sounds like you're making progress getting the owner to see the light, even if a second opinion was required. now if you can just get him to understand that the injectors should be replaced with the IP, you could get him into a good-running truck again

 

ya its about time, hes pissed cuz he got it through napa and it cost him a little over 600 plus a 250 core... takes money to make money though. also I may have found the cause for it, i couldnt get to it before, the supply line between the filter and the ip was leaking, to me that explains why the fuel filter stayed full but why it cranked so long trying to purge the air from the system as the ip was trying to pull more fuel than the lift pump could supply through a leaking line

 

just don't tell him that. as far as he can hear, it needs the IP and the injectors to run right. and the damaged fuel line is just a little side thing

 

hahaha i hear ya this isnt my first but i did **** up somehow the timing gear moved, runs good except its got to be a tooth off u can hear and feel it, and when you open the throttle you can see the smoke from the unburned fuel in the exhaust... so, any pointers on how to get this timed correctly and quickly?



let me say that again, it runs and doesnt shutdown, thats what i was trying to say by runs good, glow plugs were already toast so not worried about the advance based on that. i dont know how it slipped my marks were dead on, im wondering if its a timing gear issue or an ip issue

 

well, the only times i've pulled the gear housing off is at the junkyard, as i've taken 2 pumps from there. but i hear that its fairly common to screw up and be off a tooth trying to get the gear back on there. that said, i have no tricks from experience, but hopefully someone here does.
sounds like you're making progress anyway

 

ya kinda sux i couldnt get to the bolts before and for whatever reason didnt even think to look for bolts for the idle control for the ac compensation

 

well i inspected it a bit further pulled the inspection cover and checked all the timing marks, everything was dead on how they were supposed to be, found a couple of bad injectors, i could only get him to spring the money for 3 of them, hope he decides he should go ahead and get the rest, the thing runs strong but feels and sounds a little on the rough side, but unless he wants to put the money out i cant do much else for him

 

so after all of this, new ip all 8 injectors the upper radiator hose popped and the thing overheated. Now im back to square 1 the problem before the ip was replaced has returned exactly as it was, I can crank it 2 or 3 times for 20 seconds or so each time and get the thing to start, it runs rough for maybe 30 seconds no matter what the rpm is and then it shuts down as if the key shuts it down. the original problem I thought was a faulty fss switch which was replaced with a donor fss off of a junkyard van. this didnt fix the problem. I replaced the ip and the van drove around for a week, overheated, and now the problem is back. Is it possible that the fss overheated and is now faulty?

 

i've never heard of that happening, and i've been driving one for a couple years, and active on this forum for the same amount of time.

i think the best thing to do at this time is to figure out why the engine overheated, and maybe take the IP back to the rebuilder and tell him exactly what you told us, minus the overheating part. hopefully he'll be able to take care of you.
on second thought, bringing him to the vehicle would be even better, as he can hear how it shuts off, and that may trigger something in his memory of some previous IP he dealt with, that the rest of us would have no clue about.
also, recheck the wiring. have a test light between the FSS connector and the nearest convenient ground, preferably on the IP itself, to prove that your problem isn't electrical

 

I just dealt with a similar issue last week - my 1984, 6.9 IDI F250 truck would just die for no apparent reason, though my shutdown problem was much more intermittent (as opposed to 30 seconds after start up). After the truck cooled down a bit, it would start back up ok and I'd be on my way until it died again. It seemed that the problem was becoming more frequent as time went by, though I seldom drove it so even harder to pin down.

While troubleshooting, I took the top off the injector pump (3 small bolts) and messed around with the FSS solenoid switch, even hooking up a separate battery to test it. Though the function/action seemed to hesitate a bit at first, the solenoid opened and closed reasonably well enough so I put everything back together.

But then, once again the truck would just die unexpectedly, even while idling at a dead stop. So I took a harder look at the electrical connection on the top of the IP and determined that it was loose enough to move the spade clip back and forth by hand.

So I tightened the small bolt on top of the IP with a socket (the one that holds down the spade connector) and that FINALLY fixed the problem.

My unreliability issue, the one that stranded me on multiple occasions by causing my truck to die at the most inconvenient times and places, was ultimately being caused by a high resistance electrical open. Those can be the hardest cases of trouble to find and solve because they cause intermittent troubles. Even though my ohm meter showed a solid connection between the ground of the battery and the spade tip of the FSS connector (with the connection wire removed and the ignition switch turned off/no key), it still wasn't good enough to keep that intermittent problem from happening. Only by tightening the connection that secures the spade tip to the electomagnetic switch inside the IP solved my problem.

I have also heard that the guys who rebuild the injector pumps sometimes have to solder the connection to better secure the electrical spade clip to the solenoid (if I understood correctly) so they could achieve a good connection.

Best of luck with the overheating issue and hope this info helps you, or maybe somebody else, who has also struggled to resolve this vexing electrical/fuel problem.

 

One more thing. You mentioned that it shuts down after about 30 seconds.

The Dieselmann site suggests the cause for that symptom at Ford diesel 6.9 7.3 IDI

"The next common area for air leaks on both the 6.9 and 7.3 engines is at the injector return cap o-rings and hoses. This will cause the engine to stall after about 30 seconds of running if the air is able to travel into the fuel filter. On 6.9 engines the return line from the filter should be long enough to loop about four inches above the filter."

Good Luck~

 

i believe thats an error on their site. air intrusion from anywhere in the return lines will cause the engine to stall after about 3 seconds

 

ya ive been over all of that i replaced the fuel return caps and inspected the entire fuel system for leaks or air intrusion, there is a small leak at the fuel heater, and this is going to not come out right, but the leak isnt sufficient enough to cause this problem, it was running fine the day before it overheated just needed some fine tuning, running a little rich. I will have to look into the fss terminal idea, that sounds like it could go somewhere, but as for right now im still wondering if the overheating issue is what caused this, its just too big of a coincidence, when this problem first started, the owner had me pull the radiator out because the seal from the core to the top tank was bad, i have to suspect that it overheated since upon removal i only drained about 3 gallons out. the overheating issue now was simple the upper radiator hose blew, it overheated and spewed all over the new ip. I replaced the hose and coolant it ran for about ten minutes before i told the driver to get it back to the yard which was about 7 miles away it made it half way then shut down, now runs for all of about 30 seconds and shuts down, it runs poorly, until right before it shuts down it will smooth out and then just die like you turn the key off. or power to the fss is lost, if the power to the solenoid is lost it has to be internal as suggested because i can run it with a test light wedged in the connector and i never lose power on the wire. it took 3 hours to get it the rest of the way to their yard. if it stumbled before it shutdown i would be more heavily concerned with fuel return and delivery. either way it doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me. I crack the injectors to check for fuel and fuel pressure, and its normal, high pressure fuel spitting out of the lines, even when it doesnt start and run. ip is new all injectors return lines and caps are new and no leaks there. once again as in the case of the original problem the engine speed doesnt matter, it can be at idle or it can be wide open and it will just shutdown... hes gonna have a ford guy with alot of experience with the idi's take a look at it on friday, but i have a hard time letting a machine kick my *** like this one has, so im gonna keep tryin and keep diggin, any and all help is appreciated, any new ideas are welcomed and once the thing is fixed ill be sure to post it in here

 

ok so the guy that was supposed to look at it today didnt show up, so the owner and myself for ****s and giggles turned it over and fired it up, it ran for about ten minutes, got up to operating temperature and shutdown... again, could the ip have malfunctioned during overheating? or never remanufactured correctly to begin with??

 

This sounds a little like a pump problem I had on a diesel tractor a short time ago. It had a piece in the pump that was called an elasticast ring that came apart with age and plugged a steel return line. Engine would run and die, finally loosed the return line and let it leak and it would run for hours. Symtoms of running were that the length of time it ran decrease as it built pressure!

I dont know how different, or similar the systems are between the two, but wondered if it is possible!