Postcard from New Mexico- 3

27 October 2012

Santa Fe

It took over a week to get in the queue, but on Thursday 10/25 we drove the truck to Spear's Auto Center in Cedar Crest, NM to get the exhaust system fixed. I had talked quite awhile to Scott and took his advice to install a DPF-delete kit plus an H&S XRT-PRO tuner. The great part about this approach is that all of the Banks gear stays in tact. The XRT-PRO, as setup by Scott, operates in the Ford tuner to shut off regen. The Banks system still adds/reduces the fuel flow as an adjustment to what the engine is commanding. He set the XRT-PRO to 0 HP gain (stock) so that I can run all 6 Banks power settings as we have always done. Very interesting concept. H&S has many optional tunes available (all the way to over 500 HP) if you don't have a Banks system already, but I don't want to make any smoke out the exhaust, so he kept it conservative. For us, it's all about fuel conservation.

Edit: H&S makes it clear on their site to not "stack" tuners (e.g. Ford + H&S + Banks) as we have in our F-350 unless you know what you're doing. You really need someone involved who has worked this out already because a misstep will lead you to a dead end where you can't operate the truck.

Surprises

We wanted to get the truck serviced while Scott was doing everything else, so I asked for that to be added to the service order without really knowing what that might entail. When The Day arrived, Scott stripped out the old parts, then when he received & installed the delete kit and tuner, road tested everything before the day was over, then was ready to start the maintenance work at the end of the day. Great start.

Then Michelle handed him the printed 75,000 mile service instructions... all 18 pages. Yikes!

As he went thru the service he discovered that our rear shocks were leaking. Typical shock life is 50,000 miles on these trucks, so they did good. I asked that he replace just the rear shocks and he got them on order along with any filters he needed. And that's when things started getting messy.

The first set of shocks they sent were for a Jeep, so they had to re-order. They also ordered the internal transmission filter which was a challenge cuz there are 10 different filters used for this transmission. The right one depends on the truck's VIN. Our truck was built the day they started using the 2nd choice, but the filter turned out to be the wrong one. We needed the oldest filter choice which was supposed to be for the day before our truck was built. By the time Scott had to leave (he also races radio controlled cars professionally!) the filter hadn't arrived. But he said if it arrived before Michelle went home on Friday, he would come in on Saturday and finish up. And that he did.

Btw, when he walked me around the truck before we left he said the Banks exhaust (the last section of tail pipe) was so blue and dark, it had to have been heated to well over 1,500° F, maybe even 1,700° F. That's pretty scarey! I think what saved us is that the exhaust hit those temps while we were moving which helped dissipate some of the heat. Still, it points out the danger of the recommended repair that Ford wants done when the sensor is corroded in place.

The bottom line

We retrieved the truck mid-day Saturday for a grand total of almost $3,500: $2,000 for the exhaust/tuner mods; $1,500 for maintenance. Don't ever let anyone mislead you- diesel trucks are expensive to operate!! But if you need torque for pulling/hauling, nothing else will do.

We happily paid the bill- what a relief when Scott assured us there is nothing wrong with the twin-turbo. We had lunch at the Greenside Cafe in town (try their Sangre de Cristo sandwich!) then drove back to the RV park.

I reset the mileage calculator on the dash as we took off. There was no issue whatever with the engine... ran like a noisey top! Also, I heard no strange turbo noises like I heard on the way over. The exhaust note is not loud which is a relief. And by the time we had covered the 40+ miles of constant grade change the calculator was reading 20.1 mpg. That's a great number for the 6.4L F-350 when running solo (no load; Ford says maybe 9-13 mpg), but the number we want to know is mileage under load. That will have to wait till we head for Benson on Tuesday morning. We've got our fingers crossed!

Btw, I always ask that the engine get full synthetic motor oil (AMSOIL if I can get it- 15W-40 CJ-6). I was shocked the first time I drove our truck after having it installed... the engine becomes much quieter!

Computer issues

You probably noticed there haven't been any photos recently. My laptop is struggling and I haven't been able to process images for a couple weeks now. Like everything else, it'll get fixed in Benson!