bob99

How long ago did you get your VIN number?

I think that was the last time anyone has reported any new scheduling getting confirmed.

All of the verified retail orders. I think they started this process for new retail orders last summer so dealers could get incremental allocations. We saw a bunch of trucks get scheduled on a Tuesday a few weeks ago that were all COVP.

I realize there's no traditional SD scheduling this Thursday and I believe last Thursday. However, I recall we had a recent round of scheduling on a Tuesday for the COVP orders since they can get scheduled on any day. Has anyone gotten a VIN / first scheduling notice lately on an off-day?

I think this has to do with the dealer's individual unscheduled order bank. It would seem his dealer received enough allocations and likely did not have a large backlog.

Someone commented here that the "closing new orders" statement only relates to a specific legacy ordering system. It's an IT thing and does not apply to other ordering systems. That's my understanding.

Power Service and OptiLube are two big names. OptiLube XPD claims to help with water and adds lubricity in the same product. It's also a winter variant so it's more expensive per treatment for the anti-gel function that you may not need year round. Power Service sells Diesel Kleen and other products. IIRC, they told me that their products are designed to be mixed together and they have an additional product to deal with water. They position the Clear-Diesel product to be used quarterly or "as-needed". In the past I mixed the products together because that's all that was available to me. I don't have a diesel truck currently but plan to email them to clarify if they have an all-in-one product like OptiLube. Power Service products seems to be more readily available to me including truck stops. It may even be cheaper to mix two products. I never did the math. It's really hard to know what is going to help for any given circumstance. Water can be a big problem for the Bosch fuel pumps in a SD. How much water and over what period of time is an issue? And will any of these products help if you get an extraordinary amount of water from a fueling station? Who knows. I save my receipts in case of a problem afterwards. When towing, I try to stick with pumps that big rigs use at the truck stops because the fuel is likely fresh. With a discount fleet charge card, it helps with the cost. See the Optilube chart.

Another preventative maintenance tip: use a fuel additive with an emulsifier to help increase the odds any water in the fuel ends up getting filtered. Some of the additives only boost cetane, add lubricity, or do it all.

Yeah, it's a bit ridiculous.

If you end up with a $66K XLT like me, it appears you can add OEM LED headlights around a little over $3K. I am going to wait and see how the stock halogen work. I had xenon headlights in the past and they were much better than halogen lights of that era. Never owned LED.

Water and Urea.

I read in the beginning of the thread that changes can be made to COVP retail order before it is scheduled and VIN assigned. Does anyone know if this will reset the clock when it is actually time to schedule? I only want to change the color but don't want to lose my place in line among equal priority orders in my dealer's USOB.

This has been my experience as well. A few different dealers all printed the a/z, d, and x plan prices along with MSRP or MSRP + invoice. Thanks to ice-capades we now know it's fully customizable. Since this document is not an invoice or buyer's sales order, I put my x-plan pin on the copy I signed. My dealer didn't sign anything so I still have to trust them. I have an email where they said they will honor x-plan and this document with x-plan pricing listed.

The best thing you can do for the SCR system, that uses the DEF, is to make sure you are buying fresh DEF. The bottles have expiration dates and it shouldn't be an issue at a store like Walmart. If you have a fleet card, you can get DEF at the pump with the truckers at the truck stops on a busy interstate. That stuff should be fresh. You can also buy it from a Ford dealer's parts department that does a lot of diesel service. I had each of the three emissions systems fail at different times on a 2015 GM truck. They tried to avoid a warranty payout on a SCR failure by claiming I got "bad DEF". (Soot build up also caked and cracked the intake manifold because of the abuse from the EGR. The DPF also clogged up later on. This was all before 60,000 miles. I blame GM's design and the environmental nonsense that forces them to install this stuff. However, I think the main issue was far too many short low speed trips and not enough highway miles.) I imagine if I owned a diesel truck long enough I might want to drop the DEF tank and clean it around the same time I wanted to flush the cooling system. The stuff gets nasty after a while and I could imagine what the components looks like after a few years.

All great advice and should allow you to drive with any normal tint level pretty much anywhere. Anyone on the fence can still do the nearly clear ceramic and still get the heat reduction / uv damage protection benefits for the interior.