Earlier today I was cruising down the highway at about 60mph when my truck developed a tire shake. As expected, if I varied my speed the shake went away. Later, I noticed that my exhaust was a bit smokier than usual. About 10 miles later, I turned off the highway and noticed that I didn't have a tire shake, but that I had a bad miss. In fact at idle, the truck was running very poorly. When I got to my destination I popped the hood and noticed that engine sounded different. I could tell that the noise was coming from the intake so I opened the air box. If you have ever heard one of the old 2 cylinder John Deere tractors, well, that's the sound I have coming from my intake. I did my business and drove 30 miles to my shop, keeping the speed down to around 55mph. When I got to my shop I used a stethoscope and noticed that cylinder number one was a bit noiser than the other cylinders. I took the valve cover off and the exhaust valve lash was visibly off. I lashed the valve and found that the exhaust side was at .041, so I reset it to .020 which quieted the valve tick. The intake valve at .010. I also checked cylinder #2 and it was within spec. Unfortinatly, relashing the valves made no difference in how the engine idled. I called a mechanic friend and he said to bring the truck in. I drove another 15 miles to his shop, this time at 70mph. I noticed as I drove that my truck was getting smokier. In fact, now I could see black smoke in th rear mirror when I was in a flat cruise. When I turned off the highway the truck was idling worse. While I was waiting at the light blue smoke started to come out of the exhaust. When I went to rev up the engine to let the clutch out, I was met with a very loud successive popping from the exhaust. Sounded like a shot gun on full auto. I've heard this pop before, but only when the engine was cold and I tried to rev it up. A short time later I pulled into his shop and my truck was now blowing huge clouds of smoke. So much smoke that it was forming a cloud 2 stories tall and 50' long. The smoke is pale blue and does NOT smell like oil. The engine now is running like it has a significant lope and you can hear that tractor sound in both the intake and the exhaust. He used a temperature gauge and we noticed that cylinder #1 was a good 30-50 degrees cooler than the other ones. When we gently reved the engine up, the temperature went down and I started to get black smoke from the exhaust. He's going to do a leak down test tomorrow...
Prior history: My specs are below and the truck currently has 166,000 on it. The truck has been trouble free for some time except for two recent incidents:
About a month ago, after a 2 hour drive, I found that the engine wouldn't idle. You had to hold the throttle with your foot or the engine would die. Very frustrating when you're trying to turn a trailer around. After being shut off for several hours, the problem went away and has never reappeared.
The second problem occured about two weeks ago. Having recently filled up, I noticed that I went through a tank fuel rather quickly. The next day my wife took the truck in for new tires when the shop noticed that I was leaking fuel. The leak must have just started because I had just filled up and it was a huge leak. It turned out the rolled lip on the fuel filter had failed causing the fuel to leak out. A new filter solved the problem.
Thoughts?
Prior history: My specs are below and the truck currently has 166,000 on it. The truck has been trouble free for some time except for two recent incidents:
About a month ago, after a 2 hour drive, I found that the engine wouldn't idle. You had to hold the throttle with your foot or the engine would die. Very frustrating when you're trying to turn a trailer around. After being shut off for several hours, the problem went away and has never reappeared.
The second problem occured about two weeks ago. Having recently filled up, I noticed that I went through a tank fuel rather quickly. The next day my wife took the truck in for new tires when the shop noticed that I was leaking fuel. The leak must have just started because I had just filled up and it was a huge leak. It turned out the rolled lip on the fuel filter had failed causing the fuel to leak out. A new filter solved the problem.
Thoughts?
