Hey guys, its been a long time! Ive missed yall... Trucks been through a lot, including a new transmission, but I've got another issue here I need some input for.

Trucks been running rough lately, low power, almost dies sometimes after climbing a hill or WOT. Hutch and in tank mods done 3ish years ago. I've upgraded my inline filter to a larger auxiliary filter (running wix right now) and I've also pulled the fuel bowl and tightened all of those connections. There was a fuel leak at the back of the bowl, gone now.

Every time I've done work on this I have ended up draining the fuel bowl and repriming it for a while. Every time my issue has gone away until I ran low on fuel again, and it started running rough again. Now its parked, I can barely go over 55mph without it shutting down. I can clearly hear rattle in the top end of the engine from extra air/fuel starvation. I know my connections are good at my fuel bowl and auxiliary filter, I think the only things left are trash in the tank, bad fuel pump, or cracked pickup foot in the tank.

I think and my dad thinks there's just a bunch of crap in the tank. But it will barely run,and I've got a full 36 gallons of fuel in the tank right now. I can't limp it along for an entire week to run the fuel low, so I'm going to have to pump it out so I can drop it and clean it.

Any suggestions for further troubleshooting and/or pumping the diesel out of my tank so I can drop and clean it out?

 

Rubber fuel hose into the tank filler to siphon it out works pretty good you just need enough cans for the diesel.

It'd be nice to know what your fuel pressure is while the engine is running. That would help rule out your pump.

 

Hi, When I got my 58 F250 I had the same problem with loosing Power and I decided to take a look at the gas tank. I Purchased this $6.00 syphen hose with a small blue pumper at Auto Parts store and it worked like a charm. You put the long hose into the tank and as long as you have your portable gas tank on the ground and have downward motion your in business. Pump it as fast as you can until you see the fuel then you leave it alone and let gravity prevail, the fuel flows freely at a pretty good rate without you having to pump it. $6.00 went a long way, then for the gas tank YES, I had some junk and some rust so I pulled out the Tank, Blew my lines out with my compressor and purchased a new Tank on LMC.com added new fuel with a fuel treatment or you can clean it out if you desire. I also installed it with a new sending unit and my truck runs free and clear no loss of Power anymore and runs like a charm now, so it definitely took care of my problem maybe it will work for you....just make sure if you have a fuel filter that you change that to a new one like I did because that helps too. GOOD LUCK !!! Hope it Helps !!!

 

....X2....

 

If you don't have a fuel pressure gauge, disconnect and plug off the fuel line coming from the tank and stick a rubber hose on the back side of the fuel pump. Run the hose to a 5 gallon tank in the bed and take it for a quick spin.

That will eliminate the fuel tank from the equation and confirm or deny your suspicions. Just remember that the fuel return line still goes back to the tank, not the can in the bed. That means you don't really have 5 gallons of fuel to test with. Whatever fuel the engine isn't using is getting pumped back into your fuel tank.

 

Hey Ben, When I had to replace my rear tank, I did the siphon hose deal, BUT I went to Lowes and got a paint filter/screen that goes over a 5 gal bucket. That way when the fuel came out it was filtered and all the big pieces got left in the screen. about $5 for two IIRC. that way you can reuse your fuel when you're done.

Barney

 

Hey guys... I appreciate your chiming in to help Benjamin on this. He and I have discussed it repeatedly, and just had not run across Chris' idea of running the truck from a clean pail of fuel ... outstanding idea!! With Benjamin not living at home and me being virtually completely consumed with home remodeling projects which have Thanksgiving deadlines, it's been a hit-and-miss thing.

One great comfort now is that Benjamin has the much larger canister type filter instead of the smaller inline type. The first time this happened to him, he found tons of junk inside the inline unit, and the second time there was more junk in the replacement element, and that is why we feel like there is still some more garbage which needs to be cleaned out of the tank... stuff heavy enough (and perhaps big enough) to where his pump picks it up more frequently when the low-level sloshing takes place. Also, the large, new canister element will take care of filtering whatever he siphons out and should not hinder his runnability while he determines whether or not the tank is really the issue. We can always replace that element once again if tank trash is the proven culprit. Otherwise, it will be a new pump.

When Benjamin and I talked again earlier this morning, he's also going to run some heavy weed eater string through the hose between the tank and filter inlet, as well as through the pickup tubing, and that way we'll know that the line is clean regardless of what is or is not found inside the tank.

Thanks again for pitching in with your input. He or I will post back whatever he discovers over the next couple days.

 

I had a prefilter that killed the fuel pressure on my Stage II sticks, so I went to a fuel strainer and that solved my problem.

 

When I put fresh filters in, I tend to get about 68 psi at the fuel bowl, but I'm also running a Carter lift pump between my underbody fuel filter and the stock pump. The only time I've suffered from pressure issues was when the original Carter pump died and the OEM stocker had to pull through the straw, Baldwin filter, and inoperable Carter pump... talk about CAVITATION!!!

Then again... I'm also not running anything like your Stage II's.

EDIT... I just checked the specs on that Racor, and it appears to be a 10 micron filtration unit which is the same as the Baldwin and Wix that Benjamin and I are running. I still like that Racor, though, because it includes a clear bowl and opportunity for water to settle out. I would have went that route myself if I had known about it when I did my Baldwin setups.

 

How old is that Rich, and got any pictures of it not so clean? Some bowls like that tend to cloud up and become worthless. Others seem to work great.

Pete. Looks to me like it's a 200 micron strainer. http://www.parker.com/portal/site/PA...extfmt=default
When I did my in tank mods I ended up calling Baldwin and spoke to one of their engineers. I ended up with a 100 micron filter/strainer that has worked well. I don't think 200 would be any issue since the purpose is to catch big stuff and let the regular fuel filter do it's job. A fuel bowl delete would be a different story of course.

 

Ok, so I drained all the fuel last night. Took me a little while, but I got it almost completely siphoned out. I didn't have the time to try running it off of a diesel container in the bed of the truck though.

I did try to siphon the fuel out by connecting to the fuel line (flexible rubber) that connects to the inlet of my underbody filter. The hand pump literally would NOT pull any fuel through the line. So its safe to say its pretty well blocked right now.

Dropping the tank as soon as I get home from work this afternoon, hoping I'm going to have some great pictures of crud all inside my tank and pickup foot.

Thanks for the input guys...

 

I gotta say, I had forgotten how helpful it is to get input from everybody here....

 

Ok so fuel tank has been cleaned out and there were pieces of my pickup foot all over the tank. Thats taken care of.

Everything's put back in, idles fine, sounds smooth. But if I go on the highway for more than 10 minutes it gets rougher and rougher then shuts off. Happened once,I found the fuel bowl empty, primed it and it ran fine again.

Should I tow it to the diesel mechanic or could this be the fuel pump?

 

It could be the fuel pump, it could be trash in the line clogging up the inlet screen on the fuel pump, it could be a broken pick up assembly in the tank you just put back together, it could be lots of things.

Taking a truck to a mechanic when there are no codes for him to look at means you get to pay him to throw parts at it. ($20 says he wants to replace your HPOP if you go that route)

If you'd rather fix it yourself, we'll help, but nothing has really changed. You dropped and cleaned the tank without ever diagnosing your problem. You just guessed. The disintegrated fuel pick up foot is a good clue. Ask yourself what else could have been clogged up from that. It could also be a red herring. A fuel pressure gauge would be a good place to start. This can be done pretty cheap. Get a 0 - 100 psi gauge, enough rubber hose to run it out from under the hood, some duct tape to stick it to the windshield where you can see it while driving, and the fitting required to screw it into the fuel bowl.

 

When Benjamin put everything back together, he did not replace the plastic pickup foot, but rather just ran the tubing down to about 1/4" off the bottom of the tank. I'm also concerned that the inlet screen to the pump has some junk in it because Benjamin ran the truck about three days with no filter whatsoever between the tank and the pump.

The pump has 310K miles on it and a tired pump may just be coinciding with the line pluggage problem... in fact, the line pluggage issue may have helped drive the pump into further "tiredness".

You're idea for a temporary gauge is a good one, Chris. I'll see if I can help Benjamin get that setup to confirm exactly what's going on. The dry fuel bowl could have also been from a not quite completely closed drain valve, and I had Benjamin cycle the valve with the engine running, and when he started opening it, the truck started running very rough immediately. Bottom line is that the valve is now closed for certain, and all the fuel bowl o-rings were replaced a couple years ago and tightened again early on in this round of fuel supply issues.

Last night, I hooked up AE on the truck for Benjamin right after he got the fuel bowl reprimed, and the HPOP looks to be OK. No delay in getting enough pressure on startup, and the truck starts beautifully. Could be the beginnings of a sticky IPR, but I don't believe that would address the empty fuel bowl at all. Everything still points to a fuel supply restriction in my mind.