Ford tough.

Wow, that's scary. I heard awhile back that the government wanted to have a lot of the ford vehicles recalled because of the weakness of their tops. The tops cave in horribly when involved in a roll over, trapping/crushing anyone inside the cab. Ford denied it and wouldn't comply to their request.
Some of my relatives were in a bad accident couple years ago in their dodge truck, flipped and ended up on its top spinning. The top held up very well, didn't cave in like you would have expected.
 
In this day and age of so many lawsuits and focus groups and 7 years lead in time of R&D- how, just HTF does something like this slide by? This is not risk management, this is turning 35,000 blind eyes and allowing these vehicles out to the public.
 
Well, I can see how it doesn't show up untill you do a few 1000. One pinched wire, one bad connection, one set of chips with a bad pin, eh, almost anything.
It's like microsofts idea of improvement. Fords improved to the point you don't even have to rear-end these to get them to start on fire.
 
Knowing something about the causes of this, I gotta weigh in here. It has happened 3 times, and each time it took a SEVERE failure of something else to cause this. Once it was a failed injector, and the other two times it was a physically broken turbocharger that apparently allowed engine oil into the exhaust. Ford has (voluntarily) recalled all the '08 diesel superdutys, and is reflashing them to allow them to detect the conditions leading up to this and prevent it from getting so far. Notice the loud ticking in the video? That's a bad injector.

The point here is, not only does it take a failure of other parts to cause this, it must be a particularly severe one. Simply pulling a heavy trailer up a steep mountain will not cause anything like this. There have not been any reports of this happening since the fix was issued, so hopefully they got it right. I also hope dodge and gm don't have a hazard like this lurking undiscovered. The crux of the whole thing is the dpf (diesel particulate filter) that all these trucks must now run to meet emission standards. These filters must be routinely cleaned by being heated to roughly 2000 degrees F. The engine does this by injecting lots of extra fuel late in the combustion cycle to heat the dpf. It's entirely possible that dodge and gm have such a monster lurking around an as-yet unturned corner.

I'm not trying to excuse ford for letting this get past testing, I just wanted to put it in proper perspective.
 
It's also a new motor this year so it will have teething problems. Ford did that with the 6.0 P(O)S too, when they tried to put an EGR setup on it. I want to know more about the dual-stage turbo setup, I wonder if something like that could done with a gasoline motor in a car. Other than the headlights I kinda like them...


I don't like the new Dodge, haven't since the 02 model year. The designers took a good looking truck, as they usually do, and screwed it up...
 
My understanding is that it's a compound turbo setup. Meaning, the discharge of one turbo is the inlet to the other. I personally like the looks of both generations of trucks. The 3rd gen trucks to me are a logical extension of the 2nd gen trucks looks-wise. They un-fucked a lot of stuff that was wrong with the 2nd gens. For example, balljoints are no longer a fast-wearing item, and the track bar on a 4wd doesn't wear out in 20 or 30k anymore. The frame is MUCH stiffer, the turning radius is better, and the got rid of the troublesome vp44 injection setup on the diesels, replacing it with the not-perfect-but-still-much-better cp3 pump. Those are just a few of the things they greatly improved. I know-I own both generations.
 
I guess your refering to the Dodges, I like the newest ones better, but my fav's are the 94-01 1500's & 02 on the HD's. It's good they straigtened out some problems with the new ones
 
The frame flexibility thing is really a problem. While pulling a trailer, I've managed to twist (momentarily) the frame of the dually enough to crack the windshield when pulling out into traffic in a hurry. Admittedly it's making some extra torque compared to a stock engine, but that's still a little too flexible for my tastes. I'm sure a 3rd gen would not flex nearly as much.
 
v8440 said:
...I've managed to twist (momentarily) the frame of the dually enough to crack the windshield when pulling out into traffic in a hurry.
Click to expand...
That's a LOT of torque!!! I do know the newer ones have boxed, at least partially, frames which considerably reduces the flex.
How hard would it be to mod one of the newer diesels to your present power output? Did the controls change drastically, or just enough to make it a PITA?
 
Not much problem, just a different set of mods. Turbo needs to be replaced, injectors, a box or programmer needs to be used, air filter upgraded, and an auto transmission needs to be seriously beefed up. If manual, a good clutch needs to be installed. One characteristic of 12v's is that they tend to produce more torque compared to hp than later engines. Put another way, if you get a certain amount of torque from both a 12v and a common rail motor, the common rail motor will probably be making more top end hp. That's largely a function of the fact that all '99 and later 5.9 cummins in dodge trucks have 24v heads. This gives them more airflow and consequently raises hp. 12v heads can be ported to help considerably, which my engine will get at some point.

Perhaps the single saving grace of the '94-'98 12v 5.9 is the bosch p7100 pump. This is THE injection pump to have if you want to make lots of power with the 5.9. The bosch cp3 is catching up, but it requires TWO of them to do it. One in the stock location and one belt driven. The p-pump is so good that people have actually taken '03 and later common rail engines and custom made timing covers to adapt a p pump to them! Especially modified, a p pump can flat PUT THE FUEL TO IT. Wanna make 1000 hp or more at the wheels? Don't fuck around with some dumb shit, get a modded p pump, firehose injectors, a bunch of turbo, and let it ride. Wanna spin the motor to or past 5000 rpm? No problem-put a set of sufficiently stiff governor springs in it.

Any of you guys seen Gale Banks brag about spinning his highly-modified duramax to 5k+? Folks have been spinning STOCK BOTTOM END 5.9 cummins well past 4k for YEARS, with 5k being a set of mainstuds away. I STILL don't understand that dumb shit-he acts like he's invented the wheel, but people have been doing it practically forever with a motor that ought not be able to. The stroke on a 5.9 is 4.72 inches. The pistons and rods AREN'T EXACTLY LIGHT. Think a 440 rod and piston combo is heavy? Nah chief, it isn't. But old Gale is god. Ok.

Anyway, you can make dumb power with any of the variations of the 5.9 put in a dodge truck-the method and potential max power just varies.
 
5 grand from a diesel! [smilie=2: WOW!!!

I didn't think/know they could do it, but I don't know anyone close that works on/with them. I've wanted one, and knew they can make serious power, but I never realized the possibilities. I wonder what it could do if lighter rods, pistons, etc were used. I know the durability would be seriously compromised, but if you could stuff one into a C body, or even a short wheelbase 1/2 ton pickup, I would be curious to see what kind of number it could put up.:hmmm:
 
A fully dressed 5.9 weighs between 1000 and 1100 lbs. The crank, rods, and pistons are a fairly small part of that weight. What it would do is smash the hell out of the front suspension and twist the car up if you ever got it to hook. This is not your grandma's 440 newport kind of torque, this stuff will send the driveshaft a'flappin.

The 5k rpm is not common, not because it's a crapshoot, but because it's not needed in most cases. You're getting pretty serious at that point. 4k is a no brainer with cheap aftermarket valvesprings. I have a set and have not installed them yet. By all reasonable calculations, mine makes about 500 hp at the wheels with the 3000 rpm setup it has now. It has pushed my 7000 lb truck (probably a bit conservative with me in it) to 98 mph in the 1/4. Please take the time to plug in the numbers youself in an online hp calculator. It will undoubtedly make more past that, but I'll be hitting the point at which an aftermarket cam will help a lot. Mine still has the stock cam/lifters in it. Swapping cams is a pretty big job, though I'll probably do it myself. You have to pull a bunch of shit off the motor and do a trick with a sawed off broomstick and clothespins (no kidding!) to shorten the job. Drop a lifter and you also drop the oilpan to retrieve it.
 
That's ashame. Seems like those folks at Ford would do so much testing that they would catch things like that before they send them out the door.
 
v8440 said:
The crux of the whole thing is the dpf (diesel particulate filter) that all these trucks must now run to meet emission standards. These filters must be routinely cleaned by being heated to roughly 2000 degrees F. The engine does this by injecting lots of extra fuel late in the combustion cycle to heat the dpf.
Click to expand...


That's certainly what's happening there but at an extreme extent, look real close at the special exhaust tips used to help cool the exhaust gas during this "filter burnout". They have cutouts with louvers designed to introduce ambient air in an effort to cool the escaping gases.
Will be interesting to see what the aftermarket exhaust systems come up with for a more asthetic look as those tips are butt ugly.
On another note those filters don't last forever and introduce another maintainance item to be brought in for replacement.
 
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