Well fellas, the inevitable happened. My concern was this thing lugging itself to death, hurting bearings, and whatnot, and most importantly, it hurt itself—it hurt the manifolds. So bear with me, I’ll try to be as informative as possible. That’s the point of these videos—to be as informative as possible.
This is a regular pickup. It’s all stickered up, so bear with me here. This guy’s a car hauler, that’s what he does for a living. Well, might as well just walk you around, and here we are.
So, I want to show you the damage. I want to show you why these manifolds came off. As you can tell, the chunks are missing. If you take a good look at this manifold, what do you see? You see blowing. No, that’s not oil—that’s not oil stained. Look at that. This manifold has expanded, contracted, and now it’s too short to be reinstalled. It chopped off a couple of bolts.
Looks like the guys just dropped it in there for a quick reference, but we’re missing four bolts. Four bolts are broken off, yep, four bolts are broken off inside the heads, and one just busted off, but there was plenty of meat there to grab onto, and we twisted it out. What a nightmare. So, new manifold logs—nothing crazy, right?
So I want to be patient and jump to the cause of this, what I believe is the cause of this. These trucks have so much power, and something needs to give, right? So from… I’ll show you the turbo. With great power comes great responsibility, right? Man, that turbo’s big, cooling ports—but still, things are pretty small, but it does the trick.
Guys, I own a 24, I drive that 24 right out there, and my concern for this was, this thing tries to be the king of the hill, tries to idle its way, if you know what I mean—lugging itself to death. But it will—it will avoid downshifting. Now, when it starts downshifting, it drops two to three gears, at least my 23 did it. And, nevertheless, what that causes is extreme temperature.
You feel that? That was leaking as well. You see that black, all the way black sit on the bottom? That was the manifold, so it’s the passenger-side head that was leaking, ’cause the driver’s side looks nice and clean. What happens when this thing is pulling large hills and grades for an extensive period of time? It’s running at very low RPM, very low in my definition, and it turns out to be true.
What Ford is trying to do is to give the driver, the customer, the most pleasant experience, right? It doesn’t want to shift, ’cause what was my concern with the 23? First thing I told you guys, this transmission is all over the place. So clearly in 24, they fixed it, and I’m guessing they updated this thing. This is a 23, and now it’s not shifting all over the place, but then you got this kind of situation.
So by it not shifting—well, it went from one extreme, right? It went from one extreme to where it’ll downshift and upshift and downshift and upshift. It was preserving the engine and not driving the temps up. It started… man, I’m running out of air; it’s hot in here. It started just lugging itself, but it pulls it so great. It’s hard to explain it. With timing and more aggressive tuning is what it comes down to, they’re able to pull the hills with lower RPM.
What really happens at that point is you’ve got all this heat on the engine, and for the amount of heat that you have, you don’t have enough flow. So you’re getting all this heat, all these parts heat-soaked. See? It’s not bad. You’re getting all these parts heat-soaked. This is the intake manifold, guys, this is not the exhaust. Getting all these parts heat-soaked and really cooking.
Talking to the driver, I was thinking one of two things: either he wasn’t warming or, excuse me, cooling this thing off properly, or long, steady hills, long grades were pulled at very low RPM. And I nailed that one. He’s like, “Yeah, this thing pulls at 16,700.” So a lot of throttle, not enough RPM. I told him to keep it between 2,200 and 2,500. What that does is not only give you better oil flow—right now your engine’s better protected because you’ve got more oil flowing through there—you also have better cooling characteristics.
No, you’re thinking, “Oh, the gauges aren’t out of whack.” No, I’m not talking about that. Yes, partially, but I’m not concerned about the gauges, guys. This is not a gauge game. This thing has so much power it can keep the coolant in check, it can keep the oil in check with its cooling abilities. What it’s not doing, to my surprise, is it’s not defueling enough. I guess at such a, what, 1,200 lb-ft of torque, I’m pretty sure they’re taking some measures to defuel, right? But it’s not enough—it’s not enough to preserve itself.
And the reason I think they’re doing that is they don’t want the drivers/operators to feel bummed out. This thing needs to defuel, it needs to defuel significantly. Look at that. Look at that coloring. It’s not just the sun hitting at the right angle. This camera isn’t necessarily transmitting everything it needs to, but for the most part, that’s not oil stains—that’s just how overheated this thing is. That’s all the blue.
So my recommendation to the guy was, keep it at 22 to 25, keep that air flowing, you’ll keep your oil in better shape, you’ll keep your coolant in better shape, meaning the engine’s not going to fight as hard. But obviously, there’s still the ability to keep the cooling in check because obviously, he’s not seeing any red flags.
The operator has basic mechanical skills in place, but he’s not very knowledgeable at an advanced level. He’s kind of puzzled by why this happened. So guys, first thing—it’s hard to say, “Hey, at this point, this is what you do.” What I might’ve done… hey, at this weight, this is what you do.
What this guy does is pull five cars. So for those guys understanding what five cars is, it’s a five-car hauler—five vehicles on that trailer. There’s a lot of weight. I’m guessing this guy’s averaging about 35,000 gross, maybe up to 40,000 is my guess. All he’s claiming is he’s doing early 30s, mid-30s, but anyways, that’s not the argument. Let’s just agree to 35,000. He’s pulling grades at 16,700, which means he’s not flowing enough air.
If not enough air is flowing through here, what does that mean? It means he’s increasing heat pretty bad. It means these parts are getting saturated with heat like crazy. It means these things are getting overheated—combustion chambers are way too high to be acceptable for the parts, right? You’re talking 1,200 lb-ft of torque on such a little setup versus a big rig, right? Big rigs—what are they, 1,800, 1,600, best-case scenario 2,000?
So you guys gotta understand mechanics, at least at a basic level. I was going to say, “Let me go show you a manifold off of a semi, right?” 1,800 torque versus 1,200—that’s 1,200 to 1,800. The difference is not double, right? If you do the math, that’s 600, so that’s 30% greater. 30% greater. So in theory, this manifold only needs to be 30% greater than the semi’s—bull crap, it’s like three times bigger, that’s 300%.
So you guys need to comprehend that. You guys need to comprehend why manufacturers derate their cab and chassis because they know this is going to happen. All this guy does is haul cars every day, in and out, right? It needs to be a cab and chassis. It needs to be detuned.
So he loves this truck, he says it pulls great, he’s just puzzled why it happened. Guys, four studs are busted, and they’re busted well in there, and now they need to be drilled out. What a nightmare. What a nightmare.
So I want to wrap up this video and tell you guys, you gotta understand what you’re working with. It’s not out of thin air that I was concerned when I saw what my truck does. If you’re new to the channel, I’ll walk over to my truck so you have a better idea. My truck does not tow anything near what that truck tows. My truck, maybe some days, gets half of the weight. So what’s half of 35? 17,500. Am I doing my math right? Anyways, yeah, 17,500.
This is my truck. It’s a pretty-boy truck. It does a lot of lightweight highway driving compared to that guy, right? Lightweight highway driving. Sometimes I push it, but my pushing is what, maybe 75% of his weight once in a blue moon, and I’m on the interstate. Those guys are around town hauling cars and interstate—so a lot of hill climbs. I can’t stress it enough, guys—use some common sense, understand that power doesn’t come out of thin air. You need mechanics, you need fuel, right? There are certain things you’re not going to be able to get around.
Sorry for the, you know, shooting on the ground here—just got too much stuff stickered up. You’re not going to get around the factor of physics, right? Certain things just need to be bigger to accommodate that. Yes, this thing stays together, but how long does it stay together? 140,000 on this truck. This thing stayed together for 140k. In my opinion, this is inevitable, but he could’ve kicked the bucket down the road if he would’ve kept that 22 to 2,500 RPM.
How can you preserve that? Guys, you just gotta be one with your mechanics, or you gotta be in tune with your truck and the mechanics of your truck. Thermo gun—the best thing I can tell you, right? As you pull every day, pull data, record multiple units, see what this says.
Feathering the throttle is literally what it comes down to, and then BS to ask the question, “Why did I get all the power if I can’t use it?” That’s why cab and chassis are detuned so you can’t have all the throttle. So you can use most of the throttle. These things are hot rods. This is why I did not buy Fords for my fleet. Why am I driving the Ford? I very much appreciate the hot rod, but I will not give it to a driver. That Ford and a driver are not going to get along because where are they going to get ground?
My first concern is the transmission—you could blow that way too quick. Not that it’s a bad one, but 1,200 lb-ft of torque is just too much for it. Second thing is obvious things—this driver is not aggressive, he takes it easy, he just does not understand the thermodynamics of what’s going on in here and why it cost what it costed.
So, less throttle, more RPM. Find that sweet spot—30% throttle on average, 22 to 2,500 RPM. Just keep dropping gears until you can do that throttle position, 30%. A good telltale sign is 20—if you’re an old trucker, you’ll understand this, the physics still apply—about 20% boost or 20 pounds of boost, kind of live by that rule. If you can climb the hill with 20 psi, maybe 25 just to crest the hill a little longer, do that and watch this thing live forever.
If you watch your boost… let’s take a step back. If you got 30% throttle, you know you’re about the 20 psi boost. I’m talking about long, steady hill climbs. I mean, this guy has to do long hill climbs. He goes through Deadman, he goes through Sikomi—he’s got all the hills covered, right?
So 30% throttle, plus/minus, adjust it accordingly. 20 pounds of boost on a factory mapping is phenomenal—it’s plenty of power. These Fords make plenty of power at 20 pounds of boost. Get it up to 25, pass people. Get it up to 30, pass people. But bring it back somewhere between 20 and 25 pounds of boost—25 is on the high side, 20 is where I would like to be, but you gotta adjust accordingly.
Giving heavy throttle at low RPM is what they try to do, and it is just not a good mixture. Some might say 140,000 is plenty, but it’s not. I feel like this could have easily gone 300 before needing this, in my books. That’s what I’m shooting for—300,000 before these manifolds need to be replaced.
Anyways, guys, as always, may God bless you, and may you all have a mighty fine day, and I’ll keep you posted on what I find on these things. Ciao.
