I bought my truck new with 23 miles showing on the odometer (6/24/07). Today I got my first CEL light at 2,998 miles on the odometer. I still cannot get my truck to display any codes doing the turn the key 3 times thing, can someone explain that one to me? But I took it to the dealer and the tech read the code and it was the P245 EGR code. He said they have a new flash out to fix that specific issue so I'm scheduled to get it next week.

Now heres the rub. When he read the ECM it showed a total of 85 engine hours, and out of those 85 it says I had 21.5 hours of idling! That is absolute BS, and of course the tech started in on me with a big lecture about idling. As I told him, I do not use my truck for work, I use it only for pulling my boat and 99% of that driving is on the highway. I have read these forums since before I got my truck and I am religious about not letting it idle. He said that anytime the engine is running and either in park or neutral, the clock runs on the idle time meter.

I told him there is no way, if he had said 35 or 40 minutes total, I would buy that. Then things got heated because he basically called me a liar and the service manager had to step in before I started pounding this guy.

So the question is, how the heck did this thing get 21.5 hours of idle time on it? It either idled a lot at the dealer before I bought it, or the dealer let it idle a lot (accidentally?) when it was at their place numerous times (adding leather seats, changing fuel tank, etc not for problems) for service, or the engine program is not counting the time correctly. I did notice that if you bring up the hour meter on your overhead console and leave your key turned on but the engine off, the hour meter does keep counting.

Any ideas?

 

I think I read or heard that any rpm's under 1400 or somewhere near that are logged as idle time so if you aren't getting up the rpm's down the road it will log as idle time. If I'm wrong or the stated RPM's may be wrong please correct me.

To check it turn the key on then push and hold the trip reset with it showing miles, then it will change to trip miles and keep holding it and after 10 or so seconds you will see xxx hrs. Divide that by miles and it will give you some kind of aproximate run speed and time.

 

this may be a dumb question but what is so wrong with letting my truck idle? i leave mine idling for hours at a time at work. heck i have let it sit and run as many as 14 hrs straight in one day at work.

 

wow 14 hours. what do you do??? many people beleave that letting a truck idle will wash the cylender walls and carben up the valves. i do not know if this is true or not.

 

im an inspector in the perto-chemical industry and on some jobs they dont have power so i have a big inverter that i use and the truck has to be running to keep the inverter going. also there are some long days and nights sitting on a turnaround waiting for equipment to be cleaned for us to look at so all you can do is sit in the truck and wait.

 

guess what? if you want to let your truck idle all day do it! thats what i would tell the little jerk if he wants to get nasty. matter of fact i ought to go start mine and let it idle all night. where do these guys get off thinking they can tell you (me, us) how we can operate our vehicles.

man im fired up now! thats crap. when you go back tell him that i dont care if 80 of the 81 hrs on it are idle hrs it still needs to be fixed!

brett

 

sounds like a fun job. lot better that a truck driver.

 

I would like to know what is better for the truck, to let it idle or to stop and start it? Like if you are running around town, should you kill it at each stop or let it idle? I have seen plenty of guys that let them idle, 30-40 minutes at a time. And then how long do you let them idle when you start it up in the morning? Hot mornings vs cold mornings?

Then after a hard run should you let it idle to cool down? I have a big JD tractor they say to let it run after working to let the turbo cool down?

 

My understanding is 1st Yes you should let it cool down, after a hard run towing and like up to 5 minutes. Short hauls short stops leave it running, more than 5 minutes shut it off. Cummins and Dodge do not recomend long time idling. There have been many arguments, drivers in cold climates let them run all the time most don't have problems but cylinder wash can be a major problem according to others therefore get rpm's up to 12-1400 then idle it. With the new 6.7 plugging the PDF sounds like it can be a problem with long ideling and not owrking the truck hard. According to some if an auto tranny idling in park can damage your tranny, and then there are the naysayers, do what you want and it won't hurt a thing. I personally believe the damage statements, and long idling can cause cyl wash down and tranny damage, there fore I do not idle for long periods of time and when idling I put it in neutral and set the emergancy brake and set idle to 1300 rpm.

 

Service writer told me computer logged anything under 1100 rpm as idle time. I told him I let my 04 idle for 8 hours one day, he strongly advised against it with the 6.7 and dpf.

 

What are the chances the tech misread the 21.5hrs for 21.5 minutes?

Does the readout on "Hours Idleing" break it down to when,, as in date
and time of day? Or something similar to pinpoint when it idled.
They may have idled it alot when it was in their shop which would
exonerate you.

 

I let mine idle at 1100 with the manual idle activated. Even Cat says to idle at no less than 1100 rpm and they will run fine.

 

I would think that *true* idle time would be whenever the throttle position sensor was reading 0% and the speedometer was reading 0 mph.

My 2007 with recalibrated speedometer and LT285/70R17's is only cranking 1,350 rpm at 55 mph.

Greg

 

I would go back and tell the tech I want the High Idle Feature activated and that way if you do need to idle the truck just activate the high idle and it will elevate the rpms to 1100 and you can adjust it up to 1500. Now not saying you did idle the truck that long in anyway but at least if you need to or want to you can idle it all day long with this feature activated and not worry about the computer logging idle hours.

 

I would go back and tell the tech I want the High Idle Feature activated and that way if you do need to idle the truck just activate the high idle and it will elevate the rpms to 1100 and you can adjust it up to 1500. Now not saying you did idle the truck that long in anyway but at least if you need to or want to you can idle it all day long with this feature activated and not worry about the computer logging idle hours.