Need some help

ride42

ride42

980MW
Joined
Jan 1, 2007
Messages
4,506
Last Thursday my truck developed a major problem. Wednesday night it was running great and had no problems at all. I forgot to plug it in that night and so I was expecting a rough start up that morning, well the starter developed a hesitation in it while cranking and it needed more throttle input than usual. It was running rough but I wrote that off as to it being cold. I went inside for ten minutes to let it warm up and came back out with the idle still being rough and the truck not running well at all. Figured I would drive it and see if it acts like it throughout the power band. Nothing changed and around 60mph if I tried to accelerate it would only blow smoke and start running rough. I drove it to work and plugged it in the rest of the day. At 6:00 pm that night I started it again to get it home and it start running even more rough than before and needed throttle input to stay running. Shut it off and towed it home.

It's hard to explain what it is doing exactly but I will try. I started it up to get it into the garage to see what was up. Started it and the same story as before but a LOT worse. I threw it into drive and it started to smoke a combo of black and white with an almost brown haze thrown in as well.

Pump and engine are both at TDC so timing should still be correct at 24° (pump was pin timed at 24° when on the bench in the Fall)

Checked the valve lash because of the popping noises and it is within spec.

As far as I can tell no springs are broken and the push rods seem to be straight but I am going to put it back together and run it without the valve covers just to make sure.

Injectors are pulled and the nozzles seem to be in good condition with no melting marks on them.

Checked coolant and oil and no case of one in the other so I am assuming the head gasket is still good.

I have a question as to what would happen if gas was present in the fuel? I have filled up at the same fuel pump that I have the last two years and never had a problem with it before but I'm not sure that's where it came from if it is present. The injection lines have a hint of gas and so does the fuel tank..there are a few people here that would pull this sort of prank so just to be sure I am going to siphon out the remaining fuel and check it out then fill the tank back up with clean diesel.

Anyone else have any ideas for me to check out? I can't think of why it's doing this unless the pump just went out of phase and took a dump or what but I find that hard to believe due to how well it has run the past couple of weeks, but they always run the best right before they kill over right?

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Completely forgot but here a brief setup-

5x.014" injectors, .030" delivery valves, barrels and plungers are turned at 500cc right now with 0-plate full forward, S300G with 62mm compressor, 4k governing springs.
 
Bryce...try draining the fuel and getting clean diesel in it. My dad filled my truck up with gas this last summer and it took a siphon and about 20 minutes of running to get it all cleared out.

Sounded just like what yours is doing...almost like the timing slipped, but with the mixed color smoke like you described.

If anything comes up wrong with the pump let me know asap and I'll get ya taken care of.
 
Sounds good Seth. I don't think it's the pump. The truck has ran great the past couple weeks. I am going to check the fuel filter tomorrow night and the fuel heater to see if there's anything out of the ordinary there. I will keep you informed.
 
Fresh from the pump diesel - Strong smell of sulphur.
0212002025.jpg



Fresh diesel + gas - Mixed smell of both but the gas came through stronger as it should because there was more gas to the amount of diesel.
0212002025a.jpg


Fresh diesel + water - Strong smell of sulphur,
0212002026a.jpg


The fuel taken out of my tank - Smell of gas and another chemical that I can't make out.
0212002026.jpg
 
it looks to be a diluted version of your gas/fuel mix. think someone got ya with a "prank" if ya wanna call it that
 
Gas and fuel additive? Hope that fixes your troubles...if it was a prank I'd be doing some head-hunting...
 
yeah, not cool man. That sucks. Good thing you didn't do like some and just drive it till it cleaned up.
 
Bryce that sucks, hopefully it didn't hurt anything. I would definately get a locking fuel cap afterwards though.
 
That sucks man but I guess it could've been worse. I'd be knocking some heads with the quickness imho that's nothing to screw around with.
 
Didn't clear it up. Taking my injectors up to a friend at Gillett Diesel this weekend to have him check them out.

It will idle on it's own now with no throttle input but it's a lopey pig. I can free rev to 4k no problem but as soon as there is a load on it, it stumbles and needs throttle to keep it above 700 RPM. I took it around the block to see what the driving characteristics were and it had a random knock on the driver side under acceleration. Random as in - knock knock....knock...knock knock knock...knock - there wasn't a pattern to it like I would expect.

If the injectors check out then I am going to go through and test compression and resort to pulling the pump as a last ditch effort.
 
Not the fuel system. Devan Manis helped me out a bunch today with the truck. We started it up on fuel and then introduced ether and shut the truck off. No change in the way it idles so that leads us to believe the fuel system is not the problem.

While idling on fuel we cut out each injector individually. Injectors 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 all would kill the truck when the injection line was pulled off. Injector number five was a different story. It took the tick away from the turbo, although there was still air being pushed out of the turbo, and it changed the exhaust note dramatically. Leading us to believe there is a problem with cylinder number 5. There is little to no blow-by out of the oil fill so I would assume rings are somewhat out of the question.

Ran the truck with the valve covers off and all valves are moving freely and clean with no hang ups. My next step will be to pull the head and investigate the valves, piston, and cylinder of number 5 and any others that seem suspicious among removal.

Temperature as follows:
Cylinder 1 - 220°
Cylinder 2 - 260°
Cylinder 3 - 270°
Cylinder 4 - 296°
Cylinder 5 - 296°
Cylinder 6 - 232°
-These were taken on the inside of the exhaust manifold with a laser thermometer. EGT at idle was 490-500° and it would idle between 6-700RPM
 
When we pull the head we are going to check the plenum and see if there is any carbon present towards the rear.
 
Here is another tally against the Felpro head gaskets.

23781_386589089276_501544276_354559.jpg


Valves and pistons checked out fine. Going to fire ring the head and throw on a new gasket and go from there.
 
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