Ford Super Duty, Ram 2500 and 3500, Chevrolet and GMC heavy-duty pickups, the Nissan Titan XD with its 5.0L Cummins, Sprinter vans and chassis cabs carrying a service body or flatbed: those are the diesel trucks San Antonio owners bring to RDI Power. The shop is in Brooksville, about 24 road miles from the middle of town, so this page covers 2 things. What we find and fix on a diesel pickup, and how to decide whether yours should make the drive.
Short trips around San Antonio and a loaded DPF
San Antonio is compact. A run from Curley Street to City Hall on Pennsylvania Avenue and back takes a few minutes, and a modern diesel that lives on trips like that seldom gets its exhaust hot for long. The particulate filter needs sustained heat to burn off soot during a regeneration. Interrupt enough regens and the filter loads up, the truck tries to clean it more and more often, fuel mileage falls, some engines start diluting their oil with fuel, and eventually the dash warns of a clogged filter or limits power. EGR valves and coolers collect soot the same way.
A long highway drive helps some trucks finish a regen. A filter that keeps loading, though, almost always has a cause upstream: a leaking injector, a boost leak, a lazy sensor or an EGR fault. We find that cause before anyone talks about a new filter. The whole soot-and-regen cycle is laid out in our article on DPF and regen problems.
Engine-by-engine faults on San Antonio pickups
Each diesel platform has habits, and knowing them shortens the testing. A few we check for on trucks from San Antonio:
- 7.3 Power Stroke: a failing camshaft position sensor that causes stalling and no-starts, plus aging HEUI injectors and the high-pressure oil system that fires them.
- 6.0 Power Stroke: a fuel injection control module that loses voltage and causes hard starts, and an oil cooler that plugs up and starves the EGR cooler until it fails.
- 5.9 Cummins, 1998.5 to 2002: VP44 injection pump failures, frequently after a weak lift pump has starved the pump of fuel.
- LLY Duramax: a tendency to run hot when towing heavy.
- 6.7 Cummins: variable-geometry turbo actuator faults, along with EGR and DPF trouble behind many derate complaints.
None of that replaces testing the truck in front of us. A known weak spot is a place to look, not a diagnosis.
Bringing a San Antonio pickup to Brooksville, or not
The drive in follows Curley Road and St. Joe Road to Lake Lola Road, then Spring Lake Highway to SR-50, about 40 minutes on county roads. A truck that runs normally with a steady warning light can usually make it. One that is overheating, has dropped into reduced power, smells of coolant or shows a rising oil level should be parked. A mobile technician can meet it at a yard, a job site or the roadside, scan it there and fix many faults on the spot, from batteries and sensors to fuel filters and belts.
At the shop, Fords get scanned with Ford IDS and Ram trucks with WiTECH, the platforms dealers use. Our Ford specialist logged more than 30 years at a Ford dealership, and our service advisor turned wrenches for 35 years at a Chevrolet dealership, so Ford and GM trucks from San Antonio land with people who know them. A pickup repair carries RDI Power’s labor warranty of 3 years / 36,000 miles, and active military, veterans, police and fire save 10%. The engine-by-engine detail lives on our light duty diesel repair page, the community overview is on diesel repair in San Antonio, and owners next door can read truck repair in St. Leo.
Tell us the year, the engine and the symptom at (352) 433-3800, and we will say whether the pickup should come to us or a technician should go to it.