Hey all,

So the other day here in the frozen tundra of Central Illinois, I was driving home from work and I had to get around a guy on the highway doing 35MPH, so I punched the throttle, the truck began to accelerate then lost all power and began to shutter, when I let off the throttle the truck stopped shuttering, if I got back on the throttle it would shutter again, after about a mile or so of not pushing the throttle the truck went back to acting normal..

A few days later I thought I would try punching the throttle again to see if It would repeat the same action, and it did only this time the check engine light came on, so I took the truck to the dealer.

The dealer checked it out and said that the intercooler was cooling too much and that there is a TSB out for this problem. They said that the TSB is only for trucks experiencing this problem and not a recall.. So I haven't seen the part yet but they told me that it was some sort of diverter so as to divert some of the air from the intercooler so it doesn't over cool.. They said this TSB is installed on all new models from the factory..

So my question is, How's this going to effect performance when it's not negative temperatures out side? Also It's seems like an oxymoron that the intercooler is over cooling..

Does anyone know about this TSB?

Thanks

-ThaChad

 

The intercooler TSB had to do with condensation collecting inside the CAC. Not likely unless it's humid air, which I'm guessing your not experiencing right now. I had a similar issue a couple months back and it turned out to be a bad coil. Nothing to do with the CAC.

Search for intercooler or CAC condensation and you'll find what your looking for.

 

get the tsb for the intercooler done and have the spark plugs checked for the correct gap

 

Short answer, it won't hurt your performance as the factory one was big to begin with.

Long answer involves lots of discussion about air velocity, relative humidity, dew point, throttle position and engine run time.

 

There is a service video on here somewhere that does a good job showing and explaining the changes... do a search for that and you will learn a lot about what they want to do.

I also find it highly suspect that you would get condensation in this weather - the air in freezing temps is rather dry...

Like others have said - check the plugs too

 

The air coming into the truck will be fairly dry but if the temp in the intercooler is below the dew point there will still be condensation made. After enough low throttle driving this could create a buildup of water.

The other place the condensation can come from is the PCV system. The air in the motor will also contain moisture and it will condensate on the hot engine parts once the engine is turned off. Once the engine is back on and starts to come up to temps the water revaporizes and is sucked into the intercooler where it is cooled and becomes liquid again. Rinse and repeat until enough collects to cause the misfire condition.

The only way around this is to get deep enough into the throttle consistently enough to keep the water from building up, drain the water out of the intercooler (Ford can't do this since it is linked to the PCV and will not pass emissions regs) or limit the cooling of the intercooler to keep the temperature above the dew point. Ford can't control #1, can't do #2 so #3 is the only choice. A lot of people have done #2 on their own and it almost always stops the issue. The intercooler build up seems to be very dependent on the truck and or driver. Mine has only done it one time and that was after days of milking the throttle in very damp nasty weather. I finally had enough of that slow driving crap and put the skinny pedal to the carpet and it misfired and the CEL blinked for a few seconds. That was enough to clear it out and the problem went away. Since then I have not been able to recreate the problem.

Good call on the plugs, the 2011s seem to have the most variance on the gaps and this will cause a stumble that only aggravates the problem.