As always happens when you're a little ways from home, something wants to break.
We were towing a 14' enclosed trailer with some tools in it (2200lbs) on Sunday night. Cruise on, 110km/hr (68mph) in 8th gear. 5 minutes into the trip, we had just started up a bit of a grade out of a valley when we lost power hard. Cruise cut out and the dash lit up like a Christmas tree, but of course gave no useful information. Truck was backfiring and sounding super rich at low RPM, and didn't have enough power to accelerate much.
We turned around and limped it back to my brother's place we had just left. Fortunately he had a code reader and we pulled up the P0068, which translates to a MAF sensor issue. We pulled the intake and checked all the piping for a hole or blown coupling, but found nothing. Wiggled the wiring on the two MAF sensors we found (one on the intercooler discharge, one on the intake manifold). When we got everything back together and fired it up, the code was gone and everything ran normally. Took it for a test drive (without the trailer) and couldn't replicate the issue. Even did some launches to shock load things.
Hooked the trailer back up, and we were on the way again. In the identical spot we had the first issue everything went sideways again. We limped it to the top of the hill, shut it down and wiggled the MAF sensor connections again. Everything went back to normal and we made the rest of the 5 hour trip without issue, even going up some much steeper grades.
Going to have the sensors replaced next week.
We were towing a 14' enclosed trailer with some tools in it (2200lbs) on Sunday night. Cruise on, 110km/hr (68mph) in 8th gear. 5 minutes into the trip, we had just started up a bit of a grade out of a valley when we lost power hard. Cruise cut out and the dash lit up like a Christmas tree, but of course gave no useful information. Truck was backfiring and sounding super rich at low RPM, and didn't have enough power to accelerate much.
We turned around and limped it back to my brother's place we had just left. Fortunately he had a code reader and we pulled up the P0068, which translates to a MAF sensor issue. We pulled the intake and checked all the piping for a hole or blown coupling, but found nothing. Wiggled the wiring on the two MAF sensors we found (one on the intercooler discharge, one on the intake manifold). When we got everything back together and fired it up, the code was gone and everything ran normally. Took it for a test drive (without the trailer) and couldn't replicate the issue. Even did some launches to shock load things.
Hooked the trailer back up, and we were on the way again. In the identical spot we had the first issue everything went sideways again. We limped it to the top of the hill, shut it down and wiggled the MAF sensor connections again. Everything went back to normal and we made the rest of the 5 hour trip without issue, even going up some much steeper grades.
Going to have the sensors replaced next week.