Exhaust Back Pressure Sensor Circuit Malfunction
Engines can fail at the most inconvenient times!
A couple of weeks ago, I came home at noon on a snowy Friday to send my wife off to an all girls skiing weekend. As she drives off to Missoula in our other vehicle, a Honda Element, I start up the Sporty to drive back to work for the afternoon. It is about 10 above and snowing heavily, and the diesel starts up pretty roughly, making odd whuffing sounds while the check engine light starts flashing. I drive around the block slowly, and can barely get up to 20mph, so I check the Scanguage which gives me a P0470 error code.
After parking back in the driveway, I research the code online, which says Exhaust Back Pressure Sensor Circuit Malfunction. I call the Ford service department, and they say to bring it in before they close up for the weekend. Back in the Sporty, I have to crawl at 20mph in 4WD through heavy snow six miles across town to the Ford dealer. By this time it's mid afternoon and they are very busy finishing up vehicles for the week, so they reschedule the work for Monday morning, after determining that the engine is in Limp Mode, and the turbo will not work with this error code situation.
Being vehicle-less in the snowstorm, I call the insurance company, Progressive, to see if they will pay for a rental car. Nope, the policy doesn't pay for breakdowns, just accidents. Next time I will drive over a curb outside the Ford shop and call in an accident.
I walk over to the Enterprise dealer down the street, and end up with a Hyundai with summer tires on it. The drive back home is way too exciting with 8 inches of fresh snow on top of ice in rush hour traffic.
On Monday, the Ford techs reset the engine computer, but are unable to detect anything wrong with the exhaust system or the turbo (which I had cleaned a year ago at 30,000 miles).
So far, driving the van every third day or so, I have not had a re-occurrence of the Error Code. It is better to break down in town rather than in Death Valley for sure, but it was not how I wanted to spend the weekend. At least the wife had a fun ski holiday!
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2006 Baja Tan SMB 4X4 EB50 PH 6LPSD
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