3.0 diesel and the PowerBoost

[amschind]

There's other differences like the BCMC being different as well. The PB's is configured for the DC/DC and the aux buffer batt. The diesel has glow plugs / PTC heaters. It appears that the diesels fans are different as well as the fan points are used for glow plugs. The PTC isn't populated at all.

With the way the PB operates, if powered by a diesel, the DPF would likely regen much more as it really likes to be hot. The casual start/stop of the PB doesn't bode well for keeping the DPF hot. You'd have to beat on a PB diesel to keep the emission system healthy and it just seems backwards if you're not towing. In hybrid generator mode it'd just be really bad fit. You'd need to do a full emissions delete to avoid costly repairs further down the line. Looks like you'd need both PCMs and a device sitting between them to fake the data to make it all happy. The PB's PCM would need to control the trans for the interconnect clutch to function, but shifting for the diesel has to occur at much shorter RPM intervals. That'd be a helluva project to undertake!

Sadly I agree. In fact, the DPF issues are almost certainly why this never happened from the factory. While the EGR and DPF deletes would be step one for the project, they are likely the only part likely to work, much less be easy. Spoofing an interconnect between the ECM and the PB computer would be a giant pain, as you'd have to reverse engineer the whole interface even if you could make it work.

That revelation was the genesis of my thought that the only realistic way to achieve this swap would be jerry rigging the Ecoboost PCM to control the diesel: I think that the only level at which even a very talented hobbyist could hack the interface is voltage signals in and out of the Ecoboost PCM. You would still need all of the data tables from the diesel PCM AND have to figure a way to replicate those functions using the inputs and outputs of an Ecoboost PCM, which would rapidly get complex. I.e. the Ecoboost PCM will always expect data from a knock sensor; do you just let it go crazy or tell it to ignore an absent signal? The Ecoboost thinks that it is spraying fuel using the port injectors, so how do you tell it that there are none? How do you turn the signal to an Ecoboost low pressure injector into the signal for a high pressure diesel injector?

Overall, I think that it probably COULD be done; the more relevant question is: once you've achieved it at 3x the cost of a new vehicle, was it worthwhile? Unless the thing that you've made is a unicorn, it is usually far cheaper and easier to wait for a factory to figure out what they should have done all along.

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