My family bought a 2006 reg cab XL 4X4 with the 5.4 this fall to use for plowing and we had it at the dealer the other day for a oil change and the service guy told us that it doesnt have any Catalytic convertor on it. He said it has a convertor delete pipe on it. I was wondering if anyone has heard of this and also why they didnt put convertors on the truck??? Could it be due to the heavy duty package it has for carrying the snow plow??? Is the delete pipe just a piece of pipe or does it actually serve a purpose???? Also we plan to put a Cat back exhaust system on it this spring and I was wondering if anyone has a sound clip of there 5.4 superduty so I can have any idea of the sound....

thanks

 

I work on the engine line where your engine was built at Kentucky Truck Plant and the only gas engines without cats should be a 6.8. To my knowledge all 5.4's have cats. On the 06 models Ford only has two pipes available one with cats for all 5.4's, but the 6.8 could use either or (with or without cats). If you can check to see if there are two extra plugs on the transmission wiring harness, these plugs are where the back two oxygen sensors plug into. These plugs (blue in color) will be in between where the trans cooler lines screw into, it should be connected to the big square plug on an automatic tranmission, on a manual the plugs will be behind where trans coolers lines screw in. Your 5.4 should have 4 oxygen sensors. Maybe somebody changed the pipe after the dealer sold it. If the wrong pipe was installed at the factory the engine shouldn't of left the line, because the next job after pipe installation has to plug in the harness and the harness and pipe wouldn't of matched up. Let me know what you find out about the oxygen sensor plugs. Hope this helps...

 

I will check this out when I am home this weekend..The truck was brand new when we purchased it. The service tech mentioned that it was over a certain weight limit so it didnt require a Convertor, whether this is true or not I dont know. Will it hurt the motor not to have one? When I was under the front of the truck hooking up some air horns I never noticed a convertor but I noticed that the y-pipe looks like it comes down and bolts up to the convertor delete pipe with 4 bolts at a flange. The delete pipe looks to have an extra layer of steel pipe around it. I will try to get under it this weekend when I am home and see if I can see those plugs....My main worry is if it would do any damage to put a cat back exhaust system on the truck?? let me know what you think

thanks

 

The converters should be on the Y pipe..There should be 4. Those plugs should be about 1 foot in front of rear Y pipe flang. Do you think the service guy could have meant it had a muffler delete on it?

 

there is a muffler under it and that is hooked to the delete pipe. have you ever seen one of the convertor delete pipes?? I can only describe it as pipe with another layer of steel pipe around it and it looks to be crimped to the interior pipe on the ends. Does this sound like the pipe to you? I wish I was home this weekend from college so I could look under it but I will have to do that saturday when I am home..let me know what you think

 

The pipe you are talking about with the extra layer of steel crimped to it comes after the cats, the cats are in the Y pipe. More than likely the tech that worked on the truck had no idea what he was talking about. Oil change techs are usually the least experianced guys in the shop, they are basically being trained to be a tech someday, more often than not they have only been working on cars for a few weeks! I have an 05 F-250 5.4L with the plow package and towing package and it has cats, if yours had a delete pipe in it the check engine light would be on.

-Jon