost, no power until higher rpms)I put the truck in neutral or park and rev the motor up to a high rpm 2,800 to 3,500 a couple of times and then everything is back to normal it seems to blow out or unstick what ever the problem is. please post what the dealer does ,this seems to be a common proplem, but have never heard a definite crue.

 

High temp makes sense, it was 90 + out yesterday and I was seeing higher egt..only pulling 3000 lbs and getting 1100 to 1200 at 20 lbs of boost at 55mph on a medium in grade third gear. It ran great pulling the hill didn't have the problem till after a long downhill at about 70 with no boost needed. about 15 miles after the hill I stopped and then it started acting up. no codes. dealer said two days before they could even look at it.

 

Got it back today, runs like a champ, turbo was replaced, tech said there was rust on the vanes and it had to be replaced. build date is 7-03. sure is nice to have my truck back and runnin right.

 

mines been doing this to for a while, sometimes it runs REALLY REALLY good then it runs like crap... no boost, high egts even the exhaust sounds different and I get a strong exhaust smell in the cab . my built date is 9/03.

 

Here we go again, 2 weeks ago dealer said they repaced the turbo, but Sat. on the way to the lake, before I got out of town.. no boost. This sucks, little slow gettin home. This time the turbo wouldn't kick in inn till I got to 55mph, then it acted normal over 2000 rpm. Next day I drove it and after 5 or 6 miles the truck ran normal. Both times I had it in tow/haul wondered if that makes a difference. first time in 20 years I had to turn around and go home because of truck problems... hope they can figure this thing out!

 

my early reply to your post tells the same tail and what I have done to try to fix the problem,well heres my update. took my sandrail laoded up in my trailer headed out to the desert friday afternoon,the first part of the drive was great,water/methanol system I installed made a big improvement on power and the egts were not bad either,but then we hit stop and go traffic and before long no boost,now for the rest of the trip no boost until higher rpm 2800+ now before we hit the traffic the meth system was working great but it reads boost and egts then determines what % of injection to use.the problem is low speed low rpms no injection. now as we sat in the traffic my egts never got above 600. the next day I took the truck out for a little drive at first no boost but slowly it came back to normal.on the way home no problem what so ever it ran great,the meth system does what it says it does,lowers egts and improves horsepower.I turned it off for awhile pulling a hill and the egts got up to around 1250 and I had to keep my foot on it to maintain speed,but as soon as I turned it back on I could lower my rpms and keep my speed thus lowering the egts down to around 1000 all the way up the hill at 65 mph.I know this helped the problem with no boost but did not fix it, neither has anything else I have done(new turbo,bigger exhaust,cleaning egr,unpluging egr, fuel additives)someone out got to know how to fix it,cause ford sure doesn't, I'll keep looking for an answer and let everyone know if I do so please do the same. getting more and more p@#$&# off steve

 

You hit right on the head when you said Ford doesn't know how to fix it, my trucks been at the dealer for three days, and now through the weekend. The only calls I get is them teling me they are STUMPED!! They even wanted me to take the tech for a drive with my boat hooked up to try and reproduce the actual dead turbo with his scanner attached.... Guess i will if they cant figure it out.

 

are you in so cal if so what dealer is working on your truck,heck if the dealer is close to me I will be happy to bring my truck with my trailer to them and take a test drive.anything to help fix our problem. steve

 

Nope, so. ariz. thanks for the offer, and if thats what it takes I'll do it, dealer called today said the tech feels married to the truck, but still can't figure it out. Said they have a call in to a Ford engineer, and waiting for some insight. service writer wants to put on a third turbo but Ford wont let them, said they have to follow procedure from Ford. He also said on really tough promblems they will have to wait for an engineer to come to the dealer to figure it out. This is my second trip to the dealer with the truck, so I dont know how good the diesel techs are, or how much smoke they are blowin.... it is a large dealer with a good reputation, but who knows??? will keep you posted.

 

Got the truck back tues. runs great, heres what the tech wrote on the order... Replaced turbo for sticking, on test drive turbo would not pass boost test. needs 22lbs only getting 17lbs. tested all sensors, all good. Requested help on tech hotline they said test intake leak. Intake and intercooler passed pressure and smoke test. They had another 6.0 in the shop so they started comparing sensor values and my mass air flow tested different.they used the other trucks MAF and test drove and it passed with 23lbs boost. Put new MAF on and passed again. So in three weeks 2 turbos and 1 MAF.... hope this helps narrow things down for others.