Ford V-10 oil consumption

Rob Mo.

Member
It was brought to my attention a week ago that a truck @ my place of work was drinking oil. It was said that evening though this truck will arrive @ a job & idle for at most 30 minutes @ a time before it is driven away. Being that this is a newer truck & all the maintainace is done @ the local dealer, the dealer told us that the truck has enough hours racked up from idling that it is comparable to driving it @ an average speed of 30mph. Confused yet?

Let me put it this way. The currently has 2,800 miles on it. The dealer put it to us this away. The amont of hours that is on the engine running, the truck should have around 13,000 miles on it if it were going down that road @ a 30 mph pace. I don't agree with that, my 2 cents. When it was brought to be serviced, the oil level was @ the add line of the dip stick. For some reason, it is drinking oil while running, idle or not.

I have seen this problem with a Chevrolet 5.3 liter, difference being it was a daily driver. Dealer ended up putting new rings on the piston, problem solved. Seems odd to me.
 
Let me see if I got this straight. A new truck with less then 3000 miles ?

I'd change the oil & filter use something non- synthetic and go run the snot out of it and try to get the rings to seat. Sounds like it needs broken in. I'd also shut it off if I was going to idle more then 5 min.
 
2013, yes new. Believe the dealer is running synthetic in it, we do on all of the fleet. Is the specific gravity of a synthetic less than that of a conventional oil? I might add that the fuel consumption absolutely sucks (6-8 mpg). Utility bed maybe grossing 9k+/-. Was expecting around 11 or 12.
 
I believe it, Idleing a new or rebuilt engine for any length of time is a big NO NO. Cylinder walls glaze up before the rings have a chance to seat. Drain the Synthetic oil out. refill with break in oil- Lucas makes it- and run the crap out of it for a couple thousand miles see if it doesnt improve greatly. Medium duty truck manufacturers tell you that a garbage truck or any truck that does a lot of starting and stoping or idleing has triple the miles on the engine that is showing on the odometer.
 
I would try switching to conventional oil. I bought a new Chevy Impala LT with a 3.9 V6 and it used oil on synthetic oil . Switched to the same weight oil but in a conventional oil and it doesn't use a drop of oil now.
 
It's a fact of life. Practically all the Oil-field trucks around here are started in the morning and run all day. I know I averaged 13mi. an hour on a L800 delivery truck. Most take it very good.
 
Why is it let to idle so much? Compare idling time to actual driving time. That should explain the low gas mileage. Unless it is needed for PTO use for something like compressor, winch, hyd pump, or generator power, shut it down.
As others have stated, with so much idling time, the rings probably haven't seated.
Willie
 
I would say there is something in the idle/ milage theory. A guy A friend of mine knows very well, brought a diesel oil field truck, had 50.000 kms on the clock was like new.

The motor blew up. They towed it to a ford shop. The guys said whatever the problem was, it never usually happened before so many kilometers!. They figured something was up. mileage checked out accurate.
Then they did engine hours. It had about 4 times the hours to miles. that's why it blew up.
It spent many hours idling in the cold.
I would go with what some others have said with oil and
breaking it in. It wont like the idling times!. Anybody caught leaving a new truck running like that, should be fired right on the spot.
That motor will never be right until it's treated right!
Regards Robert
 
Has the truck had it's first oil change yet? It may have a thin "break-in" oil to help seat the rings, or the excessive idling may be preventing the rings from seating. The owner's manual or maintenance schedule may address a break-in procedure and oil change schedules. In many shops those manuals get lost or thrown away very quickly.

If the shop isn't concerned about the fuel consumed during all that idling I have to wonder why they are so worrier about a little oil consumption?
 
Our volunteer fire dept has a Ford F550 with a V10 that has about 2000 miles on it. I think it's an 06 model. It's outfitted with a slide in tank/pump and has a 750 gallon tank on it. This truck runs hard to the fires and sits and idles at the scene until it's put up. Sometimes that may be an hour, sometimes it may be four hours. It won't be solid idling but I would say over half it's life has been sitting running like that. We change the oil in all of our trucks twice a year, and none of them use any oil to excess. We never have to add oil between changes on any of our eight trucks. Mile per gallon??? Don't even want to know! We have one Chevy C65 with a 366 engine (1978 model) that has 13000 miles on it. I would like to see the number of hours, but it doesn't have a meter on it. It's funny, when it turned 12000 the owners manual said to take it to the local dealer for a "free checkup". More as a joke than anything else we did just that. The reaction was priceless.
 
What is it that you aren't grasping about the "equivalent to driving 13,000 miles at 30MPH" explanation?

30MPH is not an arbitrary number. If you average out the speed over the life of a typical vehicle, it ends up being around 30MPH.

Whether the truck is idling in the field, or driving, it is running. If it were being driven in a typical way, the entire time it has run so far, it would have 13,000 miles on it.

Frankly, I wouldn't consider a quart of oil on an engine that hasn't even broken in yet, but is really being abused, to be anything to get alarmed over.
 
If you are ever getting 8mpg you are better than we are, we get a flat 6 mpg with the F450 V10. My idle time is right at 1hr per month in the Freightliner,no pto to run. 30 min a day would get me fired.
 

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