LastResort

Please take the catch can to one of the many other threads that are devoted to that. This thread is about drilling a hole in the intercooler to solve condensation buildup.

Viking1204

Not paranoid when you paid for an extended warranty. All it would take is for a tech to lift your truck on a lift and see the oily mess dripping out and discover that you drilled a hole and tell you your warranty is no longer valid due to an alteration you made.

Viking1204

Wow, took me two days to skim and read through this thread, mostly skipping the infestation of Catch Can comments that didn't belong in this thread.


My 2011 FX4 Ecoboost has almost 70,000 miles and has had the shudder/loss of power issue since it's early stages in life. Since replacing my plugs and gapping at .030 about a year ago truck has run great but I hadn't driven through any rain for an extended period of time.


This past week I was driving back from Savannah, GA to NW Florida through some thunderstorms and the shudder/loss of power issue came back again and the truck spit out a misfire on cylinder 1. I have no doubt it was moisture getting into cylinder 1 that caused the probable since I drove through heavy rain for several miles.


My Intercooler looks like it's been through a war so I just decided to order a new factory Intercooler shipped to my house for $185. I will install it after I drill the weep hole and then inspect the old Intercooler and see just how much water/sludge it has in it. My guess is it will be quite a bit, I'll make sure post my results up here. I am going to research and see if there isn't some sort of one way valve that can be installed on the Intercooler than just drilling a hole.

fastdraw23

Bought a 2011 F150 Ecoboost Supercrew 4x4 in Dec. 2014 with 55k miles on it. I tried every fix possible spending over $6000 by replacing intercooler with a Full Race intercooler, replaced throttle body, cold air intake, turbo power pipes, exhaust, plugs 4 times, coil packs and even drilled the holes in the bottom of the pipe to drain the constant water build up, which constantly drips. Nothing AT ALL worked, The engine still shuttered, and at times severe. It would still also go into limp mode forcing me to pull off the road in heavy traffic. Well at a little over 101K miles the engine, with no warning finally blew and broke a connecting rod! No check engine lights, no rise in temp, oil was full etc. left me stranded 250 miles from home. All that strain from misfiring over the last year finally took its toll on the pistons, connecting rods and crank. At least I know now why the previous people sold it. Bummer I didn't resell it quicker!! I will be putting another "very spendy" replacement engine and finally be getting rid of this piece of JUNK!!!!

Tothemax

This has nothing to do with the condensation hole so why double post it?

fastdraw23

It has everything to do with a condensation drain hole. I installed the hole and the problem continued. Truck drove fine so long as you didn't accelerate hard. If you did it still sucked in water and would make the truck run bad until I let off the throttle and let the truck idle for a while and baby the truck down the road and it would slowly clear up

Blown F-150

Too bad you had such a bad experience. But if the hole was drilled in the right spot, how could there be any condensate to suck into the engine?

fastdraw23

Honestly, I wish I can tell you?? I cant think of anything else that would cause the misfire on hard acceleration and clear up after idling it and babying it down the road and starts to gradually run well again unless I accelerate hard again. Ford over the last year after repeated visits could never figure it out. I know the hold is in the right spot so that's not the issue. Hole on lowest point of host just past exit on intercooler and I even drilled it out to 1/8" when I felt it possibly wasn't a big enough hole to get it out and was possibly clogging... and ive been a mechanic and built vehicles for the last 30 years. I know hole was even starting to sacrifice of turbo pressure

maplelakeduckslayer

That's not the right spot the IC itself gets drilled...if you drilled the charge pipe that's higher up than the bottom of the IC, allowing moisture to still pool

fastdraw23

the pipe drops 8 inches below my aftermarket IC (Full Race Intercooler)