Transcription
I'm always harping about truck maintenance, specifically fuel maintenance, and adding a fuel additive. So, let's see if all of my coaching has paid off.
If you want to drive your diesel pickup a half a million miles, there's some crucial things that you need to do for maintenance. And a lot of these maintenance items, no shop will ever tell you about. But this is my personal truck, a 2020 model F350 with a Power Stroke 6.7 at 180,000 mi. So far, I've had zero breakdowns that have left me on the side of the road because I either catch issues I have ahead of time or I do preventative maintenance to make sure I never have an issue. So, let's talk about some key ones right now.
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So, my truck has 180,000 mi. I've never taken the intake off to clean it, but this is an item that does require some maintenance. This is where the charge air coming from the turbo, it's gone through the cooler, it's gone through the throttle plate, but it will go through this chamber. It has a MAP sensor right here on top that is reading the pressure and then it goes into each side of the intake. But you can see how much carbon has built up in this due to the exhaust gas recirculation, and it's oily due to the crankcase recirculation. So you can see the large amount of carbon buildup in here. We've got at least a quarter of an inch around the side. So this thing is probably 20% restricted with all this material.
Now, one thing that can cause a problem here is that this material builds up inside the MAP sensor, the manifold absolute pressure sensor located here on top of the intake manifold. So, this is an item that you may want to look at around 100,000 miles, or at least every 100,000 miles on your truck. So, this one's not too bad. I can actually see all the way down inside of the sensor. But what's common is this orifice right here, where it's open to go into the sensor, will actually completely clog up with this carbon. And what that will do is not allow an accurate reading. So, your turbo boost is not going to be proper on your truck. If you're having an issue with your turbo fluctuating, one of the first things you want to do is check the sensor and make sure that it's not completely clogged. I've done many roadside repairs where I haven't had a sensor, but I was able to take a pick and essentially pull all the junk that had clogged that thing up and at least get the customer back on the road until we could get a part replaced for him.
This one's not too bad, but it does have a little bit of debris inside there. So, what we will do is soak this thing in the parts washer for probably 7 or 8 hours, then take a power washer to it and get the remaining junk out of it. But you can see right here, before it goes into the top of the engine, there's a lot of buildup inside there. I have another one here that was a prime example of how bad these things can get restricted. This thing is probably close to 50% restricted. This is off of an older 6.7. I think it was a 2015 model or so. But look how thick this stuff is. There's at least a half an inch of buildup right here in the center. You can see this thing has got a quarter inch to a half an inch all the way around it. That's going to restrict your airflow, possibly cause some issues, but most commonly these pieces will get clogged inside of the MAP sensor and cause a boost reading issue.
So, we have another piece of our intake system. This is where it feeds into the turbo. So, a lot of your oily gases that get in there is coming through the crankcase ventilation system. So, that crankcase has an oil separator. It then sends those oily gases back into the intake. And so, inside here, you'll start getting some oil residue built up. You can see where a little bit of the dust that's gotten past the air filter has built up. You want to make sure and keep this clean so that you don't ever have a buildup where you have a particle actually come loose and make contact with the turbo, which will cause damage to the fins and probably cost you an entire turbo.
Now, this system is so large right here because it has a built-in muffler. So, this box here on top has several holes that open up, and those holes allow the sound from the turbo to enter there and essentially act as a muffler. So, let's pop this thing open and see what it actually looks like inside. I got in trouble from you guys last time for using a wood chisel. So, this time we actually have the correct tools for the job. See if we can get this thing broken open. This is going to be a little challenging to get open, I think. So, it's not something that opens very easily. It's obviously something you don't want to do if you're planning on putting this back on your truck. But, for demonstration purposes, we can see there's two muffler type chambers in here that the sound waves are going to enter and essentially cancel each other out. Most people want to hear those turbos, but on these nice trucks, they try to make the engines as quiet as possible. So that's what the muffler looks like on the inside of your intake.
So, the next item of preventative maintenance that I do is I run a fuel additive every time I fill up the truck. So, it's not something you want to just put in every now and then. Every time you fill up the truck, you want to make sure and add fuel additive to do a couple of things. One, you want to increase lubrication. So, if you do buy fuel that does not meet spec, you can lubricate that fuel pump. And two, it has water separating capabilities so that if you do have water or contaminants in your fuel, it'll help that fuel filter become more efficient and collect all the water and debris out of your fuel system before it enters that pump.
So, what we want to look at today is how good a job did I do protecting this thing. So far, I've made it 180,000 mi on the factory CP4. And I see a lot of people concerned and want to replace that thing because they hear all the horror stories about the pump coming apart. And if you're running bad fuel in it and not running additive, there could be some risk and concern for that. So, this one's actually the CP4 out of my truck. And I would not recommend pulling yours out for inspection unless you're really good at putting stuff back together because these things are not easy to get apart and there's a good chance once you take it apart, it won't go back together. But, I'm doing this for demonstration purposes because I want to see what the inside of this thing looks like with running the fuel additive its entire life.
So, the VCV was nice and clean. So, if we have a truck that comes in and we are concerned that it has had contaminated fuel with the CP4 pump does have some type of damage, we'll check the upper fuel filter, look for metal contamination there, and we'll pull this VCV and look inside the screen. So, this thing's mounted right here on top of the CP4. And this is what's controlling the amount of fuel that's going through this pump. So, this thing's nice and clean. So, I'm going to assume inside that I don't have any wear scars, but that's what we're looking for because I want to know if this fuel additive has done its job.
So, this thing sits up on the front of the motor down in the engine valley and it connects to the cam gear. So, there's a gear that rides on this shaft. It's going to connect to the cam gear and as that engine rotates, it's going to spin the pump. And this pump acts like a little V twin Harley engine. It's a basically a two piston with a cam down in the bottom that is pressing those pistons up and down. It compresses the fuel and the high-pressure fuel comes out these ports on the end right here.
So, to get this cam out, you've got to take the pressure off of the cam. So, we're going to pull both of these pistons out of here. That'll relieve the pressure so we can get this thing completely apart. So, it's under quite a bit of pressure just pulling those bolts. This spring right here pushed its way out. I can see the piston down there in the very bottom. We'll get the other side out here. So far, it's looking nice and clean in there. So, both of these pistons move very freely. So, you can see how easy that thing moves up and down. So, that's a good sign. So, these things are pressed in there and extremely tough to get out. There must be some kind of big pulling machine that they use when they rebuild these. But, if you look at this thing, this cam lobe is completely smooth. There's not any signs of scarring on there. So, the fuel additive I've ran has done a good job. There's some broken pieces from my disassembly. Let's take a look at these rollers. Same thing. The roller on the bottom of these pistons is nice and clean. So, you can see there's no scarring on either one of the rollers. Let's check out this one. Lots of debris from the disassembly, but that's exactly what you want it to look like. So, 180,000 mi, absolutely nowhere, thanks to running some fuel additive every single fillup.
You may think, okay, well, that's a lot of wasted money to have to put towards a part that's supposed to fail. Well, that's not necessarily the case. Just like if you put poor quality oil in your engine, you're going to have wear. If you're putting poor quality fuel into your fuel system, you're going to have wear. The extra lubrication that comes with the fuel additive has done its job. I probably could have got another two or 300,000 miles out of this one, but I was curious, you know, getting close to 100,000, what does this thing look like? It does cost a lot of money to pull this thing out, but I like to know that my preventative maintenance is working so I can make good recommendations to my customers. And in this case, this is 100% a great recommendation. I pulled a lot of these out of trucks that were either scrapped or had a bad engine. And a lot of times I find scarring inside of this pump at 100,000 miles just because they're running poor quality diesel. Not knowingly, but there's a lot of places you can buy fuel that sell junk fuel or they have water in the fuel, low lubricity in the fuel, and it's going to cause damage to this fuel pump.
So, we open this thing up. It is immaculate inside, exactly like you want to see it, just as if it was brand new off the shelf. If you're not running a fuel additive in your diesel and you're running the factory fuel system and you want that thing to last a long time, make sure and start doing it today.