Hi all! I just bought this truck with 337k needs injectors and glow plugs. they are on the way. I'm fairly mechanical but my last 7.3 was a 1996 PS that never needed anything but oil.
What other PM should I do to this IDI?
Thanks

 

Welcome. I hope you ordered Motorcraft glow plugs. Most others have a high failure rate, sometimes burning out the first use. There are also some places out there selling crappy injectors. Where did you order from?

 

Thanks, I bought from accurate diesel in bitely michigan. They said they are the only glowplugs made in the USA.

 

That means you don't want them... Motorcraft glow plugs are made by Beru, a german company.
Not to say that stuff made in the USA is bad, but the consensus on here is that the Motorcraft/Beru glow plugs are the only ones that are worth using.

 

You got Wellman/DieselRX glow plugs. Some here have had problems with them; I've used both them and the Beru ones. I'm actually using a set of the 6.9 Wellman/DieselRX right now in my truck.

The problem that people here talk about is the GP swelling when it fails, making it hard or impossible to get out of the GP bore. Autolight GPs are supposed to be the worst at this.

What I've found is that /all/ glow plugs, even the Beru, will swell if you run too much power through them. This is usually the fault of a bad controller; if the rest of your system is in good shape, one could probably even run Autolights.

I wouldn't recommend the Autolights, though... build quality seems to be ****.

I'm happy with my DieselRX GPs, if only due to them being cheaper.

I would run them, keep an eye on things. Give it a bit, then test them(in the engine is fine) with a test light, multi-meter, or wire to battery+(if you touch a powered wire to the top of a good GP, you'll get little sparks. A bad one, you'll get nothing).
If you see one or more fail, you'll need to replace them... and ask yourself /why/ they failed. More than likely, you've got something screwed up in the system -- either a failing controller or corroded wires. Chances are, though, the GPs will last over a year.

If you end up having trouble and more trouble with the system, you can do what some of us do and go to a manual glow plug system -- you push a button down to make them light up, and have to know how long to push it, based on temps. It works pretty well, but isn't idiot-proof.

 

Thanks. I actually paid more for the diesel rx gps. Oh well. I'll see how they last and report back.
So I'm at 337k miles. how long do these engines generally last? It looks as if the truck was well maintained by the PO until one year ago when it was lent to friend who used it as a deep woods logging truck.

 

As far as I can tell, they generally don't die(assuming good maintenance). They just get old and cranky.

My engine, at unknown-thousand-miles finally got worn enough to warrant a rebuild; it had a tick to it, and was underpowered -- it had lost some power compared to the year before. Injectors were good, IP was good, it just seemed like it was running on 7.
It still fired up and drove, and probably would have run another 100K, but I wanted more power and was a little worried about the tick.
With my turbo on there, it had decent power above 2K once the turbo kicked in, but lower in the revs it was just kinda low on power.
It also drank oil(like a quart/100 miles), and had an absolute ton of blowby.

Pulled the motor(I drove it to where I wanted it), and when my machine shop tore it out, at least half the rings were broken, it had almost .020 of bore taper to it(.010 ridge all the way around), all the bushings were worn with tons of slop... and it still ran and drove. It had no problem firing right up.
It cost me $3K to have a shop rebuild it to basic long block condition; I reinstalled and am much happier about the low-end performance now.


In your case, don't worry too much about it. Keep an eye on things(there are a number of small failure points that can go wrong; 25 year old O-rings can fail at any time), and run it. The chance of a catastrophic failure leaving you stranded is pretty low(unless you run out of fuel and/or run it too low and have the Cone of Failure(tm) in the tank fail <_<)

 

Thanks MacRobb. I bought this truck to replace my "Temporary vehicle" 98 Explorer that just won't die. I can't believe how long I've been without a truck. At least three years. I have many trailers but it is not the same as having a bed available at a moments notice.
With 3.55 gears and 4x4 does any one know what 90% hwy empty MPG should avg?

 

Somewhere between 15-18 MPG would be my guess.