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.

 

Follow-up on this for those who may be going through something similar.

Back in February, I was grossing around 95,000lbs for a job... about 3 loads a day for about two weeks straight. I was pulling through hills and such, giving the truck a good workout. Each round trip was about 180 miles (I pull side dump, in case I haven't mentioned that earlier). For the most part, the truck was behaving pretty well up until the last day we were running. It turned into a total dog and was smoking black way worse than usual. Like, solid black 100 yards past the back of the trailer. Emissions be darned, it shouldn't be doing that either way. I got done with the job and talked to a few guys I know and trust about what it was doing. I was referred to a local shop that would work on it. I talked to the guys at the shop and simply from the word of mouth history of the truck, they knew who butchered the tune on the engine. They said they had seen it before from this guy. Long story short, they retuned the engine and found that the EGR was plugged up, too. They cleaned that up and got the truck back on the road for me.

That week, I helped a farmer friend haul some corn because his truck was down and I wanted to test mine before committing to any of my paying customer jobs. If anyone knows farmers, you know these loads aren't always loaded properly. Without incriminating myself too badly, I'll just say that each load was over 100k. The truck handled this without a problem. I've been driving it for my jobs since then and haven't had any problems with it. The turbo sounds like it's doing what it's supposed to do and my throttle response is right where it is supposed to be. It's by no means a power monster but it behaves the way a 450hp truck with a 10 speed should be. My fuel mileage hasn't drastically improved but is showing slow improvements over time. All in all, it came down to the tune on the engine. I feel like it was money well spent to get it going the way in should be.

Hopefully this helps anyone else dealing with something similar.