I'm up here in North Dakota right now and we have a lot of Dodge and Ford Diesel trucks up here on the construction site right now --- Question is what's the coldest weather that you have had your truck start in? So far for me it is -47 F without plugging it in overnight.waytogo
Well that gives me a good feeling. Im headed up to Alaska next month... -47 is COLD! Im not sure the coldest mine has started in but it never has given me any troubles, Nor did my 02.
-47, wow did not know it could get that cold on the mainland of the u.s. what does that kind of temp feel like??? and was the truck strugling to warm up, lots of details please....
It was in North Dakota about 15 miles from the Canada border. I had to cycle the glow plug grid about 3 times and it shook like you would not believe but it ran, guess next time I will not forget to plug it in:doah: It took it at least 5 mins. until it was running smoothly enough for me to walk away and leave it for a good half hour to warm up I'm just glad that I had the cold weather treatment in the fuel. I highly recomend using the Amsoil fuel additive it works. By the way you can feel every inch of your lungs when it is -47 and any exposed skin hurts after just about 30 seconds.
Yea -47 sucks. I was up there for about two weeks around the new year and holy **** it was cold. I work in the oilfield to so we are outside all day and night. Our company trucks are ford 6.0's. Wanna talk about shaking and missing and just sounding like they were gonna fall apart. HAHAHA They were even plugged in too, and they didn't wanna run at all. Just curious; why didn't you plug it in?
Sparky forgot to plug it in...Coldest for me so far, not plugged in, was -5F with PS fuel additive. I recently had a problem with the battery connection for grid heater and without it, took me a good 5 minutes to get it to start @ +20F.
I do the startups on substations for wind farms, after working for two weeks strait starting at 6 in the morning and getting done at 10 or 11 and getting back to the hotel I just spaced out and forgot to plug it in. The truck was slow to crank over the batteries don't like it much either, and yea I had the whole radiator covered and it still took 30 miles to warm up all the way.
-27 F three years ago with a wind-chill of about -40. I work the mid-night shift as an overhead crane operator and there's nowhere to plug 'er in at the factory parking lot. I did the pre-heat once, started it, ran for a second or so and stalled. Done the preheat again, started it and never looked back. You could defiantly tell when the grid heater cycled as the rpm's would fluctuate with it, but other than that, no drama. I let it idle for 60 seconds or so before I engaged the Jake Brake. This puts the engine under a slight load and also effectively holds the exhaust temps inside the head ( the EGT's will go from 250 degrees without the Jake to 500-550 or so with the Jake engaged) . I went back inside the shop for 20 minutes and when I came back out, the truck was purring like a kitten, and the coolant temp was at 174 degrees imp:. I love that Jake! Makes for super-fast warm-up's (for a diesel) and it's controlled by the truck's ECM. When the coolant temps reach 170-175 degrees, the ECM will cycle the Jake "off". If then the coolant temps drop below 169 degrees, the ECM will cycle the Jake back "on" to bring them back up! Very cool when it's cold out, pun intended.waytogo
