f*rd diesel help

[neverendingproject]

I know this is not a ford forum, but my father is having problems and he needs help.

The problem is that he has fuel leaking somewhere into his coolant. The truck is a 01 7.3 diesel. The truck has a surging/miss when it is cold, but goes away under hard throttle and when the engine warms up. As of now, there is a good amount of diesel in his coolant, to the point that it overflows.

Any ideas on what the problem is and how to fix it. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

thanks

 

[Big89Burban]

I guess you could do this about two ways. You could pull out all the glow plugs and do a coolant pressure test on it. Then crank it over to see if any cylinders spit out coolant (with the injectors disabled of course!). The other way would be to do a cyl. leakdown test. I say leakdown cause I dont know if you can find a compression gauge that will go high enough for the compression a diesel has.

I would be trying to find out if the head gaskets are ok. I would also check the oil to make sure its not contaminated with fuel.

 

[dave_90_blazer]

I guess you could do this about two ways. You could pull out all the glow plugs and do a coolant pressure test on it. Then crank it over to see if any cylinders spit out coolant (with the injectors disabled of course!). The other way would be to do a cyl. leakdown test. I say leakdown cause I dont know if you can find a compression gauge that will go high enough for the compression a diesel has.
I would be trying to find out if the head gaskets are ok. I would also check the oil to make sure its not contaminated with fuel.

you can, it is called a diesel compression gauge.................

 

[Big89Burban]

yeah, but I dont think thats one your gonna find at the corner parts store. Probably gonna have to catch the snap-on truck for that one. An engine I built for my car (13:1 compression) had right at 270psi and it kept blowing out the schrader valves. We went through 3 of them trying to do the motor.

 

[neverendingproject]

I FINALLY found soemthing. Has anyone ever heard of an injector sleeve? i read that these will sometimes leak, but i dont know.

anyone else know something?

 

[79Beast]

Powerstrokes don't use injector sleeves. They have three Orings on each injector. It's very likely that it's a faulty injector allowing fuel to get into the coolant. Has he had any injectors replaced recently? If so it's a good possibility that that's the faulty injector.

 

[89GMCSuburban]

And how would a leaking injector dump fuel into anywhere other than the oil and combustion chamber if it didn't use any kind of copper cup? Just looking around on the net, sure looks like it uses copper injector cups to seal. If you are getting fuel into the coolant....the cups are bad. There is no other logical way to think about it....but if I'm wrong, then the head is VERY cracked.

 

[89GMCSuburban]

Harbor Freight has diesel compression gages...

And BTW, if the truck has a lot of miles and the cooling system hasn't been maintained, removing copper cups SUCKS.

 

[neverendingproject]

he hasnt replaced any injectors, but how would i fix a copper seal, or an oring which ever it is?

 

[lrazer]

there is a tool that threads into the cups that u put a slide hammer on

 

[u2slow]

IIRC, the PSD has fuel passages in the heads to feed the injectors (i.e. they're not externally plumbed).

My educated guess is a blown head gasket.

 

[89GMCSuburban]

You can just re-seal the injectors. The kits come with o-rings and the copper washer at the bottom. Do a compression test to check for any cracks or bad head gaskets. Pressurize the cooling system with the injectors out to check if any is coming into the injector cups.

 

[89GMCSuburban]

Problem with that thought is the fuel is going through the passage from lines connected to the heads....if I'm thinking correctly. Fuel doesn't pass through the head gasket itself. You wouldn't want the fuel to get that hot.