I had posted a couple days ago about my new old truck and the lack of power that it had, especially the part about having to hold it on the floor to maintain 75 mph on the interstate. We had pretty much come to the conclusion that it needed a new IP and injectors. Well I'm having to wait til paday to get the pump and injectors so today I decided to dig into it a little bit and see what I could find. I took the air cleaner cover off to inspect the air filter. It was a K&N air filter that looked as if it hadn't been cleaned in 10 years! Holding it up to the sun I could see no light coming through at all, it was pretty much black! I'm not a huge K&N filter fan and I plan on trying to find a custom cold air intake or making one my self anyway so I went to advance auto to get a cheapo Purolator. Well Advance doesn't stock the purolator and all they did have was new K&N filters so I just got the K&N cleaning kit.

I came back and cleaned the filter per the instructions and it looks much better, still want to replace it but it's way better than it was. I changed the fuel filter and turned the IP up about 1/4th turn. I also inspected the throttle cable and found it to have some slack in it. Upon closer inspection I found the slack to be in the lever on the side of the IP that the throttle cable hooks to. It moved quite a bit before it actually started giving throttle. The spring that holds the lever is rusted pretty bad and seems pretty week. I put some WD40 on it and it's much better but I still think the spring and maybe the entire lever needs replaced. The pics below are the part I'm talking about.



I think this is why I had to mash on the pedal so hard to get any power, because it wasn't opening the throttle up like it should. It's quite a bit better now. I got it all put back together and took it for a drive. I couldn't believe it was the same truck. It had alot more power and boost was at about 8 where 5-6 was max before. It still has the flat down pipe so I think a good down pipe upgrade will help that. I think my IP is okay because after turning it up my EGT's got up to 1000 fairly quick when I got on the interstate and got on it! May need to turn it down 1/8th turn. It still idles pretty rough when I start it up, it smooths out after a minute or two but not completely smooth. I think it could still benefit from some new injectors. Also the tranny shifts pretty sloppy so some tranny work or a new one will be a big help, maybe the Opti Shift TCM if there is nothing actually wrong with my tranny. Would bad injectors cause the rough idle? Unless you guys think I'm wrong, I'm getting ready to order a new set. I'm really relieved at how much better it's doing after the minor stuff I did today! When I drove it yesterday, I just about had myself convinced that it needed a new motor and transmission!

 

I can guarentee that you never need a new motor and tranny as long as you dont have banging going on inside that engine, or it just is puking oil everywhere....actually i take that back...these will run puking or not. Anywho, yes bad injectors cause rough idle, if your idle sounds like it has a lifter knock, its a dead injector or a really close to dead one. I bet if you just replaced the spring, DP and whatnot you could get way more boost out of it.

 

Now that you mention it, it does have a knock that sounds like a lifter when I first start it up. It don't leak a drop anywhere that I can find which suprised me cause the other two diesel trucks I have/had seem to leak more fluids out than they kept in even though they run great. I'm definitely gonna get some new injectors. I've seen some guys talking about BB code injectors from Typ4 on oilburners.net. I've never bought injectors before and I'm not sure what the best option is. Any suggestions?

 

Delphi fuel injector standards seems to have changed.there's been a few reports lately of failing injectors with very low miles.
you may want to consider going with some Stanadyne's instead.
7.3 L Ford Diesel Fuel Injectors Fuel Pumps Accessories

alternatively,you may want to have yours rebuilt at a local shop.
find a quality shop to rebuild them,and you'll end up with better than todays new injectors it seems.
Russ is behind on injectors right now anyway,and he's the one who mentioned Delphi has appeared to lower their quality standards.
so im not stepping on Russ's toes or anything.
just keeping ya updated on the latest info.

 

Yeah, I need some like yesterdy! I also found these: Diesel Care Inc

Are you familiar with them?

 

they have a mixed bag of results.
im getting a blocked site warning,so i can't see what your linking too.
are you thinking remans from them? if so,that's what iv heard mixed results from.
enough so,id look elsewhere.
the declining economy is making finding quality parts harder and harder lately.

 

Thats good enough for me. I'll probably just use the link you gave for the stanadynes just to be safe.

 

well,folks prefer the BB codes,but the G codes came stock on the factory turbo's,so they can't be too bad.
with the quality control issues of late with delphi,there's kinda only one logical choice right now,ya know.
if i had a turbo,and was in need of injectors right now.im be ordering factory original quality Stanadyne G codes.
even if it meant a loss of 5 or 10 hp over BB's (could it really? i dunno man.) you can't beat buying something that you know will last 100k.
so,take it as ya will.i don't sell any auto parts,so makes no diff to me haha.
good luck.

 

I don't know why I haven't thought of this but my mom is the office manager for a parts store/machine shop so I'm sure she can get the stanadynes for me at her cost!

 

woah.well,i think you found your solution.
i want to test the E codes compared to the BB's in mine,so i can run some fuel economy tests.but that wont be anytime soon.like next summer or so.
i have a feeling the reason why BB's become popular anyway,wasn't for their increase in FE lol.

 

Yeah I'm not really concerned a whole lot with fuel economy cause I don't drive it a huge amount but I don't want to be able to watch the fuel gage move toward the E either! I just read the thread about adjusting the TPS. It looks like the previous owner installed a new TPS on my truck cause it's new and clean looking and there is an old one in the back of the truck. I probably need to check it cause my transmission is shifting too soon. I also just read all 10 pages of eaton's timing issues and now I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed! I'm gonna try to not let myself worry about those things though until I get some new injectors in there and see what problems that cures. Since I'm hopefully not having to replace my IP, maybe I won't have any of those problems.

 

My new Stanadyne injectors will be here tomorrow along with the return line kit. I went out today and pulled a couple of injectors to see what they looked like. I don't know what a "bad" injector looks like but these look pretty nasty to me but I could be wrong. They have a manufacture date of 03/05 so obviously they are not the original injectors. I do have a concern though. I'm gonna try to just replace the injectors, hoping that my IP is okay. When I removed the two injectors today I realized that it will be really hard to get a socket on them when I install the new ones without completely removing the fuel lines which looks to me like means that the lines will have to be removed from the IP also. It doesn't look like the lines all of the lines can be removed from the IP without removing the IP. I was hoping to not have to remove the IP so I didn't have to re-time it, if the timing is correct now that is. If I have to remove the IP to replace the injectors, then I may as well replace the IP too. Anyways here's some pics of the two injectors. They were the first two injectors on the driver's side.

 

Get a sharpie and make a mark on the old IP and timing cover in case you have to put the old one back on for some reason. It helped me when I had to get my old pump back on, I could set it back to the exact timing it was at.

 

If you remove the injector line clamps, you should be able to gently move the line out of the way enough to get on the injectors.
Generally, injectors & IP should be changed at the same time, though.
As the injectors wear, the springs get weaker, and the injectors open earlier, which effectively advances the timing a bit. As the pump wears, it builds up pressure a little slower, effectively retarding the timing a bit. These two things tend to cancel each other out. If you put new injectors on with a tired pump, it effectively retards the timing a bit because the pump has to get up to a higher pressure to fire the new injectors. This extra stress can accelerate the wear of a tired pump.