Third year in a row as soon as the temperature drops my truck starts smoking a greyish / white smoke.. Seems to be when I am under 2k rpm but while accelerating. Happens even when I am not hauling. Have had it in the shop at least 6 times since I bought it new. Really starting to annoy me that they cant figure out what is causing it. I'm not talking a little bit of smoke here either!!!!! Enough to cause traffic to stop. Also fuel mileage has went from 14-16mpg this past summer to 10 -11.5mpg in the past couple months. Any ideas??????

 

Could you tell us which engine you have in it?

Something to think about,
If gas, could be coolant

If Diesel could be coolant, turbo, over fueled,not getting up to correct operating temp
as you can see ,requires a little detective work to pin down and maybe they aren't sure where to go. And maybe they don't want to pull the heads to confirm a bad head/head gasket.
Have you had to add anti-freeze to it at any time?

 

Sorry thought I added that! I have the diesel 6.4L. I think it is related to the exhaust regin. Seems to be related because I start getting messages telling me to "Drive to clean exhaust". Message will stay up for several days and I am traveling 55 - 65 mph for 15 mins or more and it won't go away. This is same time that it starts to smoke. Thanks for any help you can give me!!

 

Is this vehicle one that you have to add "DEF" diesel exhaust fluid? Also check the owner's manual you may have a provision to do a manual exhaust regen where it will clean the particulate filter .

 

Hanky is correct, mostly. If you get this message continually, the short answer is that the Diesel Particulate Filter (dpf) is getting clogged; and No, Hanky, this powertrain doesn't require DEF fluid.
What happens is this; when the DPF backpressure gets too high, EEC (the fuel injection) sees this as the DPF needing a cleaning; so, it starts to inject raw diesel fuel on the exhaust stroke, and when the exhaust temp. gets high enough, it starts a catalytic reaction that burns off the particulates that are desigened to accumlate in the DPF. And this was also the reason for the first of many, many reflahses this PCM has had, as when they went into regen, 6 foot flames would shoot out of the exhaust on the very early ones. Wonderful.
However, Ford's done an about face on the life of the DPF; orginally, it was supposed to be about 150K, then it went to 100k, and now it's down to about 80K, though just about any time the engine melts down in these, it's usually about time to replace it.
There are places the take the DPF, cut it apart, bake it in a kiln (just like pottery), and this cleans it out and it' reasembled and in it goes for another 80k or so.
Getting back to your point, if this is comming on really often, then what's happening when it displays 'drive to clean' is an 'active regeneration', which means that if kept at the (relatively) same load, speed, etc, it will clean itself. This is in addition to all the 'passive regens' it does, that it doesn't tell you about.
The upshot of this is, Ford says some smoke is normal, especially in Cool, Damp weather. However, if you get a Ford tech to scan it, it doesn't take an especially well trained tech (like Hanky) to see if the DPF is on the big downhill ride. The backpressure will increase very quickly, and stay high.
These engines were also well known to be the only engine in extsistance that manufacture oil (by injecting diesel in the exh. stroke, some bypasses the rings and goes into the crankcase), which can lead to the aforementioned meltdown that I alluded to.

 

Greasemark, thanks for clarifying that for us.

 

Thanks Hanky and Greasemark! Well I picked the truck up today from the local Ford dealership, about the 7th time it has been in the shop for this. Showed them the videos I made last week of the truck bellowing smoke from the exhaust and all they could say is WOW! They basically told me that there was an alert put out for the turbo cooler causing this issue. The part in question had already been changed on my truck and the Ford assistant stated that even with the new and improved cooler there was no guarantee that it would fix the issue. Something about being moisture because of the drastic temperature changes....blah.blah.blah.......They said there was nothing they could do about it. Thinking about plastering the videos of the truck bellowing smoke all over the internet in hopes that someone at Ford will do something about a dedicated Ford Truck person that paid $50,000 for a Smoke Generator. [ATTACH]

 

Even with the CAC upgrade the regen will most certainly be an issue,, not to mention 'your' liability for excessive smoke ticket/s (and fines) and anyone following in your pollution trail for potential hazards.. I'd go with a DPF delete, although warranty comes into play.. At some point there will be a class suit (if not already in the works) if engineering can't come up with a fix, and soon.. I can't believe the EPA/Air Quailty Management isn't already all over this...

 

I can't offer any suggestions that would correct the problem other than check with another dealer or two, you might get lucky and find someone that has come up with a temporary solution. It's worth a try .

 

You know, our moderator has a very valid point; I wonder why the EPA ISN'T all over this. I've worked on a lot of these, and it seems all they do is smoke. After all the success of the 6.0L (which may or may not still be dragging through the courts), I'm surprized that International let out another turd of an engine in the 6.4 L. I mean come on, when you're injecting raw fuel on the exhaust stroke to get the thing in emissions, that's probably a sign that something somewhere along the line is seriously fouled up.
Even on a well running unit, when I do a manual regen, they billow smoke (and it really does make me nervous to do it, condidering I'm 2 blocks away from a fire department).
There is one piece of good news, though; the DPF delete kit not only gets rid of the need to replace the DPF, but it also stops the oil-manufacturing capability of this engine by turning off the regen altogether!