Help, melted intake manifold, high CAC temps, Code P026a

Wrecker

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Here's the background of the situation to where I'm at now.

17 F350 DRW on 37/22's

Ez Lynk, Tyrant CAC sotf tunes, No Limit intake, 5" exhaust, and egr block plates at 3500mi

About a month ago, hooked up to my toyhauler for the first time with this truck, 43' Voltage 17klbs, to head from Grand Junction CO to Moab. Sotf set to 1, truck felt like it should have more power, egt's seem to run hotter than I remember with my 14 truck. About an hour into the drive I hear a massive hissing noise from under the hood that’s getting louder and coast to a rest stop. Get out and the secondary cooling system is blowing all the coolant out of the overflow tube. Figured the hissing noise was just the sound of the coolant spraying out. Fill the secondary tank back up, appeared to only dump what was in the tank, maybe ½ gal. Attempt to pull back on freeway and massive hissing is still there, plus no power. Pull off and look around and find there’s a 1” hole melted in the back passenger side of the plastic intake manifold. Pull the cac cold pipe and the cac temp sensor is melted also. Dur to the SOTF tunes, this sensor isn’t hooked up which is why I never saw anything or got a CEL. Have everything towed home.

Get No limit full egr dlt, ccv dlt, Midwest piping kit, and No Limit intercooler ordered up and installed on truck.

Get the truck all put back together put about 1k mi on it working and head from Grand Junction CO to St. George UT to pick up my new boat, all seems to be running good on SOTF 5 setting. Go to leave St. George and get about 1.5hrs out of town towing the boat up a hill with the cruise set at 80 and the hot side intercooler boot explodes, doesn’t blow off the clamp actually blows apart in the middle. Also, the powder coat on the hot side turbo pipe is starting to discolor right out of the turbo. Gorilla tape the boot back together, hook the boat up to my dads truck and limp it in to next town, find a boot that kinda fits and baby the truck 5hrs home not towing anything.

Get new HPS metal ring reinforced hotside boot ordered up and decide to load up a straight non-sotf tow tune so I can plug my cac temp sensor back in and see why the temps are so hot. Drive the truck and see right off the bat from sitting cold overnight my CAC temps are running 40deg over my IAT cruising at 80mph unloaded, roll into wot and climbs to 100+ deg over IAT (to about 200deg) within about 5-10sec. Getting a P026a code within 2-3 min of driving the truck also, “charge air cooler efficiency below threshold”. Clear the code, comes back right away every time I drive the truck. Load the non-sotf Extreme tune and get the same temp differential and code. My boost psi reading also jumps up and down about 4-7psi rapidly around whatever the actual boost psi is, still seeing peaks up to 37psi though.

Replace CAC temp sensor, MAP sensor, EBP sensor and try again, same results on everything. Both coolant tanks haven’t budged under the max line this entire time either and it’s been about 2000mi of driving now dealing with all this crap. Have several buddies with 17’s and just dlt tunes and their IAT/CAC temps stay with about 4 deg of each other while cruising and 15 deg at wot and their boost isn’t bouncing rapidly. Monitor turbo vein position on ez lynk and they are ranging 0-100% just like they should, exhaust brake is working, and you can hear them change at idle due to the rumble tune when it briefly hisses every so often.

WTF is wrong with this truck that even after replacing everything but the turbo the temps are so high??? Bad turbo??
 

Wrecker

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Pic of the hole that melted into the manifold, the entire inside of the manifold is all melted also
 

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Wrecker

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Pic of the boost reading and what my guages are reading cruising at 80mph with cruise set
 

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Wrecker

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How it’s setup now
 

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Jomax

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Can you read the secondary coolant temp?

Also remove the inter cooler tube going into the CAC and tell me if you see coolant in the CAC.


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Wrecker

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Can you read the secondary coolant temp?

Also remove the inter cooler tube going into the CAC and tell me if you see coolant in the CAC.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't believe with the ez lynk I can read the secondary coolant temp.

When I had the stock CAC and the intake manifold went into melt down mode there was no coolant in the CAC or any of the lines when I removed them. Didn't see any coolant in the NL CAC when the boot blew but haven't checked the cold side.
 

Wrecker

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The NL egr dlt also the bypass plate

Other things to note,
Sitting at idle my engine load is at 18-20%, cruising on flat ground at 80mph it's at 50%
Exhaust manifold pressure reads 0psi all the time, replaced with new sensor, still always 0. Assuming Tyrant has that setup that way in the tuning, would be nice to see what it was to see if it's way too high
 

Jomax

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Do you have forscan? That can read the secondary coolant temp.


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Wrecker

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put a stock cac back in and see if it changes.

It happened when I had the stock cac in there, which is why I put the NL cac in there. Should I swap it back out again?

Do you have forscan? That can read the secondary coolant temp.


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I bought the Bluetooth thing for it but never actually followed through getting forscan, maybe I need to do that today
 

Wrecker

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Here’s a pic of the cold side of the stock CAC that I replaced when it melted intake, also another pic of the inside of the melted intake. I think I didn’t pay very good attention and only looked at the hot side of CAC for leaks which was dry, looks like there is coolant in there on the cold side right?
 

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Wrecker

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So looking at some more stuff today, the factory hot boot off the turbo is melting to the hot side pipe, the powder coat under the clamps is melting and scraping off and the hot pipe tube is turning silver now from green I’m assuming due to heat. Checked turbine wheel play and up and down it will almost touch the housing but there’s little to no in and out play, hard to tell if I’m wiggling to the side slightly and feeling that but no visible movement. Seems like all of this is getting way hotter than it should be.
 

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Jomax

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The intercooler doesn’t look like it had a ton of coolant in there honestly.

As for the turbo shaft. They always have some SLIGHT movement.

For the pipes melting the paint. It could just be a bad powder coat job.

First two steps you need to do monitor Post cooler temps and monitor the secondary coolant temps and take it from there.


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Wrecker

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The intercooler doesn’t look like it had a ton of coolant in there honestly.

As for the turbo shaft. They always have some SLIGHT movement.

For the pipes melting the paint. It could just be a bad powder coat job.

First two steps you need to do monitor Post cooler temps and monitor the secondary coolant temps and take it from there.


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The turbo shaft will almost touch wall to wall, not sure if that's normal or if as long as it doesn't touch and has no in and out movement then it's good.

It could be the powder coat job, but the factory ford turbo boot is also starting to melt and deform a little, which makes me lean towards the temps actually being too hot. Also the midwest boot that blew, and all the factory intake and sensors that melted, leads me to think temps are way too hot vs having defective part after part after part.

Waiting on Forscan to approve my account, I'm very curious what my secondary coolant temps are and hopefully it'll read ebp also cause I'd like to see what that is.

Another interesting thing happened today. After I pulled the intake off the to check play in the turbine when I went to start the truck back up it would fire up and instantly shoot rpms up and settle at 1200rpm idle. I reved it up and it still wouldn't drop below 1200, put it in gear and then pack to park and back to 1200. Loaded a tune again, same thing, start up like your foot is on the gas and settles back at 1200. Went for a 20min drive and by the time I got back it was idling at normal 600'ish rpm and seems to have fixed itself. Seemed like what ever I did by wiggling the turbine shaft messed up something in the turbo and driving it for a bit got it back into place. Sure seems to me like exhaust gases are making their way to the compressor side which would explain the extra heat, why my boost reading is so jumpy, and why when I moved the shaft around it made it worse and was idling so high. I don't even know if this is possible, but that's just what is making sense in my head.....???
 

HeavyAssault

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Secondary coolant system should be supplying the CAC with temps over 100*F. The tstat will open at like 113*F. I doubt your buddies are seeing CAC out temps 4*+ over IAT.



My '15 setup isn't much different than yours except for the tuning. I most often see IAT/CAC deltas of up to 25* at most. That 25* delta is reached when under sustained boost over 10PSI for a bit of time.



Not to mention the pic you posted of the compressor wheel doesn't look like a stock compressor side. Last I knew most OEM are a stepped blade design, yours looks like a single plane design.
 

Wrecker

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Secondary coolant system should be supplying the CAC with temps over 100*F. The tstat will open at like 113*F. I doubt your buddies are seeing CAC out temps 4*+ over IAT.



My '15 setup isn't much different than yours except for the tuning. I most often see IAT/CAC deltas of up to 25* at most. That 25* delta is reached when under sustained boost over 10PSI for a bit of time.



Not to mention the pic you posted of the compressor wheel doesn't look like a stock compressor side. Last I knew most OEM are a stepped blade design, yours looks like a single plane design.

It’s been in the 90’s here, so IAT’s are over 100 anyways. One 17 250 is running Ez Lynk with same tyrant tow tune and he pulled the same stretch of hey at 80mph and he varied from 4-14deg depending on flat/up/down of the road, I was 40-60deg on the same stretch at the same time same speed.

Only time I’m under 25deg is at idle or slow city driving with hardly any throttle, cruising at any hwy speed I’m at least 40

That’s a stock 17 turbo, bought the truck new and I’ve done all the mods myself, haven’t touched the turbo
 

HeavyAssault

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Wasn't sure about the turbo wheel. I'll keep that in the memory bank.


What have you done to test the secondary coolant system is in good order?
 

Wrecker

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Wasn't sure about the turbo wheel. I'll keep that in the memory bank.


What have you done to test the secondary coolant system is in good order?

Haven’t tested in any way now, not sure how I’d go about that. I do know that after I replaced the the CAC I topped off the tank, drove it several times and kept topping off the tank as it got the air out of the system and since then the level hasn’t budged in 2k miles and hasn’t puked at all. From that I would think the pump is working since it kept getting the air out of the system at first but other than that I’m not sure what to do since I can’t monitor the secondary temp and haven’t figured out how to use forscan. I just drove 60 mi on the hwy cruising at 80mph unloaded, the iat was 70 most of the time and the cact was 115, so that’s right at thermostat temp
 

HeavyAssault

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Yea, those temps should be good to go. Still trying to get to how your original setup temps caused the melted parts.



Considering you have changed all that out still to have a suspected issue is challenging. Am I correct in your thoughts now are that the CAC out temps are too high? Otherwise the truck runs fine, drives fine?? How much boost do you see thru driving conditions?



For my own truck if I saw OAT at 80*/IAT at 80*/CAC out @ 180* with easy driving I'd think there's a coolant supply problem. As of now I have a hard time getting CAC out over 140*F while the truck is moving normally.
 

Wrecker

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Yea, those temps should be good to go. Still trying to get to how your original setup temps caused the melted parts.



Considering you have changed all that out still to have a suspected issue is challenging. Am I correct in your thoughts now are that the CAC out temps are too high? Otherwise the truck runs fine, drives fine?? How much boost do you see thru driving conditions?



For my own truck if I saw OAT at 80*/IAT at 80*/CAC out @ 180* with easy driving I'd think there's a coolant supply problem. As of now I have a hard time getting CAC out over 140*F while the truck is moving normally.

I think the temps are high cause every time I hook up to a trailer things start to melt, and everytime I drive the truck I get code p026a which is saying the temps are too high. Truck does run ok, still makes upper 30’s max for boost but doesn’t feel like it has quite the power it should, especially towing. Runs about 7psi boost cruising flat unloaded at 80mph at 2000rpm
 

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