No more trouble for deletes

'80 KW, yep it has a plywood floor but it's a Canadian cab, so it has a steel cab frame, firewall and steel side cowl behind the air cleaners. The only aluminum on this cab is the rear skin and the doors.

 

Yup, people dont seem to realize def requires work too. Dont get me wrong i HATE emissions crap. But at the same time there is a lot you can do to help with longevity of these things.

Cleaning/Replaceing the DPF filter every so often. Hell my bloody isx manual that came with the truck says to drop and clean the DPF every 150k miles for severe duty and to replace it at 500k. The def filter is supposed to be done every 100k miles.or anually. It says to replace the doser every 250k miles right in the book and so on.

Do all of what it says in the manual and the maintaince is not exactly cheap. But not ruinious like a multi fault breakdown is either. I mean hell would you ##### if you only did an oil change when the check engine light or low oil light came on, then you dropped a rod or liner? Same thing here. Bad maintaince leads to lots of expensive repairs as stuff cascades

Reason so many of these newer used trucks are junk when you buy them is that many people and/or companys run them to 500k and dump.them often with absolutely awful maintaince done om the emissions system if its done at all. Even my lonestar when i got it i had to pop a ton of mew parts onto it because every single part was so far over miles it was a bad joke.

 

what’s all the cleaning and nonsense usually end up costing?

 

I cant speak for all of the motors. but mine for a ground up overhaul was $8000. That was a new oem DPF filter, new doser, all new sensors, egr pull and clean, dpf tank drop and clean, high pressure line pulled and cleaned, new decomp tube and a few other odds and ends. And a decent chunk of the cost was the actual DPF filter. Basically only the SCR was what was left on it that came from the factory when i was done. And frankly thats the one part you dont want going bad from sloppy maintaince. The SCR alone is $5K

Just cleaning the DPF is around $300-1000 depending on filter and shop. And some guys just pay the $1800-2500 for a new oem filter. New def filter is like $50, anual egr and tube pull clean and new gaskets is around $500 and so on.

Also dont get aftermarket parts. 99% of them are garbage and wont hold up.

 

$1200 at the Kenworth shop I go to in WI to remove it and manually clean the ash out of it. (Sort of like how you have to scoop out a fireplace periodically.) There’s a book interval for it…I think it’s around 250k. I’m not clear if the truck has any way of knowing it needs done. Regen to burn the soot off it knows by watching the pressure drop between the inlet and outlet with pressure sensors.

 

They remove the ash when they remove a DPF for cleaning since it does not get removed during a regen. The soot is what is catalyzed and cleaned out every time the truck does a regen.

The ash slowly accumulates over time, covering up surface area in the DPF catalyst. Eventually when it gets too full of ash there is not enough surface area to properly catalyze the soot, which is why regens happen more frequently as time goes on.

 

I daily drive a 39 year old truck, with a 32 year old motor.

 

Have had this truck done twice. Both times the DPF and SCR have been removed and run on a cleaning machine. Not sure what the SCR part does, but it is some sort of fluid that is heated and flushed through the catalyst. Must clean off the residual trash. Both times it was $1800 total for the full service. One thing that is important is to get the ash timer reset. Have been going 200k between getting this done. So far been working good.

 

SCR catalyst is what the atomized DEF reacts with.

 

I own two such systems:
22 F 350 and a Cat 330 excavator.

I have had absolutely zero issues with the pickup thus far. It only has 70k miles on it.

The excavator has not been so good, and some of that is no doubt the conditions in which we work (starting un-aided in below zero temps for example). The mechanics of the system haven't been bad with only one DEF pump replacement, but the fault codes are ridiculous - most of which go away within an hour or two, or after shutting it down and turning the master key off. Fortunately the dealer can connect remotely and help diagnose a lot of issues, but it's still a pain in the butt to get a fault code, stop work, try to find what fault the code represents, etc. Meanwhile three other machines on the job have stopped awaiting this one to get going again. Doing the math on that downtime cost is not pleasant.

To @Accidental Trucker s comment regarding egr, I have read that some new engines in development (Cat 13 litre - not in trucks) will be able to completely do away with egr systems because, with improved and increased use of DEF/SCR, they can control nox without the use of egr.

I am aware of a few construction equipment machines that have been "modified", leading to increased efficiency with lower gallons per cubic yard fuel consumption, and no downtime due to emission fault codes.

I could go on for pages describing how, in my uneducated opinion, these emission systems on a whole have had greater negative impact to our environment relative to the probable results if the same insane amount of resources spent to meet emission standards had been spent to strictly improve efficiency. Nobody really wants to hear (read) that though. I do find it interesting that deleting of emission systems is legal in Canada, but not in the States.