Review of bad delete program jan26_2021.

[Rawze]

I stopped in at speedco other day for an oil change. Got in conversation about some old steer tires that I was giving away and someone there said they would like to get them for their trailer. They came over later that evening and got them and somehow we ended up in conversation about ISX engines.

This person told me about a friend of his that has had nothing but issues out of his truck with transmission, clutches going out, drive line problems, power loss issues, engine surging/hunting rpm at idle, and his friend has been to about 8 different repair shops and no one can find anything wrong. - So, I told him to get in touch with this person and send em over to the house here, Maybe I could at least give em some advice, etc.

This person showed up today (monday) late in the afternoon, was not much daylight, but I could tell as he pulled into the driveway, his engine was not running right. I could hear it hunting at idle and turbo sounded like it was cat-calling, whistling up and down in an annoying fashion at times (not leaking, just working much harder than it should have been). His truck was also covered in soot all the way down the passenger side of the entire truck, he definitely had an exhaust issue up by the engine of some sort.

-- Well, low and behold ... he had a delete (supposedly) done about 1.5 years back from some place in south georgia (USA). The shop simply took the advice of not hollowing out the SCR by the person who did the programming, as they were told "it was a passive device" and it did not need it. They had hollowed out the DOC and DPF, but did not touch the SCR element at all. This was the start of an exhaust issue that worsened over time and has severely plagued this guys truck ever since. So ... this part was never done right to begin with.

The completely clueless person who supposedly remote tuned it was from canada who also boasted that they were a top tier tuning expert who also helps run on one of the well-known auto tuning sites. Not trying to say anyone specifically, just relaying the info as it was said to me... the truck owner may have been lied to by someone or it may have been the case, it is unknown. This same "tuning expert" is also who said the SCR element does not need to be hollowed out, leading to a lot of problems for this guy. - This truck has also never been quite right since... but hey, there were no codes in the dash outside of the ABS + traction control issues, etc. that plagued it. - At least this is what the truck owner told me... I am only repeating what and who he said did this work.

This truck has been blowing apart exhaust piping/joints and 3 different shops have worked on this problem alone. None o0f them stopped for one damn minute to realize that this guys SCR can was never hollowed out properly and now was severely impacted with soot. It was so blocked up that it was blowing joints behind the turbo and creating exhaust leaks everywhere it could find. This was problem number 1 right away.

I then told him that he needed someone to review his programming to ensure it was ok/safe for the engine. i told him that the turbo and idle huntuing like that is not right at all. The conversation lead into other things about the truck overall like wheel bearing re-torque not being done at a regular schedule like it should be and discussing issues of ABS lights + blown wheel seals, tranny issues as he has an atuo-shifter, clutch failing a couple time now, u-joint issues, etc. plaguing the truck too. This guy also had no clue that his fuel pump needed regular maintenance every 400k to keep it from destroying the engine. ... This engine now has 900,000 miles on it and it is a CM2350.

We discussed a few other things and then I started reviewing his program with him. Here is what was found in his engine.

* Right away, when looking at engine with Insite, the Vin#, engine ser#, CPL and program of a 550+HP engine, + insite reported that the make/model of truck were from a Kenworth T680H. This is would be fine and all .. but this guy has a freightliner cascadia and a tier-1 (small build), 400HP engine that is absolutely not compatible with this program at all. ... SO, it was blatantly obvious that someone stole the program out of a T680 somewhere, modified it heavily, and had dumped itinto this guys truck. None of the info or progeam belonged to a cascadia, nor his hard-parts of his engine at all. Nothing whatsoever matched any hardware either internal or external. That is a serious problem in the programming for both the engine and truck all by itself.

* This guy had been plagued with ABS and traction control alarms since the delete as well. - With the wrong data-plate info in the engine, the traction control was throwing a fit and ABS/traction lights were on in the dash of this thing and that is one of the major things that 8+ different repair shops could not solve besides the exhaust. THAT engine ser# and truck VIN# HAVE TO MATCH THE TRUCK because that traction control system is matched to this info in the engine specifically.

I helped him fix all this data-plate issue and many of the ABS and traction control alarms in the dash went away as a soon as the changes were saved.


We pulled the program out of the ecm and started going thru it. Here is what was in the program (even though it was wrong for the truck) that someone did ...

* It looks like someone started out by mimicking/copying an old version of the @m*m^2 del out of a Kenworth T680 for a CM2350 ... at first glance it did not look to bad ... that is until we got to the important parts, where someone jacked around with things quite heavily instead of leaving things alone.

* Some complete moron jacked the torque up to 2500+ foot-lbs in all the torque tables across the engine. With an auto-shifted tranny, and this ridiculously high engine torturing torque/power level, the tranny was in a constant state of alarm and screaming back at the engine to reduce torque and engine was unstable and surged in and out when pulling any kind of hill. This was another problem that the 8 different shops could not solve, and his biggest complaint. His horsepower level was set at well over 1,000 horsepower as well. Only thing saving the engine partially was the severely clogged up SCR element and the fact the fuel pump cannot supply that much fuel flow tier1 injectors too small for it + wrong program, held it back somewhat. Power was up into the 670HP range realistically .. and this is bad enough but that torque, especially below 1500rpm, set that high was absolutely tearing up his drive-line (mentioned above), has taken out 2 clutches, and cause all sorts of expensive repairs on his auto-shifter tranny.

* NEXT, this same "tuning expert" idiot also jacked the injection timing up into the 8 and 9+ BTDC range on the main injection cycle. This is absolutely too high of injection timing setting for a CM2350 by quite a little bit on its own with normal power levels. With the power and torque cranked up so high, these setting are downright torturing the liners, cylinders, and the head.

* The turbo was not re-programmed at all for the delete. This was a big part of what was causing the surging, as it was fighting hard to make pressure against a blocked up exhaust... then falling back again due to excess pressure buildup. The engine was trying its damnedest to make boost but it simply could not. The truck owner went on to tell me that he had replaced the turbo twice since the delete due to failures, costing him more than $8,000 by now. --- I told him, IT IS NO WONDER!-- THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THIS MESS IN YOUR TRUCK SET IT UP FOR REPEATING FAILURES!. ..,. Of course the shop that did the work tried like hell to sell him an aftermarket turbo and manifold for another $4,000 installed. - He is lucky he did not get duped into this horrible mod due to lack of proper programming skills by some clueless person stealing programs out of trucks, modifying them with horrific settings, and dumping them into other ppl's engines. That is all I can say about that.


There were a lot of other issues with the engine program but we did not continue, it was pointless to keep going with the review. It was obvious that this thing needed to be put back to factory with the factory program for his model engine and cascadia... so that is what was done. The proper latest official ver. of @m*m^2 was done to it, he is in the process of going back and hollowing out the SCR and re-examining the DOC/DPF, etc... and the power was set to about 535HP,1850 (something reasonable). Only problem now is all the damage this bad program has likely done so far. i told him that he needs to be saving up for an inframe in its very near future + pull that fuel pump apart ASAP and replace its guts.

The worst part of this is that the truck owner said to me that there were 9 other trucks there in line to get "deleted" by these people when he showed up due to them "being quite popular and highly recommended".

That scares me A LOT and should scare anyone else reading this!.