No power climbing a hill from dead stop

adondo wrote:
It sounds to me like this only happens in the driveway, from your description.

I know Caterpillars de-rate until they're up to operating temp. I've been in places that I'm trapped in for a while until the Cat warms up enough to "give me some power" so I can get up a slope and escape a campground. (Such as some places in Colorado) The throttle isn't 40 feet of cable hooked directly, it's a rheostat mounted to the (probably Williams Controls) gas pedal, and sends a signal to the engine. (Drive by wire) You can't tell by the sound, the engine sounds normal enough, it's just "gutless" until the computer (ECM) decides it will run at full power.

If it's only happening in the driveway, then just wait until the coolant is up to temp, and your Cummins should operate normally. If it's doing that everywhere, then it's de-rating for some other reason, and a competent truck shop should be able to hook up to diagnostics and find out what's wrong. And, by competent shop, I don't mean the nearest RV dealer, I mean places that service Kenworth, Peterbilt, Freightliner, etc.

Yes, this only happens in my driveway at a dead stop. On the road it runs very well. I do have the drive by wire with the rheostat also, I am going to look into that because i did have an issue with the box one time. I sent it back to the manufacture and they rebuilt it. What i do not know is how my timing when i had that rebuilt meshes with my hill climbing problem. I think I will call that company back and see if that could be the problem.
I thought about the engine needing warmed up so a couple of trips ago I let it warm up a long time before leaving and it really helped. The last trip i did the same and it would not go, it slowly went up the hill. But after I was on the road and thinking about why warming it up worked the time before I had thoughts that my exhaust break may have been stuck on, which did happen once in the past. If it was stuck it started working again on the road.
I am sure I have a ECM but it is not the electronic engine, it is the mechanical version so I am not sure if they can plug in to check out the engine. I know i won't go back to Cummings after my bill for them to change out the waste gate, about the price of a new turbo.
Thanks for your input