First I had an oil leak at the passenger side oil galley plug. Replaced the plug, oil leak fixed. The I found that I broke the rear VCH plug. Bought a new plug and pigtail and replaced that. Truck ran terrible and really rough after that, CEL came on. Unplugged that from valve cover, started truck and it ran smooth. Narrowed problem to the wiring/ plug. Didn't have time to fix it last night. Worked on it this morning. Checking continuity to see if anything was shorted out, found continuity between the glow plug wires and one of the injector wires. Separated all the wires, problem isolated. Tried to start the truck......engine won't turn over. Checked the batteries, both fully charged. My guess is the injector that was shorted out stuck open filling cylinder with fuel. Any suggestions on how to correct this?

 

If that's the case, pull the #22 fuse, pull the glow plug on the suspect cylinder and have someone tap the ignition key and see if fuel gets pumped out the hole.

 

I'm desperate now. I have turned the motor over several times by hand, both directions. Truck won't even turn over using the key. Checked the batteries, fully charged. Pulled the starter and had it tested, passed 3 X. Still won't turn over. Pulled all 4 glow plugs (1at a time) on the passenger side. Back 2 motor turned about 1/2 a turn and locked up. Front 2 engine wouldn't budge. Tried jumping solenoid, just for giggles, still nothing. Not sure what else to try.
Any advise would be greatly appreciated. As I said, I am desperate.

 

Desperate times call for desperate measures, right? Maybe you should pull ALL the glow plugs out at once and see what happens. Just make sure you pull #22 fuse so the injectors don't fire.

 

Yikes! That's not good.

What happens if you pull all four glow plugs on that side? Put the VC back over the rockers or lay abig heavy rag over it before you hit the key or it will spray fuel EVERYWHERE if it does turn over. If you put the VC on there the fuel will go into the crank case, but there shouldn't be enough in there to dilute 4 gallons of oil.

So you were able to crank it over all the way by hand with all the GP's in it? If that's the case it doesn't sound to me like it was hydrolocked. I'm more wondering if the GP pins were shorted to an injector line what the 110 Volts from the IDM that was intended for the injectors may have done to the rest of the starting and electrical systems. It could have backfed through the GP lead, GPR and into the electrical system I guess. I would tend to think though that having the starter tested would have showed an issue if the starter was messed up.

 

Auto part stores testers aren't any good. Mine tested OK and wouldn't turn my motor over. Try a mity vac and see if you can suck any diesel out of the cylinders thru the GP hole.

 

Here's my thought, if it was electrical that wouldn't stop it from turning over would it? I have tried jumping the solenoid and it still doesn't turn over.

 

If it's a bad starter, it could. The problem with the parts store testers is that they don't put any load on the starter when they test it. The starter is just free spinning and not driving anything. I still think that if you're able to turn it over by hand and you don't feel any really hard spots (it turns with roughly the same resistance all the way through the firing order) the starter has to be the culprit.

 

So, it turned over by hand fine before you started pulling glowplugs, right?

did you happen to notice a lot of oil draining down into the cylinder when you pulled the different glow plugs? if enough gets down there, that could hydrolock the engine. as glen said, try to vacuum out all those cylinders if you can. or you can shoot some compressed air down the GP hole. if it spits back a bunch of fluid at you, you've probably found you problem. wipe it off your face with a rag and you should be able to tell if its oil or diesel :-) probably oil unless you have a badly leaking injector...

as for the starter, it would be a heck of a coincidence, but it could be a bad connection or ground that is preventing your starter from working. when I got my new truck, on the second day I had it the starter moved turned for half a second, then stopped. fearing hydrolock, I got out and put a wrench on the crank (which is a pain in the rear, by the way), but could only crank about 1/4 of the way. I couldn't get much leverage on it, though so was thinking it could just be that I couldn't overcome the engine compression.

after beating on the starter and wiggling lots of connections, I pulled it, bench tested it and it worked fine. put it back in and it fired right up. same thing happened a few more times, before I finally pulled the passenger side battery-to-block connection and found it pretty well cruddy and rusty. cleaned it up real good, put it back together and been fine ever since. I still need to do the other side...

again, probably not your problem, but you never know. I've had crazier, seemingly-unrelated things happen at the same time.

 

Here's the update
Got my truck fixed today. After many incorrect tests, and driving everywhere. Evidently when my truck started on Saturday and was running extremely rough, one of the wires on the starter broke loose. As I said yesterday, I had the starter tested 3 X and it passed every time. The broken wire was an intermittent thing.
I had the starter tested, it passed
Thinking maybe batteries were weak, had them tested. They both failed. Had to drive to the nearest store where I bought them ( 20 miles away) to get them replaced. They tested them and they were good. Came back home, put the original batteries back in.
All 8 glow plugs out, truck still wouldn't turn over with the starter. Pulled the starter again and powered it straight off the battery. One time it worked, then wouldn't. Took it back to the parts store and had it tested again. It passed the first time. Made them move the wire, from the starter solenoid to the drive, and tested it again. This time it failed.
Long story short, series of coincidents, 2 full days of tearing my motor apart, it came down to the starter being bad. I was angry and happy at the same time.
Thanks for everyone's advice and input.

 

Glad you got it going! Its times like that, that will make a grown man cry. Hang in there! LOL

 

Hey! I'm glad to hear you got it going. At least it was nothing internal. That makes the 'ol sphincter pucker doesn't it!?