Just curious, my truck puts out white smoke and I always thought fuel was black and oil white.......


How much does timing affect this ? it smokes hard in the morning but then clears up but always smokes white a little.


Thanks....

 

If you have white smoke that is coolant oil is blue smoke fuel black. Do you have an after market turbo? my thought is a head gasket getting ready to let go

 

Atomized unburned fuel is white/grey. This happens with severely low compression on one cylinder.

 

White smoke can be coolant, if it smells sweet. Coolant leaking could be from a bad head gasket.

White smoke that is more acrid and burns your eyes can be unburnt diesel. The difference of unburnt being diesel thats injected into the cylinder, but the cylinder doesn't fire. This can be caused by poor compression in one cylinder, bad timing (late, way after TDC and compression has dropped in that cylinder), possibly a bad injector.

Black smoke is incompletely burnt diesel, like a gas engine burning rich... it fires, but not efficiently burnt. This can be timing related as well, or caused by a clogged/restricted air filter, injector pump turned up too high, too much pedal (like if turbo is not spooled up), leaking injector.

A little smoke on cold starts, especially on cool days, is, normal. That can be water vapor, much like a gas engine would smoke a little on a cold day right after start up. That would indicate nothing is wrong.

 

Unless you've got a dead miss, you are probably about 6 degrees retarded. Loosen your lines(I usually have to remove the upper 6 lines to loosen the bottom two), and kick the IP all the way towards the passenger side as far as it can go. Reconnect the lines and start it up. See how that changes things.
You probably won't want to keep it that way long term(if you can't get the IP fixed, you'd have to skip the IP gear a tooth ahead), but it's a great troubleshooting tool.

Worst case, the engine will be really clattery and not have a lot of power(in which case you need to look elsewhere)... but I suspect it'll make it better.

 

Thanks, if you have coolant going into the engine this will wreck the cylinders correct ? If a cylinder is weak and not firing correctly how long can she go ? I have a motor on standby but want to save it for a better chasses..... This chasses is pretty good but not great..... It is worth changing the engine I believe...


Can a weak IP cause smoke and a miss ?

 

If you are getting coolant in the cylinder, you are also going to get air/exhaust into the coolant. Open the radiator cap at idle and watch it for a constant stream of bubbles.

 

It bubbled about every 10 seconds real lightly as in just a few then when it warmed up it stopped,


It definitely has a slight skip even when warm but runs OK. Also blow by seems to be normal as in nothing at the oil stick... All injectors are brand new OEM...

 

You'd *know* it if it was leaking enough to create steam, because there's far more pressure on the head gasket going /out/ of the cylinder than back /into/ it.

Not sure I trust them. You can always get a bad one.
I /love/ having a pressure tester handy. If I have a limp, I can figure out which one it is by testing each glow plug for resistance, and picking out the high/low values. I can then pull those injectors and test them, see if they are an issue or not. Also, swapping the high/low injectors will either move the high/low results, or not. If not, it's not an injector problem. If it moves, well, it's injector related(and not pump, timing, compression etc)

 

should I HAVE bought RnD's injectors ? Thanks. I really thought when I replaced the injectors it would solve a lot of my issues. It solved the leaks which is a lot..

 

I trust R&D to make good on any injectors he sells; you might give him a call and see if he can test your injectors, let you know, and replace if they are bad?

That being said, first... Can you try to do a glow plug resistance test with a multimeter with the engine running at hot idle?
Record the resistance of each cylinder's glow plug terminal to ground(remove the wire first).