THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE - DFO gets a truck and hops on Schneider's IC Choice Program

Yep, you got it the first settlement was the paid bobtail deadhead from Green Bay to Detroit, and the load from Detroit down to Bridgewater VA.

The bobtail deadhead paid $645. That was just a one-time payment for Schneider, they called it "excessive box miles".
My load paid $945.

This settlement also included the first fueling that was done up in Green Bay while finishing up orientation (I got the truck with about 1/4 of a tank in it), a second fueling right after picking up the first load, and a 3rd fueling on Monday when I started this week.

Of course the insurance, plates, permits, etc. came out as they do every week as well.

So that settlement was small.

On to today... the good news is that I was able to pick up the load today and luckily didn't run into any problems with being overweight. They were slow to start loading me and burned up about 4 hours of my day so I didn't get as far as I wanted to today, but I'll still be able to make the delivery by tomorrow evening.

The bad news is my buddy mr. check engine light is back, coming on and off throughout the day. My fuel economy is not what I should be getting and I am willing to bet it is related to whatever failure that is throwing this check engine light, which I will lay money is something emissions related. Oh I cannot wait for the day when this truck is in my name and the engine warranty has expired... lets just say some certain components will just stop working permanently and the ECM will forget they were even ever installed on this engine, lol. BUT, until then, I will play by the rules. Since my hours are going to start running on recaps soon I will probably try to get home for a restart and while I'm taking the restart will take the truck to Cummins or Freightliner.

Then hopefully by the time I"m ready to head back out we'll be all fixed up and getting much better MPG. Also maybe uprated to 500HP as well, we will see.

Its going to be a little tricky getting myself to NC. Currently it looks like I could either run a super super crappy load that will basically cover just the cost of fuel to get back to NC, or I could sit through the 18th and then grab a decent load out on the 19th and get back to NC that same day. I'll see if anything else shows up on the board overnight, if nothing else shows up I'll probably opt to sit on the 18th and then grab the load out on the 19th.

ANYWAY, all in all a good day, still very happy with the truck despite the issues with whatever is throwing the check engine light, but that is to be expected on an emissions-era truck with 300k miles on it lol. Hopefully its just the DPF needs to be cleaned or something similar, and not something EGR related. Based on what I'm able to see so far I'm GUESSING DPF related, but... just a guess. I'll be curious to see what it is.

 

Thanks, I was doing a little reading on there last night, very interesting thread.

 

Well I made my final delivery for this first week today, I think that rounded things off pretty nicely.

I'm bobtailing home now - its time to solve this problem with the check engine light - I am getting absolutely abysmal mileage and on the way to where I'm stopped tonight I got the "stage 2" regen needed light that usually means the DPF is really getting clogged. I didn't want to sit around and wait for a load towards home, and I don't want to start taking apart my engine away from home either, lol.

I did a fair bit of reading into that daf105paccar posted a couple posts back and ended up finding some videos where the guy who started the thread explains the location of several of the sensors related to the emissions system on this Cummins. I pulled the MAP sensor out when I stopped for fuel earlier today and it was absolutely caked with soot - remember, this MAP sensor is located in the INTAKE - yet its covered in soot - all thanks to EGR!!!

Anyway, I bought a glorified toothbrush and cleaned all of the soot and while I don't think it really did anything changed MPG wise I did notice I was able to produce more boost (close to 35lbs instead of 30) after cleaning the sensor off and reinstalling it.

Seeing what that MAP sensor looked like, I can only imagine what the rest of the system looks like, all of the sensors and any little passages are surely clogged with soot. Without accurate readings from these sensors the ECM gets confused and can't correctly control things such as the variable geometry turbo. The DPF issues are probably because the device that injects diesel fuel upstream of the DPF is probably clogged up as well, from what I've read around this mileage that the truck is at now is when this part needs to be replaced.

So, tomorrow I'll make it back home and will start pulling and cleaning parts. It looks like there are a couple pieces that can't really be cleaned and need to be replaced, so hopefully Cummins will have them in stock or can get them quickly. I've been watching the coolant level very carefully and it doesn't appear to be dropping at all, so that's a good sign that the EGR cooler is not leaking (for now anyway, lol). That gives me some hope that I'll be able to get everything cleaned up and run a regen and actually burn off all the crap that is built up in the DPF. If the EGR cooler is leaking and there is sticky coolant all over the combs of the DPF... well... good luck lol.

Gonna give this a shot before I take it to the Stealership or Cummins and they waste my time and money.

Running a parked regen now in an attempt to clean enough crap out of the DPF to prevent it from going into full-on panic mode and derating the engine. Who knows if it'll get anything done but its worth a shot LOL.

Assuming the couple parts that I need to replace instead of just clean are in stock, it shouldn't take more than a day to get up and running again. While I'm doing that I'll reset my hours and be ready for another week!