SpaceHiker

Just a quick note that AmazonBasics now has a possible Rotella T6 killer. It's a 5w-40 CK-4 synthetic. A few testing sites (some professional, some not) have all found the new AmazonBasics oil to be of high quality. I still have a good stock of T6 but after I've used that, maybe it's worth a try.

Good to know, thanks!

I have a Banks Brake and I don't think the Timbo will work with a Banks, otherwise I'd get one. Haven't made any adjustments, although I've read your info on how to do it properly (I tested the APPS with a meter maybe 4 years ago and everything checked out fine). Still the original APPS after 20 years and 280k miles.

Sigh, that's what I was afraid of. Ya my OBD setup (Torque Pro) just bottoms out the throttle at 9%. It's a common issue and doesn't really tell me anything unfortunately. Thanks for the confirmation.

Anyone know if there is an OBD PID for idle mode? Say for instance my truck had a weird lopey idle and I suspected that the APPS is rapidly jumping from idle mode to off-idle (because the truck also jumps out of fast-idle mode when it's cold). I know I can check it with a meter, but I was hoping I could monitor it from obd. Thanks.

Ya once you catch up on deferred maintenance they're pretty sweet. Just make sure to stay caught up lol. I pretty much agree with everything said here. I know what it's like to own a website, I operate about 7 of them at the moment, with sites coming and going all the time. Income source on all of them is Adsense at the moment, although I've used Amazon Associates as well. The big forum aggregators are just like you said, they buy sites and then let them go without monitoring much of anything.

Right, one definitive guide that solves the problem versus a whole bunch of chitchat that goes nowhere. If only people would search and read before posting.

Maybe this is all in my head, but I was wondering if anyone else has noticed this: Many of us have trucks have been around 10+ years now, and in that time I think every possible question has been asked and answered in the various online forums, particularly CF. And so, when I visit the forums now, all I see are the idiots who don't know how to search, and the trolls who answer them, usually incorrectly because they are more interested in seeing their jibberish in print than having any actual knowledge about what they are posting. All three of my vehicles are older, so I see the same pattern in the forums for all three of them. It seems like a forum has an actual useful life of about 7 years, after which it really is only needed as a search tool. I suppose something original might pop up from time to time, but otherwise I find it a waste of time to try to answer questions anymore on CF. For every knowledgeable answer that someone posts, there are 10 answers from trolls, and the OP doesn't know who to trust since they're obviously not even able to search for themselves. And so they completely misinterpret the answers they're given and just make a bigger mess for themselves. It's a pattern I see repeated a lot in forums for older vehicles. This forum is different because it's more like a place where the "already knowledgeable" go to ask about something that has them stumped, although I do occasionally see the "dur..." question here as well. But the large popular forums I visit, such as CF, NASIOC, and clublexus, have all become a bit of a joke for any vehicle older than about 7 years. ClubLexus is actually the biggest joke I've seen just because of the type of person that generally buys such a vehicle (example: "My steering wheel moves out of the way when I exit the vehicle, going to sell the vehicle if you can't tell me how to stop it from doing that?"). The other issue I think it that more people than ever before are buying old vehicles who have absolutely no mechanical inclination or experience. You can't buy a 15 year old Cummins and take it to a mechanic every time there's the slightest issue, it would cost more than a new truck within a few years. But time after time I see "My mechanic said..." on the forums. Rant over, resume normal programming.

All you have to do is leave that switch on high, and wire a rotary dimmer switch into an electrical box that you splice into the power wire. This is the switch I used on my old stove: http://www.homedepot.com/p/600-Watt-Rotary-On-Off-Dimmer-White-R50-06602-0IW/203878272

It depends on the software you are using. If you are using the torque pro app for android, it allows you to create and save a custom live data profile for each vehicle. It does not automatically switch over based on the vehicle it's connected to. You have to change the profile manually, but the procedure is obvious. Other software will behave differently. You might need to switch to a different app.

Mine clearly reports A as 1 kpa. I've confirmed it with quite a bit of driving around with live data. I guess other years report differently?

Oh yes, then there's that conversation. I forgot to mention that one. The people who were discussing that were making some important mistakes at various points in that conversation: 1. Some were thinking the ECM handles boost as psi rather than kpa. 2. Pretty much everyone assumed the ECM handles map readings as an integer, when it is almost certainly floating point. 3. People were confusing the canbus with obd. So on the canbus, the ecm is taking raw voltage readings from the output of the map sensor and converting them to a floating point (decimal) number in kpa. What we see on obd is the rounded output, because decimal precision is not necessary and the obd spec doesn't have the space for it. Logically then you would need 2 bytes on the canbus for the floating point value and 1 byte on the obd for the rounded integer.

Well, since I've taken it upon myself today to solve the mystery of my truck's poor performance on 2-stroke oil (see cumminsforum), as a side effect I solved the mystery of the boost formula. The correct boost formula that works 100% accurately at any elevation is: (A/6.8947)-14.6 This means that in any OBD software, you need to add a custom PID for boost. For the mode and pid, enter 010b or 01 0b (depending on your software's format). For the minimum value enter 0, for maximum value enter 100 or 60 or whatever you want (22 suffices for my stock truck lol). For equation, enter the above formula: (A/6.8947)-14.6 Then for decimal point precision, just use 1 decimal point. This formula does not depend on atmospheric pressure at all. And in fact, the whole discussion about atmospheric pressure is completely overblown because it really only concerns our trucks when they are at idle. You have to keep in mind the function of a turbocharger. It is by it's nature a perfect altitude compensator and will always try to achieve a certain equilibrium within it's mechanical limits. This means that as soon as we begin applying fuel with a press of the throttle, intake pressure comes up above standard atmospheric pressure anyway. It just takes slightly longer at 10,000 feet than it does at 2,000 feet. For the above reason, and since I'm at 9,240 feet, I see my boost sit at 0.0 for a little while before it starts coming up. That time where it's at 0.0 is when the turbo is reaching 14.6psi. It's a very short period of time, but it is noticeable at my elevation (lasts about 2 seconds after applying throttle). My mechanical boost gauge shows the same thing. Hopefully that clears up some of the issues that have been bubbling in this thread for a while. Just keep in mind that my truck is a 98.5, I don't know if the newer trucks report a different data format on 010b, but I can't see why they would.

That's very interesting because I see the opposite. My truck will read 100-102 for a long time before it starts picking up. That might be the difference between the early sensors and the late sensors. It seems I might have bought the wrong truck for high altitude operation lol. But after 9 years I guess I'm stuck with it.

Sorry for the disappearance, but what I'm finding with the map sensor, at least on the early ones, is that it doesn't register anything below standard atmospheric pressure. Apparently Cummins doesn't care if we're at 14,000 feet, the sensor will read sea level anyway and consider boost to be 0. If any of you have had your trucks at 14,000 feet, let the engine cool off and try to restart it, you know how badly these trucks run up in the rare air anyway, at least until they can build boost. You literally have to drive one foot on the throttle and one on the brake to get some boost going before they will run right. So readings start at 100kpa which is approximately the average sea level pressure, then go up from there as boost builds. This makes sense if all Cummins is trying to do is measure relative boost above standard pressure. It's actually the same thing our gauges do, as I described previously.