Funky DD13

I have a 2013 Cascadia with a DD13/10speed Eaton manual transmission and a touch over 500,000 miles that I bought a few months ago. It's been running fine and I'm overall pretty happy with it. But it's got a few quirks and don't know if it's anything serious or not. Maybe someone here knows what may be going on.

I'll be driving along at any speed, say 45mph and it will sound like the turbo is surging... Like it's trying to spool up. It'll only do that for a second or two then immediately comes back to normal. The motor itself doesn't rev up or try to speed up. I'm not experiencing any power loss. Just, the turbo seems to want to sing, I guess. It doesn't do this all of the time either. I might have an episode like that once or twice a day and then it will go back to normal.

Last week it did something else weird too. I was jake braking for a stop and the exhaust smoked solid black while jaking. I've never seen that before. Again, no power loss or anything else strange. I've only noticed it doing that twice now. Any thoughts?

 

Yes, the previous owner had it done. I won't say who it was but they were a fleet and it was 99% the reason they were selling it. It sounded to me like one of their techs kind of took it upon themselves to do it. I would assume that there must have been a problem with one of the components but it's not in any of the service records that my contact gave me for this truck...which doesn't really surprise me.

I've kind of been suspecting an ecm setting with this truck a little bit because it does seem to smoke a fair amount...I wouldn't say a lot, just a little more than usual. The tag says it's rated for 450hp. I know when I bought it they had several sensors unplugged that caused a number of CEL's. The guy I go to doesn't have a computer but plugging in some of these unplugged sensors took care of the CEL's without getting into the computer. I do see on the dash that they used a marker to black out the re-gen light but I can still see that it is flashing constantly (the previous tech couldn't even do that right...). I feel like whoever may have done this one probably botched it.

Anyway, I do check the oil religiously in this truck and it doesn't use a drop. In the service records that I do have, they recently put on a water pump and injector cups...or whatever a DD13 has. The injectors themselves were not replaced, as far as I can see or tell. That was the other funny thing, though. They put on a water pump but my tech found that the water pump pulley was bent and had nearly ruined the belt. If the previous owner has guys doing work like that...then the odds are they didn't have this truck set right, either...my thoughts, anyway.

 

Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me in the least. I'm very familiar with the quality of work from my local dealer and I wasn't likely to go there anyway. They have a sign hanging in their service department in big bold letters explaining that they won't work on such trucks.