I want to buy a 2005 Columbia with 1.1 mil miles with rebuilt engine. Opinions.

I seen truck paper flooded with their trucks. Love those 70" sleepers.
Question out of curiosity, the model year 07 trucks with the Acert are those the problematic DPF ones?

 

No, they are the engine that made caterpilla, Get out of the on highway truck market. Think about that for a minute. Cat was the top of the line engine maker in north America for decades, and then decided to stop selling engines here due to how much of a loss those engines caused them.

 

So if one had the choice of having to buy an ACERT C15 04-07 are the decent ones?
I grew up being biased to the yellow paint, my old man and all his buddies ran them, hence my username. I am just still new to all these emission engines.

 

That was always the trade off. Climb any hill with ease, excellent reliability. If you wanted a left lane truck, it had to have a CAT or Cummins. Pass everything but a fuel stop. Somewhat pricey on certain parts.

With some effort, $$$$, and changing my driving habits, I am now seeing consistent 6mpg on most loads and regions. North West.... anywhere between Oregon to about Cheyenne.. I do good if I can manage 5 - 5.5 mpg. Only time I go below 5mpg now is when I keep my foot in it.

For me 6 mpg is doable. Getting spoiled with my set up. I think the only way I would give up CAT or Cummins power would be if I knew I would never see below 7 mpg. Talking 7.5 - 8 mpg for the most part... dipping to 6.8 - 7 mpg running hard... ie.. NW region. Thats a profitable trade off.

My carrier has 2 Coronado gliders with 500hp 12.7 Detroits.. yeah.. they do 7 mpg for the most part. But 7.5 is still a struggle for them. They still dip into the 5's if you run them flat out with a load. When my BXS was only 435hp.. I could easily out pull them climbing hills. Now its no contest.

What I am really interested in is when the 579's start coming down in price.. like below 6 figures. 515hp Cummins, 13spd, 3.25 rear end, 240" wheel base. 125 - 150 gal tanks. If I find something like that below $80k thats not beat to hell, I'll be all over it.

Till then I think another Columbia or Century or an early 386 will be my next truck. CAT or Cummins powered with similar specs I mentioned above.


Hurst

 

The pre DPF ACCERTs from 04 - 07 have different designations. Also.. beware.. there are some 07's with DPF. I had an 07 386 that had a 475hp C15 with DPF. Very bad experience with that truck.

Funny thing is I also drove an 08 T660 with basically the same set up.. that truck was pretty good. Only went in the shop twice for emissions.. ARD head both times.

I have a 435hp 04 BXS turned up to 500hp, pre DPF ACCERT C15 in my Columbia. Besides fuel mileage... I cant brag enough about the reliability.

The C15 ACCERT itself is a fantastic motor. Nothing wrong with it. People who love CAT motors are doing things to the DPF C15's that we cant discuss here on TTR and rolling them for many trouble free miles.

Hurst

 

10/4 thanks for the reply, definitely cleared it up some.

After some research I think I know exactly what you mean about what people are doing to their dpf c15s.

 

Not sure how much trouble I can get in for this,.. but I'm a serious Mustang and Trans Am car nut.

On Mustangs when the 4.6 and OBDII came out,.. it added 2 more 02 sensors. 2 Primary for engine management, and 2 after the catalytic converters, to measure emissions.

It really screwed up guys like me in the beginning, because the first thing a guy like me does is get rid of the factory mid-pipe with an off-road pipe and replace the stock manifolds with long tube headers. Off road mid pips have no converters. So the OBDII system sets off the check engine light because the rear 02's are reading the exhaust emissions as out of bounds now.

Well some genius gear head figured out what parameters the OBDII ECM needed to see in order to out out the check engine light with an off road exhaust,.. and thus the rear O2 Eliminator was born. The off road pipe has bungs for the O2 sensors, but instead of plugging the OBDII harness directly into the O2's, the O2 eliminators plug into the O2's and then the OBDII harness plugs in after,.. the O2 eliminators have a resistor that gives the correct signal to the ECM so it thinks the O2's are reading correctly.

Thats as much as I think I can elaborate with out saying anything directly about CAT and Cummins DPF systems.

Hurst

 

My 07 Acert is non-DPF.. Its been a dream, knock on wood. I average about 7.25mpg driving 60mph or the speed limit whichever is slower, mostly light van loads. In the 500k miles ive put on it ive spent less than $20k in oil,repairs,tires,brakes,clutch,etc. All I heard from dealers before i bought it was how much trouble the twin turbo motors were and ive had the exact opposite experience. Im going to get it tuned sometime this year by Mr H and hoping to get up closer to 8`s.

 

Everyone always slams CAT's for being expensive to buy parts for. Aside from an inframe, which is generally what every motor needs around a million miles, I have spent practically nothing on my CAT motor in 5 years 500,000 miles. Aside from normal maintenance. To be fair I did make some performance upgrades, turbo, etc. The same can't be said for the rest of the truck but that motor just keeps on trucking reliable as can be.

 

Great information being posted!

Hurst (interesting your a gm and ford fan lol)
Good to know that it's very similar to tricking a ecm when running a test pipe, its not rocket science at all. I was 17 once so I'm familiar more or less with the idea.

Another question would be the CAT extended warranty. I remember back in the day it was 5 years/500k miles. If one is to purchase a truck with mileage up in the 800k would it be advised or worth to call up CAT and purchase a warranty (no third party coverage) for the engine to cover a potential overhaul? I have downloaded their pdf but there is no pricing and the coverage options are vague.

Many people want to stick with CAT, especially if trying to finance a truck but are restricted by the age of the truck. There is so much confusion and misconception when it comes to these engines. It would definitely help a lot of people out if we can make a sticky thread with as much correct information on these ACERT models.