01Turbo

Well as some of you may have read various other posts from me, I have decided to do full deletes on my 2012 CTD using a Mini Max. BUT, due to the ridiculous cost of the MM($1700), I have to just start buying parts a little at a time. First the tuner, then in a couple months the EGR delete stuff, etc, etc. Just wondering if anyone has been able to determine if there is a point in mileage on a non-deleted Cummins where irreversible damage or wear will occur? Basically just wondering how much time I have to buy everything and delete before the filthy exhaust being rammed into my engine does serious wear and tear? I know, weird question and maybe I'm just being paranoid and the wear will be minimal if I get deleted before, say 60,000 miles? Any opinions on the subject?

RyeThomas

Many more stock trucks on the road than deleted, you can run stock 100's of thousands of miles. I'm all for deletes if you want too, but the delete crowd thinking your truck is going to blow up or be terrible in stock form is just bull hockey. These trucks were designed to run stock by Cummins for a long time. While I can appreciate the theory deleting will increase engine life, and it makes sense, no one as of yet has torn down 2 6.7 side by side after 100s of thousands of miles and shown significant proof. Theory without proof is nothing more than opinion, and you know what they say about opinion's.

01Turbo

I understand what you are saying, but have you seen the pics posted on this site and others of the grid heaters packed up with soot on non-deleted trucks? Some of the pics looked so bad with marble sized ***** of soot/carbon/crap that look like small pieces of coal...just looks very disturbing.

RyeThomas

Yes but again far more stock trucks on the road than deleted. You have to remember many owners don't belong to these sites and simply put diesel in the tank and drive. Cummins designed these trucks to run a long way stock before overhaul. They also now recommend a CCV filter change and EGR cleaning at 67,500 miles to help with the issue your talking about.
Cummins tore down a stock engine at 200+ thousand miles and reported the results, it's out there and the engine still looked good.
Just playing devils advocate.

6.7L MegaCab

The biggest reason I deleted was to gain better mileage and I wasn't too fond of the regeneration cycle that contaminated the oil. As an avid user of AMSOIL, I'm a firm believer of extended oil change intervals if done with oil analysis. This is not possible with a stock truck (not sure about the 13+ trucks). While the oil change interval recommended by Dodge allowed you to go to 7500 miles, it also recommended changing it when the oil change reminder popped up. Before I deleted I was spending a lot of time on the road and was changing my oil on average about every 3-5K miles. I didn't have the time or the place to change the oil myself so I had it done. The $65-80 oil changes was getting ridiculous. When I finally had the chance to change the oil myself, I put the AMSOIL OE 15W-40 oil in it. At the time I went 7500 miles. When I changed the oil, the oil wreaked and had the consistency of diesel. When we finally got to our next base I decided it was time to delete (Oct '11). I changed the oil to the AMSOIL DEO 5W-40 then switched to the Heavy Duty Diesel and Marine (AME) 15W-40 a year later. Since deleting and running a full synthetic oil, I have done an oil analysis every 7500 after switching to the AME oil. Each analysis has come back code 1 for continued use. I am now nearing 35K miles and 2 years on that oil and my truck runs great (filter is changed annually)! I plan on changing the oil when I am able to add a bypass oil filter.

Everyone has their reasons for deleting and if I had the money I wouldn't mind doing a side by side tear down of my engine and an engine in stock form with similar miles to see how they compare. I have almost 82K mikes on my truck now.

You will more than likely not run into any issues if you have to wait until 60K miles to do what you want to do, but I haven't see any consistency when a truck will fall flat on its face leaving you stranded when you need it most, because of the emissions system.

xcc_rider

The real comparison would be tearing doen and blueprinting two 450k engines. I believe the numbers would tell everything.

I threw this out there before and got hammered because I can't find the documentation to support it, but I remember when I was comparing the expected engine life on the 2007 6.7 to the Chevy and Ford I found the Ford and Chevy were both at 250k and the 6.7 was 350k.
Not a bad number but when I compared the 2007 5.9 to the 6.7 the 5.9 was at 450k, 100k higher than the 6.7 at 350k.

As you say, opinions are like (you know what's) and I do have one of each but the minimal internal engine differences cannot account for the life expectancy difference but sucking abrasive carbon into the engine could.

I think that's good enough reason to at least get rid of the egr system. With that done the chances of having a dpf problem is greatly reduced.

In reality, I've got 60k on my truck while totally stock and I believe I probably reduced its life span by 1/3 of that mileage. But that's only my opinion so just fund the deletes when you can and just drive it in the mean time.

RyeThomas

My last thought and then I will move on. Cummins states that with proper maintenance the engine overhaul schedule on a stock 6.7 equipped vehicle is 350k miles. If you don't believe it you should have purchased another vehicle. If Cummins had stock trucks dying horrible deaths at 60 to 100k miles they would not have such a large following, and it simply isn't happening.

Delete when your ready, and good luck.

Every new Diesel pickup has some form of EGR/DPF system for now and they are selling well. The new SCR equipped 13+ does have some nice improvements on the system but it's still got an EGR/DPF. No real way around it as of yet.

Rant off, fellas be safe and have a good one. Rye.