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Missing at idle with puffs of white smoke

Jorge6.5

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Upstate New York
Well my truck has been sitting at the mechanics for close to 2 months now for repairs to the speed sensor/shifting issues. He never fixed it so I had enough. I decided to take my truck back home, finally.

After a few miles of driving, out of no where I hear what sounds like an exhaust manifold leak. Every so often puffs of white smoke would be coming for the tail pipe.

Got the truck home (just 2 miles from where the issue started) once home I noticed the engine shaking and an off sound from the tail pipe, sounds like its missing on one cylinder. I'm thinking its an injector stuck or maybe a valve let go but I don't hear much tapping from the valve cover area.

Here is a short video that I recorded while the truck was idleing

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0RNFD7Ralug&feature=plcp
 
Nylon button broke causing rocker to fall off intake valve? Use temp gun to see what manifold is cold aka missing.
 
That sounds like a good trick to try. How much are we looking at for a temp gun?

If the rocker button did brake, what kind of work am I looking at getting into to fix it aside from getting the valve cover off?
 
If you don't have a temp gun -find the dead cylinder by cracking injector lines 1at a time while its running. The one with no change is the dead cylinder.
 
That's the equivalent of removing a spark plug wire on a gasser. It kills the fuel to the cylinder to determine when you have a misfire of a cylinder. Start engine, crack the nut loose and the engine should bog at each cycle. If it does go to the next one. When there is no change in the sound of the engine, that is the dead cylinder. It could be injector, valves, compression, anything to do with that 1 cylinder.

To find if it is an injector, swap the misfiring one with a good one and see if the problem is at the new cylinder. If so then injector problem. If not then check compression in the cylinder to verify what is gong on.

As for the rocker button, pulling the valve cover is the hard part. You'll see the broken button. Check the rocker arm not broken and that the pushrods are not bent make sure to keep pushrods same side up (don't turn over).
Good price for temp gun! Btw
 
For the back two cylinders turbo side you will need to measure the exhaust port temp on the head.

Pull the oil fill cap and see if there is a chug of blowby when the engine misses.

Pull codes on the computer - it should have an injector misfire code specific to a cylinder. Although mine with a broken piston was indicating more than one misfire than #8 so accuracy is suspect.
 
Well today I finally got a chance to tare into the motor, removed the intake injection lines turbo and valve covers. I saw absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with the valve train, everything was in good shape including the rocker arm retainers. A whole lot of work for nothing but at least that has been ruled out as the problem.

Must have been an injector the whole time. Funny cause I just bought these rebuilt injectors from a forum member only about a year ago. At this point I see no reason to get my other injectors rebuilt considering I still have the shifting and speedometer problem that was never fixed.

Tomorrow gonna make some calls about some trucks including a 3500 dually 6.5 truck. Might even consider buying a gasser gm truck, if so the my truck will be parted out.
 
Bad injector; sounds/looks like it's peeing a stream rather than a mist.

Crack injectors while idling as noted above and pull the one that doesn't change. Put the old one back in there for now while you test the bad one.
 
I have found on a few occasions that a stuck injector can be pulled apart cleaned and reassembled. No money spent only takes about 15 minutes After the injectors removed. I wouldn't be so fast pull the trigger on the old Gal.
 
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