The importance of duct tape and a good independent mechanic

I was just driving along….. minding my own business….. in my brother-in-law Mike’s F250 Super Duty when all of a sudden….. boom!  It woke Mike and Uncle Bob immediately. “What the heck happened” is what I heard from the back seat.

We were going about 60 miles per hour and lost all power post-boom going up a slight incline. No turbo boost at all. Turbo diesels have no cahones without their turbos. Yep – something was wrong. We were less than an hour away from our rental house in Pensacola, FL and had been driving for 11 hours already that day.

I was able to pull the truck over to the side of the two lane highway and make a quick call to my buddies at Goldies Diesel Repair in Tucson, AZ. I highly recommend these guys! I described what happened hoping that the turbo had not grenaded. After a most excellent description of the incident, Eric nailed it. “It’s not your turbo, your CAC tube blew”.

I opened the hood and he was right! Eric explained that the CAC tube (Charged Air Cooler tube to intake) returns highly pressurized air to the intake of the engine. Since it blew the engine was getting zero pressurized air (turbo boost) and thus had no power at all. Not safe to drive either.

I was able to use duct tape to reconnect the tube to the intake which gave us some minimal boost to limp 4 miles to a gas station and a safer place to wait.

We were in very small town in Alabama called Citronelle,  listening for banjo’s, so we wanted a quick solution. I got a tow truck on the way via AAA and started locating the part. I was able to locate the part 34 miles away in Mobile, Alabama and then located a courier service to bring us the part. I was employing two possible solutions at once. First was to repair in place once we got the part and the second was to have the tow truck available if we were not able to repair or got the wrong part delivered.

Tow truck took a while to get to us because, apparently, they usually only plan to transport two people – we had three. When Alan arrived with the truck, he said he could wait 15-20 minutes until the part arrived. Such a nice young guy!

When the courier service arrived two and one half hours post-boom – it was the correct part! It took an entire minute (seriously, one minute) to put the new CAC tub in place (we used just the top part of the tube, since that is what failed). Started the truck and had boost! We were back on the road!

Lessons learned:

1 – Carry a spare CAC tube if you drive a 6.7 Powerstroke Turbo Diesel. The will completely disable your truck if they go boom and are WAY simple to fix. They cost about $106 at a Ford dealer.  We required the parts with the green highlights in the diagram.

Note: Eric from Goldies said they have only heard of one other CAC tube blowing this way so he thinks this particular failure its rare. I still plan on carrying a spare one.

2 – Carry a space serpentine belt. This another part on newer engines that can disable the engine and is a relatively simple road side fix.

3 – Always have duct tape on hand. It allowed us a temporary fix which allowed us to get to a safe place to wait for the part. Safety is good.

4 – Always carry tools!

We had the duct tape and tools which saved us. I will certainly be adding the serpentine belt and spare CAC tube to my travel kit for my F250 Powerstroke!

This little guy captures so very perfectly the inner me right after – the face, the dirt and the pose!

Now – where are the fish?