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1995 F-code won't start / stay running

thedrip

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Location
Florida
2 days ago I was running super low on fuel, I poured in a couple gallons of my WMO/diesel mix I use in another older truck. Started missing this morning, so figuring it was out of fuel I went and filled up proper. 27 gallons of fresh diesel. This is where the real trouble starts.

Drove 1.5 miles, truck stalled. Hard to restart, only runs 5 seconds at a time. I managed to coax it to a safe place to wait for a tow truck.

Once home, I purged the bulk of the dirty fuel by running the fuel pump until the diesel ran almost clear. Took almost 5 gallons out. Replaced the fuel filter.

Now it behaves even worse.

key on, wait for glowplugs. Cranks, rattles as it tries to start (gets to 1500rpm), then dead.

repeat as many times as you want, same thing. sets various codes. almost always a code 19, sometimes a code 18, infrequently a code 35.

I pulled and cleaned every engine related electrical plug I could find. Truck started, idled for 10 minutes with no issues. shut it down, same bad behavior on start up.

After messing around with it for a couple hours, giving it a break, trying multiple times right in a row, leaving the key on to build fuel pressure, the truck only starts when it wants to, no rhyme or reason.

When it starts, it drives fine. Fuel pressure is 7.5psi not running, seems to drop to around 4psi idling, but I cant keep it running long enough to get a proper steady gauge. Measured at the bleed T at the front of the engine. That seems a little low to me. Possible culprit?

I'm looking for anything cheaper than a new IP, before I go there. Truck has a 6 month old remote mounted PMD on a cooler.

Quick sum up. kinda starts then stalls. codes 18, 19, 35 (rarely). Looking for suggestions!



As a side possibility, my volt gauge is acting funny, and this started about the same time. Shows 10-11v keyed on, not running, 13ish running. Multimeter reads 13.5 and 14.2 in the same situations.
 
Well, I've narrowed it down quite a bit with a single test I didnt think of before. and I think I know what the problem is.

Unplug the optical sensor, truck is hard to start (as expected), otherwise runs fine.
Plug it back in, it starts easy, stalls immidiately.

So the answer is either a bad optical sensor, or my fuel is still too cloudy/opaque. Guess I'll be pumping the whole tank through a filter, and see if i can clear it up.
 
Well, I think fuel opacity is the problem. I bled out some fuel before the filter change, looked like this...

IMG068.jpg


After finding the optical sensor unplugged would make it run, I decided to dump the entire tank. I slapped together a harbor freight utility pump, a 10 micro water coalescing filter and a 5 micron filter (had the filters from a previous project, put in fresh elements). Dump 30 gallons from tank into a garbage can in 5-6 minutes. The rig I used...

IMG070.jpg

IMG069.jpg


And the result, after dumping the tank through the filters, then circulating the bucket of fuel for an hour with the pump. 300GPH rated pump, so that would be every gallon filtered 10 times (ok, harbor freight, we'll call it 5).

IMG071.jpg


So I think fuel opacity could very well be the issue.


So now I know what I should do. Drop the tank, clean it. Flush all the fuel lines out. Before I start the truck, run the IP return line into a container until the fuel runs clear.

What I want to do is fill the truck with 30 gallons of fresh clean diesel, and hope for the best, but that is kind of how i got in this mess in the first place.
 
Well your best result would be drop & flush, and clean the sock that is your next concern if you have "mud/muck" in the tank, if in a bind for time you might might I say get by with a pump/fill with fresh Diesel only fuel, could maybe find some high concentration bio-Diesel to clean up system, suck out as much as you can with external pump then jump the lift pump to run to get out the last of the fuel from the tank.

You have a pre-lift pump filter ??? if so replace that with a 2 micron element and "polish" the fuel with it
 
Well its all fixed now. I had to ride my bike to work all week, no time to fix the truck.

Pumped the tank out from the fuel filler neck to get the bulk (30 gallons) out, then used the lift pump to get the rest, until it sucked air. put 10 gallons of clean diesel in and emptied the fuel filter. It still wasn't real happy (only run some of the time), so I pumped the 10 gallons through the lift pump, and added 32 gallons of clean diesel. Its happy now, like nothing ever happened.
 
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