Black Smoke...Causes? What to Do?

My 7.3 runs fine, but seems to spew out a lot of black smoke on acceleration, when I'm starting from a stop, and when I'm pulling up a hill.

What causes the smoke? How can I diagnose the cause? What probably needs to be fixed?

 

Overfueling would be my guess. Typically black smoke is partially combusted fuel and since it happens when your pressing the throttle rather from a dead stop or going up a hill, that's what would lead me to suspect overfueling. I'm sure that there could be other causes, but that would be my first guess not knowing any thing other then black smoke on some type of acceleration.

 

turbo going south not giving the motor enough air in times of need

 

Well that would contribute to overfueling, because it's sending more fuel then the amount of air that's available. Could be air filter needing replacement, anything that would affect either the air or the fuel part of the equation could account for the overfueling symptoms that the OP is seeing.

 

what elevtion are you running in? mine smokes when over 9000 . kurt

 

could be one of a few things
leaky boots on cold air tubes or under intake spyder four on tubes,two on intake
dirty air cleaner
exhast leaks at manifold or up pipes

 

In an otherwise 'ok" engine it's usually overfueling caused by the pump being turned up too high.

If it's a turbocharged engine and it didn't used to smoke on hard acceleration you either have failed turbo or a discharge hose off or a hole in the discharge hose.

If it's NOT turbocharged. Well the first one applies usually or the engine is just flat worn out. (low compression) This is usually accompainied by somewhat hard starting.


Cheers,


Rick

 

Check the turbo shaft for play, and see if you have any codes stored on the computer

 

That would emit a very high pitch whine at all idle upon startup and it also would not store a code(the reason why I have an 03 turbo in my 06).

 

a turbo with enough wear to not work correctly won't make any noise especially the whistle when spooling up

 

There have been people hear with turbo's that have a lot of play, but don't make your typical-about-to-die-ball-bearing-squeal

 

mine only made a little chirping when it died and that was 60k miles after it had enough wear to not hardly boost at low rpms

 

If that was true according to what you have said, mine wouldn't have made a noise either, because my turbo was shot and it made that noise and it had enough play that I could have played paddle ball with it(if y'all can remember the days with a paddle w/ball and string stapled to it(that is how much play it had)).

 

that is exactly true;never made a sound till fins started touching housing

 

man you guys are going to scare this dude to death, I say start by cleaning and checking all your IC boots and tighting them down. black smoke at accel and under load screams boost leak to me. when my turbo gave up the ghost the engine generaly ran like sh!@, he said other than the smoke she running fine.just my .02 worth