Autonerdz forums

Mike, good stuff and my service manager from Motor Trucks (International) whom we use some,.. pretty well defined it.

He stated that anything over 10,000 LBS does not have to comply to some information laws. The only reason in many cases you have good support on Cummins, or Ford for instance is the fact that these engines go into many units under the 10,000 limits so you vicariously get the info (IDS) ect,  thus have some understanding of them. My point being  there is not a lot of HD training out there to be had even if you want it.  I could be wrong here and feel free to correct me.
I for one would be interested in it,  just that there is not to my knowledge much out there, pretty much learn as you go.

Also many of the shops whom we interact with and show them Pico Data have no idea what we are doing. I do find that if you take the data down to the service dept and present it to them and not be adversarial they are happy to listen to it as some of the time they also are in a quandary. Many gas technicians are farther ahead of the diesel as they to some extent were using scopes and the likes for years.  I can now see the day when the diesel tech will be very relevant as given the use of GDI it is more like diesel, so the two seem to be meeting.

I see where Ford is putting a 2.0 litre diesel in some of their new transits and also a line of cars coming, so diesel is not out of the game even after VW fiasco.  VW as I understand it could meet the specks just not with the same mileage.

Truck repair is a nightmare.  I have relationships with many companies and many of the new units, KW and Cat, whom I am told is running Cummins spend a lot of time in the repair bays. We just bought a low mileage used Internationals and talking to the rental outfit listened to some of the horror stories. Cat in our area will bring you out a new tractor free while your  unit is down, this is the only reason one company bought it as their new KW was not all that stellar. Many independents  rack up bills in the thousand and then just go broke.  As the case with the 08 that I did a forum on the dealer could not fix it over a 4 year period. When googling the net found this story to be a common thread. I doubt that it is a lot different with other makers.

We actually advise our owners to not buy any more pickups with diesel for their personal company vehicles, the repair on the exhaust and EGR just don't pencil out. As for the heavy duty if you want the HP and torque you are pretty much committed to dropping the change. My personal truck is a 03 Dodge and will never buy one newer than 06, just not worth the hassle.

This forum is a wealth of info and until some more comes along pretty much what we got. I run two TDI and a Dodge Cummins for heavy stuff. The fact is the GDI are getting just as expensive to fix and are pretty much a diesel on gas, IMO.

StitchB