I just got my truck back from the dealer after having the oil cooler and egr valve and coolers replaced. The truck spiked the temp gauge twice but never puked out. There was coolant in the engine though. Ford picked up half the bill...

Even before all this happened the truck has to be plugged in to get out of it's on way for up to 5 minutes in anything 60 degrees and below. I talked to the dealer about this before going out of warranty. They said Ford's fix is the FICM reflash, which eventually leads to a new FICM. (IE $800 plus labor). The real fix is new injectors ($3000.00 !!!) The cause, they said was lack of maintenance. I bought the truck used with 41k and now has 102k. I take it do the dealer every 4-7k for oil and 15-20k for fuel filters.

MBRP 4" exhaust. Had an SCT3 with Spartan tune, running stock now.

I want to keep my truck for a long time...is there any other cheaper way around this or am I SOL at this point?

 

You can try hot shot secret but it didn't help me any. If you are good at diy you could buy he injectors and do it yourself. I would recomend all 8 an o with after market. But if you want to stay stock you can get them for like 200 or so a peace. Then do it yourself. Main problem is going to long between oil changes. But you say every 4-5k so you should be ok. Switch to synthic 5w40 that will help a bunch. It did for me.

 

I am assuming the injectors are going bad, but the symptoms of the truck are rough idle when the truck is cold, won't hardly shift, stumbles bad until it warms up 3-5 minutes down the road. I forgot to mention that the batteries are about 8 months old.

Does diesel kleen or the alike do anything to help clean the injectors and keep them from sticking so bad, if that is the issue?


I have read a bunch of posts on this but wanted to get some updated opinions if there are any....

Thanks,

 

Is there any synthetic oil at 0W-40 or like grade?

 

0W-40 is a european car oil weight.
5W-40 diesel truck oil is available

 

That sounds like a injector problem. No diesel klean is not goig to help if you hav sticktion what us want it sounds like. The problem will be on the oil Side of the injector. Bismic has a great explaination on what this is. I don't want to go into big details on this but in a nut shell. There is a spoll valve that operates the injector. It is operated by high pressure oil. It starts to oil latch from sludge. Basicly it don't move when the oil in it is cool. Hints the runs ruff when the motor is cold. I will see if I can dig up the post by mark that goes into detail about this.

 

Here is the post taking strait from bismic (mark)
FYI -

Typically when one injector fails, we find that the engine is hard to start and is low on power. If two injectors fail starting will be very hard or the engine will not start at all. If you do manage to start the engine, it will be very low on power.

You also need to use synthetic oil (5W40), change the oil often, and get the latest flash -

The main reason why the 6.0 is so picky about oil is because it is totally reliant on two electromagnets to shuttle the spool and control the oil to the injectors. The 7.3`s use a electromagnet also but a spring to return the poppet to the closed position. Obviously the spring will work much better to "cut" through the thick oil and close the oil flow.

Not only will running oil with too thick of a viscosity cause rough starts. But this also will interrupt the shuttle action of the spool causing injection timing to be retarded causing poor performance and decreased mileage until the oil is up to full operating temperature.

There is a small spool valve in the top of the injector that controls the flow of high oil pressure fed to the intensifier piston in the fuel injector. That spool valve only moves .017", back and forth, on and off every time the injector fires.

Many factors play in to how well that valve works such as, oil temp, oil quality, normal wear, ambient temp, and many others. As this valve ages it polishes itself inside the bore of the spool valve and as the spool valve slams back and forth it can set up the condition like a suction cup, hanging the valve to one side or the other.

This uncommanded uncontrollable condition is called stiction (or oil latching). Mostly its a rough run cold condition but in severe cases it can be a no start or pretty harsh misfire condition. Oil that stays inside the valve on a hot engine shutdown and is allowed to cool slowly in the injector can aggravate the condition on restart, so the newest reflash uses inductive heat after shutdown to keep the oil warm, keep its viscosity low, and maximize the oil flowability to purge the oil from them. It has worked fantastic. It is an excellent preventative measure.

 

Thanks Texan... After all the reading I have done and what the dealer has told me , that definitely sounds like the issue.

Question is how long can I run it like this until I can scratch the doh for new injectors. I mean it's been this way for a while (30k miles). Should I go the ECU reflash for now to see if that fixes it?

 

It wouldn't hurt to do the flash. Untill you get the money to replace the injectors I wouldn't think that it would hurt to run it like that. Just let it warm up good before you drive it too hard. What. Was doing when I had that problemwas letting it idle for like 5 min or so with the high idle mod on before I would drive it