dieseldoc

Well ford doctor I sure hope so. I am a caterpillar truck engine tech and last time I was at school, My instructor said that cat has an engine and they are just waiting for someone to want it. My ford salesman also told me that ford and cat were very close to having a deal but international got the contract. I hope that if any of this is true they made it similar to the C7/3126. But seeing as how my blood is yellow with little blue ovals, I guess I am a little biased.

I am working on a 7.3 in a 90 f-250. It was in for hard starting when cold. Glow plug system is good. I was checking for power at the fast idle solenoid, I had none. I had power at the engine harness connector. Rather than cut the harness all open to find the open, I ran a new wire. However now it stays on all the time instead of kicking off like it should. Is there a diode or resistor or something I bypassed? Is this where my open probably is?

The C7 does not have variable valve actuators and so the test should not show up in the test drop down. It was probably a 4 cylinder and a 1 cylinder cut-out test. I have run into that before where it will abort and say something about a neutral switch. If doing what you did does not work I have had to go into the configuration screen and turn that switch off to get the test to work. One other thing on the C7, when doing a cylinder cut-out test the results may come up as undecided or something to that effect. If that happens you have to flash in a special flash file to do the test once your repair is complete and you have done the test again to verify. You have to flash it back to old software. If you dont it will be de-rated and not reach top engine limit. I dont usually see to many C7 at my dealership, but I feel for you if you have to replace an injector. Because getting that valve cover out isnt to bad but if you have to put an injector in #6 getting the tooling in there is almost impossible. The 650 and 750 is a really bad chassis.

Well wglr13mwz, in response to your question about whether it is cat coolant or not. Most truck oems do not use our coolant. In fact most of them use shell or some other brand at the factory. I think the problem is that most people think that elc requires no maintenance. This is not the case. In reality you should be taking somewhat regular coolant samples. I think the biggest enemy to elc is untrained people. For example a lot of truckers, and even pick-up owners go to the petro(for trucks) or Jiffy lube to get thier oil changes. For the most part these people are forced to try and sell parts and services that are unnecessary. They also see the radiator tank a little low and just add water or don't read the labels or know what they are working with and add regular coolant. In a perfect world where the system would be sealed and only a hand full of trained people would come in contact with the system throug out its life than yes elc is a wonderful product. But in the real world with untrained people or people that just dont care and have the "its not my rig" mentality standard(regular) coolant is much more forgiving. Just an opinion, dont mean to rant.

Thanks for the ideas. I just went through the pedal assy. Because it was broke and the plastic bushings were shot. The new master came with a new rod. There isnt much slop in the linkage pieces in the cab. I will try putting a fitting in the old master cap and try that. I guess all I can do is just keep pumping the pedal. What the hell I already have an hour into bleeding the damn clutch. I wish I had researched some and gottent the whole assy. Like ford doctor said. Is it possible that since the pedal was so hard to push before that the slave cylinder was damaged? Thanks for the help guys, I have been pulling my hair out with this one.

Does anyone have any tricks to bleeding the hydraulic clutch system. I am working on a 90' F-250 7.3idi and a five speed. It came in with the clutch pedal not returning all the way and very hard to push. Cust. installed a slave cylinder himself. I found the throw-out bearing binding on the input shaft. Installed new throw-out bearing and smoothed out the input shaft collar. Once together the pedal was much easier to push but still only had a 1/4 of the stroke it should. Found the master cylinder failed. Installed new master cylinder and bled following the procedure exactly like it said. Pedal now has half the stroke it should. However it will not return all the way on its own, and pedal feels spongey like air is trapped. I have tried bleeding it several times with no success. Any tricks to bleeding these clutches or other causes? Installed a new clutch and updated to the luk single mass flywheel when I replaced the throw-out bearing. Sorry for the long post but wanted to give all the facts. Thanks in advance

Well it is good to see somebody is having good luck with it. I am cat tech and I hate the ELC coolant. I see a lot of cold water leaks like you have already mentioned. Also most of the engines that we have apart that are using the ELC have a lot of cavitation erosion on the liners. I mean even at 400,000-500,000 they are pitted so bad that we have to replace some of them. We use to never see that before ELC came on the market as long as you kept up on the SCA. Being a CAT tech we are big into sampling. I am driving an 06' F-250 with a 6.0. I took a coolant sample at my last oil change(that was at 5,000 mi.) and the sample came back bad. It reccomended flush and refill. I am a beliver in the standard cat coolant. The guys I have gotten to convert over have never been happier. I run it in everything I own. I want to flush and fill my new one with it, but I am scared that it will void my warranty. Sorry for the long post. I do have a question though. When I first got the truck there was a lot of sand in the degas bottle, and it was causing my regulator to stick open. Of course when I took it in it would not act up. I finally put a water filter on and that has helped. I am wondering if this is the norm, or did I get one that did not get cleaned out well enough?

Hey guys I am new to the forum. I am a truck engine tech for a cat dealer, as well as the tech that maintains our fleet of service trucks. We use series turbos on our 11 to 15 liter engines and it works great. We have very few turbo problems. We dont use vgt at all, just a simple waste-gate. Hopefully that is what ford will use. I dont know how they can expect something like vgt to be reliable.