Taking the plunge. My journey as an O/O.

Yeah you dodged a bullet man. As soon as my units bought used or new go off warranty they are coming off the road. The last two weeks I had to put a truck on the road that’s for sale and off warranty vs renting a truck. It’s been a great truck while I’ve had it but I was nervous as hell not gonna lie. Like you just found... just a matter of s couple hundred miles can mean 5 figures.

It’s sad but I totally agree trucks are being built to run 500k miles. 300k trouble free and 500k before stuff starts hitting the fan. Even STUPID stuff like coolant main lines rusting through.

 

From my understanding its about operating temperature. At idle or under low load the engine doesn't work hard so the exhaust temperature is to low to provide a proper burn and the dpf gets plugged up from all the soot and unburnt fuel sent out the exhaust.

I've never had a truck with a dpf so won't swear by this but it makes sense, just look at the pyro guage on an engine at idle vs one running at 50% or better load. At idle my n14 barely registers enough to read, 150 maybe 200 degrees. With a light load it stays down under 400 degrees. Stick a 46k lb coil on the deck and its up around 750 and will climb to 1100 when I'm getting on it going up a big hill.

 

Factory location is in the engine pipe about 8 inches behind the turbo. I have seen some performance engine builders put them in the manifold. From my understanding the temp will drop 200 to 300 degrees by the time it gets through the turbo. For a race team trying to squeeze every bit of hp out of an engine with hundreds of thousands invested in the engine that can be important. But for the rest of us the factory location is just fine.

Fun trivia: many airplane engines measure it at the combustion chamber or immediately after. I got to play with a new Garmin avionics panel package back in 02 or 03 and it would show the internal temp of each individual chamber.

 

Yes. The Cummins guy said that the very real regen is indeed occurring only when an engine is under a sufficient load (enough weight or long enough uphill climbing) as exhaust temps are only then high enough and that even parked regen cannot as effectively produce that. Problems with clogging sure start in a harsh Winter when you leave the truck idling for more than a day or two. Maybe this would be partially solved, if they made it possible to program ECMs to put trucks into regen automatically when unattended, otherwise only a block heater or APU could solve the problem.

 

Now that’s frugal!!! Good for you. $$$$ in your pocket where it belongs. Not supporting everyone else’s businesses.

 

I wouldn't call it frugal. More like well maintained. I spend money without batting an eye when it needs spent to fix something that needs fixed. My maintenance costs are kept very low because i am under it greasing it and looking for problems to catch them before they get a chance to grow expensive.

 

That gives me an idea. Why not bake the filter clean in a self cleaning oven? While the wife’s not around ofcourse.