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1990 F350 4x4 7.3 IDI

Well, tonight was not the night I hoped it would be. I got the new glow plugs in and now it starts worse!! The glow plug controller had the light on for less time which I think I read was a sign of bad glow plugs (when you have ones that are open electrically like I had before), so that's puzzling. I've tried it a couple more times and the light is staying on longer so that's interesting too. But it also looks like I have air in the fuel system so now I get to mess with that, yay!!! Done for tonight, more to come.




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When the glow plugs are bad, you get extended glow time. That system is FUNKY to say the least. IIRC it works off of heat generated by the reduction coil that drops the voltage down. Once it hits a certain temp, the light goes out. Hence when you have bad glow plugs, the glow time is longer. It's been a long time since I messed with one though.
 
THEFERMANATOR said:
I think you're thinking of the powerstroke with heui injection. The idi's used a db4 injection pump similiar to the db2 that the 6.2/6.5 used(turns the opposite direction, and is a 4 piston instead of 2, capable of alot more fuel). My uncle still has a 92, and at 1 time I knew quite a few people with them. I know glow plugs and the glow plug system is fairly problematic. It uses 6 volt glow plugs and a big resistor to drop the voltage down. When a glow plug goes out, it increases the voltage to the other plugs, and also leads to extended glow times since it doesn't have as much load on the timer circuit leading to exploded glow plug tips. You can swap in a set of 60g glow plugs and go with a solenoid and manually activate them, or add in a timer to run them(or you could probably use a 92-93 6.5l glow plug relay setup). I know the stanadyne injectors are a long skinny design, and seemed to give alot more trouble than GM's did at higher miles, but if you change them out when you're supposed to, they're fine. Most everybody I know with them had starter troubles. So the powermaster should take care of that. The only real complaint my uncle had with his 92 was stock it didn't have a turbo. At 5K ft of elevation he said it became gutless and you just drove it by the amount of smoke coming out the tail pipe. He added in a banks turbo and took care of that. I do know if the starter doesn't kick it over fast enough, forget getting one to start. My neighbor had to use a rag soaked in gas if he let his sit parked for more than a week.

As to the brakes, I think a good hydro-boost setup would take care of alot of the problems. They used a pretty small vacuum pump that doesn't turn that fast, and there was no reservoir for it. You get one decent application, then you gotta wait awhile for vacuum to rebuild. Dodge had the same problem up to around 96-97 when they finally started going to hydro-boost systems, then there brakes got ALOT better.
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Will L. said:
Self regulated and a Ford solenoid...
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Yeah, I'm starting to feel you guys here. With some initial research I thought I could make the stock system work fine for me with some good maintenance. I like the idea of a system that monitors the current conditions and tells me how long to run the glows, but now I'm starting to question that logic. Since I just want this truck to be simple and robust, a manual system with self-regulators may be just what is needed. I'll keep researching and fiddling and see what I kind figure out. In the meantime I'm going to work on the fuel return system as that is my first suspect for the air intrusion.
 
THEFERMANATOR said:
With the way the belts are routed on the 7.3l idi, a serp swap would probably be a little tough. They used a double groove pulley on the alternator, 1 groove runs the alternator, then the other groove drives the vacuum pump. You would have to space the vacuum pump forward, then try and come up with a pulley with a serp in the back and a v built onto the front. Otherwise you could run an electric pump for the A/C if you did a hydro boost swap.
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Not quite.
Many do the serp conversion.
I think you're thinking of just swapping pulleys.
The version I know of is mostly swapping the whole accessories.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
 
I had a fun day yesterday. It was sunny and in the low 60s - perfect junkyard weather. I went to snag a hydroboost swap, unfortunately when I got it off it was wet between the master cylinder and the booster. Rather than take a chance with used parts I decided to just get new. The part I can't buy new though is the pedals, so I still snagged those. I also grabbed a tilt column with a cruise control steering wheel. The truck has cruise, but the steering wheel doesn't have the buttons, so I decided I might as well get a different column and wheel since I have to remove it for the pedal swap anyway. I got some other odds and ends while I was there - including a 1996 6.5 thermostat housing! You never know when one of those may come in handy again.

Also I had been reading that the Fords have a sending unit problem and some older ones can give you fits when the tank gets below 1/4 full. I looked at my gauge and sure enough it's below 1/4 full now. So I added 5 gallons of fuel to it. Now it acts like it did before - it still doesn't start as fast as I would like, but not as bad as it had been getting. So I guess I'll drop the tank at some point to take care of that problem. I think I'll be redoing the while fuel system some point soon, including putting the Raptor pump from the Tahoe on it since I want to upgrade the fuel supply on the Tahoe anyway - a win-win!IMG_8357.JPGIMG_8358.JPG
 
Nice! And if you need to pay for all the parts you just got, that thermostat crossover will do it. Getting harder to find and the price is going up.

How do you keep finding all the hard to find 6.5 parts?!?
 
Will L. said:
Nice! And if you need to pay for all the parts you just got, that thermostat crossover will do it. Getting harder to find and the price is going up.

How do you keep finding all the hard to find 6.5 parts?!?
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I'm lucky to have a good yard nearby!
 
I just ordered 2 hydroboost seal kits tonight for $35 a piece(mine is starting to leak, and my neighbor's needs one too). I would seriously look at installing one of the 92-93 6.5l glow plug controllers and a set of BOSCH duraterms. Then you could keep an automatic system, but with technology that is over a decade newer. I never liked the 6.9/7.3 system as that giant resistor wasted so much current dropping the voltage.
 
I kept looking at the rust on the front fenders and it bothered me. Yes this is supposed to be an ugly truck, but it also needs to be a sound truck. There was just too much rust in the fenders for me to be happy. Luckily I had a pair of OK fenders from a truck I parted out years ago. I looked them over and they were good enough for this truck, but nowhere near perfect. I thought about having them acid dipped and then e-coated through work, but they just weren't worth the expense. So I wire wheeled the bad parts I could get to and then slathered Eastwood Rust Encapsulator on the rough spots. This ought to work - should give me a few years of life and then if I decide I want better later on I can go buy new ones. You'll never see this under bedliner. Oh, and it's pretty cool how you can use a flatbed as its own workbench!

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Yesterday I did some fuel return system fixes to try to further improve the cold starting of this thing. I got a kit from Conestoga Diesel that has all new plastic caps, o-rings, hose, clamps and olives. This system is very different from our 6.2/6.5s....it uses a plastic cap that slides over the injector body and is sealed with o-rings. Very weird and not very confidence inspiring. You can get machined aluminum rails that slide over the injectors from R&D that I will likely upgrade to in the future. There is also a hose that runs from the fuel filter base that ties into the fuel return system. This hose seems to be debated in the IDI community. I've seen people delete it because it supposedly can contribute to air intrusion and supposedly there was a Ford service bulletin instructing techs to delete it. I decided to delete it just to be safe and I reasoned that my 6.5 didn't have one, so I didn't see the point to keeping it. There are also rubber seals at the supply line connections that they call "olives", those were included in the kit so I also did those. The line from the filter to the IP seemed kind of loose when I removed it, so that could have also been contributing to air intrusion.

Today I did a cold start to see if that took care of my cold start problems. It isn't 100% fixed but it does seem better. Since I didn't drive it around yesterday, just ran it in the barn, I'm hoping I just didn't get all of the air out of the system yet. Time will tell.


I also got the carpet out of the cab so I can do Herculiner on the floor. The truck was originally from Ohio and then has lived in Michigan a couple years. It's surprisingly rust free, but there is at least one spot I'll have to fix. I'm going to wire wheel it today and see how bad it is and then get to work repairing. The truck has been in the barn for 2 weeks and the carpet was still wet! That's why I'm not putting carpet back in this - I don't need to encourage rust.
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Time to get to work.
 
A trapped bubble in the clear line can be ignored. A trail of bubbles or increased amount of the size of trapped bubble is your warning indicator.

Something I do with used rigs to help is with engine running, trickle small amount of water down the intake (like wmi) so the water shocks off built up carbon from injector tips, valves, piston tops. I Don't expect that is going to help in the hesitation it has when starting, just something to throw out there.

Keep doing what your doing, its making progress.
 
Will L. said:
A trapped bubble in the clear line can be ignored. A trail of bubbles or increased amount of the size of trapped bubble is your warning indicator.

Something I do with used rigs to help is with engine running, trickle small amount of water down the intake (like wmi) so the water shocks off built up carbon from injector tips, valves, piston tops. I Don't expect that is going to help in the hesitation it has when starting, just something to throw out there.

Keep doing what your doing, its making progress.
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Interesting idea. Thanks
 
I've heard of guys doing similar on gassers, they'd cardboard the radiator to get the engine good and warm and then get it up to a fast idle and use a garden hose and add water to the point of almost killing it. Never tried it myself.
 
ak diesel driver said:
I've heard of guys doing similar on gassers, they'd cardboard the radiator to get the engine good and warm and then get it up to a fast idle and use a garden hose and add water to the point of almost killing it. Never tried it myself.
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Oh my!!!
Ive done it on gassers many times. Not like that.
Same on gassers as diesels. 1500-2000 rpm. Take a cup of water and SLOWLY pour water in. Think of drinking water through a coffee stirer- about that volume. It will cause the engine to bog a little. If it does a lot, that is too much water. It will put some descent smoke in the air as it removes the carbon.

As for a garden hose I would think hydrolock is on its way quickly. Think I would pass on that.
 
I did a cold start video of the clear return hose. The video quality isn't great once the starter starts cranking because I had my phone clamped to an AC hose, but hopefully you can make enough of it out. Those air bubbles don't seem normal to me. I'm going to start inspecting the fuel supply and return lines and also the fuel sending unit.

 
I got the Rust Encapsulator on the spots I wire wheeled yesterday.
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I also traced my fuel lines and inspected the sending unit and I don't see any suspicious spots. Hmmmm.

You know, when I was doing the return lines I was thinking to myself that it would be smart to pull the injectors and pop them. I wonder if I could have an injector or a few that are leaking and causing me to lose prime? Could that explain why it tries to start while cranking until it finally does light? Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
 
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