08' Mercedes C-Class v.s. '08 Infiniti G35 Sedan

[cpayne5]

Originally Posted by jsarno

Is that legit?
I don't see how it can do that for so long? I suppose if oil got in the headers it could work, but I would imagine it would flame out before it got to the tail pipe and would come out as smoke.
Any mechanics out there that could shed some light?

100% legit. It is caused by a) the particulate filter in the exhaust and b) too much fuel getting through the injectors and into the filter.

The way this is supposed to work is...
1) the particulate filter catches a bunch of exhaust junk (for emissions purposes)
2) ECM releases (via injectors) a specified amount of raw fuel into exhaust
3) fuel gets caught in filter and raises the temp of the collected junk from (1) so that it burns off (without combustion)

But, in the case of these Fords, the faulty injectors released too much fuel which caused the temperature to rise to a point where combustion (read flames) occurred.

Ford actually halted sales of these trucks while they worked on a fix.