O.K. guys, here's the deal. I dropped a piston on each side of the engine on my Roush Charged 06' Mark LT. After weeks of trying tio get another motor, my mechanic just called to tell me that both of my catalytic converters are completely melted and are not passing any exhaust. Roush won't even talk to me at this point. All they will say is that since I installed a Plasma Booster recommended by their dealer, that I voided my warranty even though the engine only has 20,000 on her.
My fear is that I'm goung to put another engine in and have the same thing happen. I had my injectors tested and they came back fine.
Has anyone else had this experience? If so, what was the cause of the problem?
I'm contemplating Flowmaster converters as a replacement. Has anyone tried their's?
I'm afraid that the dealer may have erased the Roush tune the day before the engine went, but Roush won't check it for me (now that's customer service).

 

First sorry to hear about your blown motor. I have been running magnaflow high flow 3" cats since day one with my charger install. I also have long tube headers and true duals. I put my SC on at 50K miles and I am at 77.6K with no issues and I have been running a custom tune since about 3 weeks after the install.

I am wondering of you had an issue with the factory cats with an internal defect. Generally a melted cat means you have been running to rich which allows unburned fuel to reach the cats and super heat them to melt. Could of had a bad O2 sensor causing it to run rich, or faulty plugs or misfires.

When you say dropped a piston did you throw a rod or burn a hole in the piston? Which piston cylinders went boom? any pictures of the bad pistons or the cats?

 

were you running the stock Roush tune or a aftermarket tune? who did you get your plasma booster from? Have you tried talking to them? Since they are a Roush dealer maybe they could have some pull with Roush.

 

I'd keep on Roush's case over this. No way the Plasma Booster would be the source of failure. Sounds like the overly conservative tune for Roush would be more likely.

 

That sucks IM with Huitt24 I put Dynotec headers and cat on before the S/C no problems here I also have a plasma booster before S/C, S/C went on at like 8000 miles 22000 now +2 PSI at like 10000 miles. I do have a A/F gage installed the couple times I went lean I saw it and let off

 

The problem with this motors is that they cant handle boost at all, My 04 f150 had the motor go out with only 10,000 miles on the motor

 

So if these motors can't handle boost why have I been able to put almost 14 psi through my 5.4L for almost 3 years? Why have countless others been able to successfully run superchargers and turbos?


Might have something to do with tuning...

 

The older 5.4 are better than the 2004 up 5.4 i had a 2001 f150 with the 5.4 alot better than my 2004 f150 by far

 

I'm from LA as well and what I noticed after putting on my Roush supercharger "in July" was that the engine got very hot quickly. After just starting up and going 1/2 mile from my house, the engine was at full temperature and the efans ran wide open. Before the supercharger I would go at least 3 miles before the fans kicked on. This worried me so much I changed my thermostat from the stock one to a 180 F one, changed the efan on temperature to 185 F, and changed the exhaust system from 2 X 2 1/2" into 1 X 2 1/2" to 2 X 2 1/2" into 3". My truck still got hot quickly. I was glad to see the summer go away. My thought is that these engines aren't breathing well with the stock manifolds and 2 into 1 exhaust systems. As soon as I get my hands on some money and before next summer, I'm installing headers and dual exhaust so the engine can breath better.

 

I had to bring the truck to my Roush Delaership because I was having a slight miss under hard acceleration for a second until it would down shift. They were out of loaner cars so they sent me to their Lincoln dealer up the street.
Lincoln erased the PCM trying to read it without first calling Roush, so off to Roush the PCM went. Roush loaded their newest tune and returned the PCM back to Lincoln who re-installed it.
They read it and said there were no errors. I drove home (about 2 hours) and the next day the engine let go.
The piston closest to the firewall on one side is gone, and the one second to the firewall on the other side is gone. The heads have not been removed yet, but the injectors and plugs on both of these cylinders are covered in oil, as well as the top of the engine.
I'm starting to wonder wether or not Lincoln did not erase the tune a second time and let me drive home with the stock tune.
Mike Troyer tried to talk to Roush with no avail.
I'm hoping to have pictures soon.
I have not spoken to a tuner yet who has said that the Plasma Booster could have even remotely caused the problem.

 

I would see if you know anybody with a excalII and use it to read a strategy code on your pcm. If it reads a strategy code than the Lincoln dealer reflashed the PCM a second time, if it does not read a strategy code than the Roush tune is loaded. That would be one way to see if they reflashed it a second time. If you did run it 2hrs with the stock tuning then that could of very well grenaded your pistons. The Lincoln dealer should of never messed with the truck in the first place if they arent a Roush dealer, there techs dont have a clue to the Roush tuning. If the Lincoln dealer reflashed the pcm a second time then they are the ones who should put a new motor in.

 

Don't know why they were checking the PCM after it came from Roush. All you have to do is bolt it to the firewall and plug the cables in. Something sounds fishy with this dealership.

 

They were checking for any error codes that might indicate a cause of a miss. They deleted the Rosh tune before they read anything the first time.

I have an ExcalII, got it when I got the Roush from Troyer. I never even took it out of the box yet, but one of Mike's techs told me about what you were sayin. I'll have to look more into it.

 

GerRod has a point. Once the PCM came back from Roush there would be no codes to display, you would need to go through several drive cycles in order for something to register. They should of never hooked back up to the truck once the PCM came back from being reflashed.

 

Rouch go boom...that tickled my funny bone!