PSD Engine Failure Survey
 

Hey all...

We've been asked many times for our opinion about miscellaneous engine failures, especially those relating to "windowed" blocks. After reading hundreds of posts on this subject, speaking to dozens of owners and manufacturers, reviewing carnage photos, and comparing countless files from damaged engines, we have a few theories. In fact, we've just finished writing a calibration simulator for the PSD that helps quickly identify just how significant a role tuning may or may not have had in relation to the failure.

http://www.phptune.com/images/misc/f...ock_wot_sm.jpg

In order to rule out isolated issues and identify any trends, we are conducting an independent survey of all 7.3L Power Stroke engine failures to see if there are any specific commonalities among the failures. The failures in questions will be specifically related to MODIFIED vehicles (i.e. Chips, Injectors, Turbos, HPOPs, etc.) and we would appreciate anyone who has suffered an engine failure of any type to please take a moment to fill out the survey. All NON-PERSONAL data collected will be made available for download to any individuals or companies that are interested.

The survey is located at --> Survey of Power Stroke Engine Failures <--

I do want to take a moment and remind people to please be considerate and use this as an opportunity to get past the old issues and move forward in a positive fashion, NOT as a means of complaining about what damaged the engine. We've all read the posts and heard the arguments, but it really doesn't accomplish anything except getting a lot of tempers flared up. (Especially Charles...) We may not all have to get along, but we are all striving for the same thing... making the Power Stroke a reliable source of performance.

http://powerstrokenation.com/forums/.../icon_ford.gif

We appreciate everyone taking the time to fill out the survey and hope that it will provide valuable information for all 7.3L Power Stroke Diesel owners and vendors, past, present and future.

Bill is going to start working on a write-up regarding what caused so many engine failures over the past several years; however, you are still encouraged to fill in the survey if you have experienced this yourself! Please remember that we will not be providing your personal information to anyone else unless you give us permission. In fact, at this point, we don't foresee a reason to share it with anyone else -- period.

We are still trying to decide when and where Bill's analysis will appear. We certainly don't want to be accused of bashing anyone http://dygytalworld.ehost-services13...es/skeptic.gif when we're just supplying objective facts. As soon as we make a decision, we'll let everyone know where they can find it.

http://dygytalworld.ehost-services13...s/thankyou.gif again to everyone who has taken the time to provide us with some much needed data!

We released the results of the survey to the public for a month or so and then closed it due to the fact that people were manipulating the results in various posts. This was merely to obtain information... not to lay blame, yet certain forum members chose to use it that way in defense of their favorite tuners or to point fingers at others.

Below is the results of the question you're looking for. We know that there have been hundreds of engine failures and don't even remotely think that our results encompass everyone that has experienced engine failures on a tuned truck. We posted links to the survey on many different forums and encouraged people to fill it out, which is the best we could do. We do feel that this is a good snapshot of the industry as a whole.

Bill has spoken with many tuners about the results (there were more than 20 questions on the survey), and this sharing of knowledge has helped make calibrations safer for the general public. We know for sure that one particular tuner has taken a lot of timing out of his calibrations, and that's a great thing!

Keep in mind, of course, that only a limited number of people responded, so here are the results based upon 56 responses:

Which company programmed your truck?
DP-Tuner - 35
TS - 5
PHP - 2 (this should really be a "3" since Bill does Edge's tuning, as well)
TDP - 2
Diesel Innovations - 2
Superchips - 2
Western Diesel - 2
Bean's - 1
Gearhead - 1
Swamp's - 1
Innovative - 1
Edge - 1
Bully Dog - 1

We asked many of the companies in the survey if they would like to provide us with the number of tunes they have in service -- this is NOT the number of customers nor the number of chips sold. I have listed them in order from greatest to least.

TS Performance (Dennis) - ~600,000 (Dennis was unable to determine the number of programmed chips sold since 2003, so this includes blank chips as well)
Bill - ~164,000 (includes Superchips (1998-2000), Diesel Power, Edge, and PHP; since we do not own Superchips or Edge, we are not at liberty to disclose exact sales figures for either company)
DP-Tuner (Jody) - ~60,000
Diesel Innovations (David) - ~12,000
Total Diesel Performance (Tony) - ~6,000
Swamp's Diesel (Jonathan) - ~6,000
Bean's Diesel (Jonathan) - ~800
Gearhead (Matt) - ~780

The survey, BTW, is still open, and anyone who has experience engine failure is welcome to fill it out.If the data changes significantly, we will happily make the raw data available again.