Ford V-10

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KRK,

I live in the San Diego area and regularly climb 6% grades to the east and north at elevations of up to about 4500 feet, and I've climbed similar grades in Montana and Idaho. I've never felt the engine was underpowered.

I'm probably a little lighter than some who have posted here, because I don't tow anything and I'm usually just going camping for a few days, but I have no problem going 50 mph up any of the grades I mentioned. I could go faster, because my foot isn't on the floor, but I'm not in a hurry and I try to keep the RPMs at or below 4200 (although I firmly believe the engine would easily sustain significantly higher RPMs without any problems).

My sparkplugs are original and I've never had any problems with them (about 26000 miles on the coach).

My overall opinion of the Ford V-10 is that it's a good RV engine.

Kev
 
I have a 32' Class C, and my V-10 does great on hills, even through the Rocky Mountains.  It is definitely noisy and the shifting into one or two lower gears with the accompanying noise bothered me at first, but I am used to it now.

One thing that impresses me is that even on extremely hot days and going up long grades, the temperature gauge does not budge from the middle.  In fact, at first I was concerned it was broken, but it is not. 

Based on what Ford engineers have told me, it is a good engine and a solid workhorse.
 
Hi,

With regard to the temperature gauge, I suspect the computer modulates the displayed temperature based on current stress/speed of heating. I have a scan gauge that shows 188-192 just cruising and temperatures as high as about 215 deg. F under the stress of climbing mountains. The fan comes on at about 212 and rapidly reduces the temperature to cruising levels.

The interesting thing is that the regular temp gauge almost never moves off its normal operating position. The one time I saw it high was when I lost water due to a leaking radiator reservoir (this reservoir is part of the radiator and runs under pressure). This caused the radiator to go to about 215/220 and the transmission to go over 200 deg. F. I suspect the temperature gauge reflects the transmission temperature as much as the engine, a good thing!

Note that any water temperature under 220 deg. F is very acceptable for this vehicle so long as the fan comes on.

Ernie
 
In many (most?) modern dashboards, the "gauge" is just a representation driven from the data available on the engine data bus. Sometimes the gauge converts to an analog display based on some arbitrary "normal" value, and sometimes the ECM actually tells the gauge what to say.

An example: my analog oil pressure gauge normally displays a midpoint between "High" and "Lo". And my computer monitor readout says 55 psi. But both of those are fabrications. The oil pressure sensor only reports a binary status, either 'OK' or 'Insufficient'. Cummins says OK is approximately 55 psi, so that's what the computer monitor software displays. The gauge puts 'ok' in the middle and would drop to zero if the status ever went to "Insufficient'. But that's academic, because the ECM would quickly shut the engine down if it ever received an 'Insufficient' status on the data bus.
 
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