Duramax Derailed by Blowing Snow

[WyoDutch]

2009 Sierra 3500 SLT, 4X4, Duramax. 2,000 miles on the odometer.

Driving home this afternoon. Light snow. Doing about 35 due to long line of traffic behind a U-Haul.

Alarm beeps... Engine warning light comes on and the "Reduced Engine Power" alert flashes.

Limp home... another 3 miles.

Immediately call the service department where I bought the truck.

"Were you driving in snow?" he aska.

"Yes", I answer.

"You'll have to get the truck in for service. We're finding that light snow is clogging the air intake on many 2009 Duramax's. We change the filter and filter box. We cut holes in the filter box to increase air-flow. You can run it that way for the winter, and next Spring... put the original airbox back on. That's the only fix right now."

"Sounds like a pretty cheesy baling-wire fix for a $52,000 truck." I say.

"That's all we can do." he says.

Amazing that they didn't uncover this kind of an obvious glitch before.

Hmmmm. Do Fords run in the snow? Yuck! Yuck!

[JohnC]

In '93 we had the "snorkel"....

[WyoDutch]

Seems to me that there was some sort of *fix* on the intake tube right after I bought my 84' 6.2... guys were hitting water puddles and the water was getting into the motor... blowing them up. Happened to a farmer my brother worked for.

We've been driving diesels in snow country for a lot of years... irritating to find the engineers still don't do adequate real-world testing. On the other hand, this is the first incidence of this that I've heard of.

Well, it could have been worse I guess... I could have been somewhere between Casper and Shoshone at 3AM when it happened. Count my blessings.

[Mark Rinker]

Strange - I have plowed snow with two '94s, an '01, an '02, and two '06 Duramaxes - never had any issue sucking up snow. When running curbs, the snow thrown back into the windshield at times can be heavy enough to stick the windshield wipers...sometimes a total whiteout for a moment!

Just lucky I guess...

[WyoDutch]

What happens is since the air intake is in the inner fender, real light snow gets sucked into the intake and jams everything up.

The good news is... GM has a "fixit kit" for the dealer.

The bad news is, the dealer has been going through these kits like grease thru a goose... so it could be a while before I can get back on the road.

[WyoDutch]

The parts guy fax'd me a couple service bullletins on snow vs. 2009 Duramax.

1. Install the grill cover... just the grill cover, not the entire front end cover.

2. Five 1-inch holes get drilled into the filter cover. In springtime.. put an undrilled cover back on.

Okay... I'm assuming that the filter is now frozen solid with melted and refroze snow.

Assuming I can get the filter out... can I just leave it sit in the house to thaw and dry?

Then... how diffisult is it to get the filter back in at zero degrees? Would a judiciouslyapplied heat gun help?

Thanks

[WyoDutch]

The thought just struck me... Even if I install the front cover... drill out the airbox and replace the air filter... what do I do about the "Reduced Power" situation? Can I do anything to reset it?

[WyoDutch]

I installed the cold weather cover... drilled out the airbox and thawed/dried the air filter.

Then I fired-up the engine and after a few minutes, the "Reduced Engine Power" light disappeared into wherever things like that go when no longer needed.

[gophergunner]

Don't feel too bad, this was apparently a bad problem on the mid to late 90's 12 valve Cummins equipped Dodgde pickups.

But when it got bad on those trucks, air filters or bits of the filters would wind up jamming the turbo.

[Quack_Addict]

Do Fords run in the snow?

The flamethrower effect on the Ford TT's generates enough thermal energy to melt the snow before it can get in ;)