Ok... So I'm new to this whole oil burning thing so bear with me if these are stupid questions.

My son's 94 350 TD started blowing smoke when he ran bio diesel through it. I've read and heard that bio diesel does a great job of cleaning a bunch of gunk out of nooks and crannies but then it all gets dumped into the fuel filter. The truck has also sat for 2 months while I got up the nerve (and funds) to start wrenching on it after his transmission problems (more on that on a thread I started https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...ed-advise.html here.

Anyway. My plan is to take the existing (Napa 3217) filter off, fill it with some Dextron III/Mercon put it back on and turn the truck on for 30 seconds, shut it down and let it sit over night. At this point I'll remove the existing filter and pitch it in the trash, fill a new Wix 33217 with Dex/Merc again then run it for another 30 seconds and let it set again.

Does this sound like a good plan? I'm not positive this is the cure all for the white smoke, but I figure this is a good place to start.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

The biggest thing I'd be afraid of is that the bio had water, or leftover glycerine with water in it. This could cause nasty corrosion here and there. Bio is great for for cleaning gunk out of things- to the point that the gunk promptly plugs things up. It also likes to eat hoses and seals if they are not resistant to bio- some are some are not.

I really doubt you can go wrong with the ATF regardless of what type you use. If it's a piece of crud hanging an injector open, it may sort itself out.

 

Uhhhhh, what color? all the time? when you rev it? when it idles?

Uhhhhh, why?

That seems overly complex.

Why don't you just put some diesel in the tank? Is there more Biodiesel in the tank? If yes, then siphon it out. Pour a tank of diesel in. That'll make whatever biodiesel is in there negligible.

Regardless, your son running one tank of BioD is not going to blow the motor or even make it run with some smoke overnight. My suspicion is you have an air problem unrelated to the BioD. Everyone wants to dog on WVO or BioD whenever something goes wrong with their diesel engines. But it's likely just something else.

 

White smoke. On starting and when idling. Does not have any hint of sweet smell (of coolant)... actually it's a pretty caustic smell.

No... there is no Bio Diesel in the tank. The white smoke died down for him quite a bit when he replaced the BioD with regular Diesel, and put some Diesel Kleen in his tank. He drove it from Washington, down here to Central CA, so there has been a half a dozen or so tanks of Diesel run through that tank since the BioD.

But he had transmission issues on the way back to Washington and the truck has sat for 2 months now. I'm just getting to the point of getting the trans issues sorted and it's puffing white smoke when we have it idling. The truck has not been driven yet. (we'll be able to take it for a road test tomorrow after noon)

My thought is... it never had the white smoke until that 1/2 of one tank of BioD. There may be things that are now migrated and hung up in the filter or injectors that were floating around in the system. They may have settled because it's been so long since the truck has been driven.

 

One tank of bad *any* fuel can destroy everything, and air leaks are routinely caused by puffed up non-rated hoses upstream of the lift pump. I'd be pulling that FF sooner rather than later for fear of water regardless of where it came from. There often is water trapped in the FF, but as long as it's not almost full, it's unlikely it made it to anywhere it'd do any real harm.

People "dog" on things like vo because it occasionally causes dramatic end to end destruction. Let me give you a common example: Dual tank systems bleed system vo back to the diesel only tank during cooldown purge. VO builds up in the start tank. Cold vo gets into the rotary IP and polymerizes. If you are LUCKY it seizes and breaks the IP. If you are UNlucky it plugs an injector and the tip blows off in the cylinder which effectively takes out the whole engine. This failure is alarmingly common on VW tdi's

Responsibly used and with proper quality control all sorts of things can be done, but dismissing known "issues" is part of the problem, not the solution to creative (and patriotic I'll note) domestically produced biofuels.

 

I don't want to discount anything here but I think it's best to start where the evidence begins. The truck did not smoke before the BioD so cleaning the fuel system and getting what ever gunk, I can, out of it is my first play.

Of course it could be air in the lines. And white smoke can also show coolant being burned (although there is no sweet smell) but why go to the worst case scenario off the bat... an analogy is... if you here an animal running and it sounds like hooves, why would you automatically assume it's a zebra and not a horse?

Another part of this thought process... The truck has sat for 2 months. The O-rings on the injectors could have dried out. I'm thinking the transmission fluid could help lubricate them.

 

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I am not particularly suspicious of bio being the issue. I just don't consider myself one to "dog" on it. But there are risks, and some are serious. IMO the water issues are the most serious.

I think you can cross off o-rings though. The o-rings are only on the low pressure returns. From the IP to the cylinder it's all metal seals.

A piece of advice I toss out regularly, mostly because it tends to be overlooked, is to crack individual injector lines with the engine running. If the smoke goes away, you found the problem cylinder. Just because the smoke goes away with no fuel does not mean that the fuel system is to blame though. If a cylinder has iffy compression it may not fire at low rpm.

Modern injection fittings are designed to protect you from spray doing this, but caution is merited since the pressure in the lines is more than enough to penetrate skin and you'll have the ER cutting chunks out of you. I always put a rag over fittings as I crack them. Not because of fear of the spray from the fitting, but in case I damage a line and it sprays out. Never had it happen, but it only takes once to ruin your week.

How much white smoke are we talking here? Some is semi-normal for a cold engine, and it will be worse if a few glow plugs are bad.

 

Not with one tank of BioD. where's the eye roll emoticon?

Even in a poorly designed dual tank system, the purge cycle could theoretically put some VO in the Diesel tank. Of course my kits don't do this, but let's for the sake of your argument say it is, the fuel pressure to push some residual VO in the volume of the IP lines is barely cumulatively 4 ounces. Of course that would be a mix, and depending on your purge time, that would reduce asymptotically to approximate a zero percentage of VO to Diesel. Purge that into a Diesel tank of say 20 gallons, and the amount of VO would be negligible even at a quarter tank. Over time it would never add up to anything close to what the haters of VO claim, because eventually you would have to refill the Diesel tank with fresh Diesel, thus wiping the slate clean. And that is assuming the worst case and poorly designed scenario, which no one would even advocate.

This is more scare tactics. My Jetta TDI has 100,000 miles on VO without issues. All my VO friends with late 90's and early 2000's VW TDI's have never encountered this problem, nor have had acquaintances or even heard stories about such problems due to the usage of VO. Sometimes greasers who haven't properly dewatered their oil may encounter pitting of their injectors, which would lead to the injector to drip into the cylinder or ruin the spray, which would allow for the oil to accumulate and cause early wear on the engine, but that would take several months of consistent burning bad oil. And even then, you would see blue smoke due to the engine oil entering the cylinder from the wear on the rings. The general reason why a greaser stops using VO is they lose their restaurant to a money grubbing renderer, not because of an engine failure.



I don't think there is coolant in the oil. I don't think it's the glowplugs. but that's easy enough to check with an ohm meter.
Overall, my theory about the white smoke is one of three things:
1.) It had been occurring before the OP noticed it, and since humans like to find patterns and connections in anything, he is attributing the white smoke to the BioD. Instead, this sounds like a timing issue or injector issue.
2.) Or, the BioD may have deteriorated the rubber fuel hose or seals around the IP at some place, and there is a small crack letting in a little bit of air.
3.) Or, the BioD stirred up some gunk, somewhat clogged a fuel line, and now the engine is starving for fuel.
Since the OP didn't talk about any loss in power, I don't think #2 and #3 are viable.

But yeah, change the fuel filter. Can't hurt. It probably won't stop the white smoke, but at least you'll have peace of mind.

 

I don't think there is coolant in the oil. I don't think it's the glowplugs. but that's easy enough to check with an ohm meter.
Overall, my theory about the white smoke is one of three things:
1.) It had been occurring before the OP noticed it, and since humans like to find patterns and connections in anything, he is attributing the white smoke to the BioD. Instead, this sounds like a timing issue or injector issue.
2.) Or, the BioD may have deteriorated the rubber fuel hose or seals around the IP at some place, and there is a small crack letting in a little bit of air.
3.) Or, the BioD stirred up some gunk, somewhat clogged a fuel line, and now the engine is starving for fuel.
Since the OP didn't talk about any loss in power, I don't think #2 and #3 are viable.

But yeah, change the fuel filter. Can't hurt. It probably won't stop the white smoke, but at least you'll have peace of mind.[/QUOTE]


Now I find this response particularly amusing. You say...

1) There was probably white smoke before the OP noticed it. Either there is white smoke or there isn't. My son says the truck started to smoke (fairly extensively) immediately after he put the fuel in the truck... as in it was fricking smoking on it's way out of the place where he bought the crap.

The particular station he was at only had BioD... Because he was in a tree hugging hippy town in Washington. He made it to the next available station that had real Diesel and filled his tank with it. The White smoke started to die down. He then bought Diesel Kleen the next day, put it in his tank and the white smoke lessened again. But now the truck has sat for two months and has only run for about 10 minutes (due to transmission issues NOT engine issues)

It sounds to me like the poster I quoted has some kind of vested intrest in sticking up for the garbage hippy BioDiesel crap... IMHO.

 

Not really. It probably was smoking a little bit and you didn't notice it. Yeah, maybe a batch of poorly filtered bioD might have accentuated the smoking, but one batch isn't going to blow your motor or fuel system.

Regardless of how stinky the station owner was, buying BioD from a real station is much safer then buying it from a guy from his garage. It'd be hard to believe that a half tank of BioD from a reputable station would cause such immediate and permanent harm.

I'm not an advocate for BioD. In fact I've never used BioD nor will it. It is dangerous, explosive, expensive to make, harmful to fuel lines and seals, causes poly buildup, bad for injectors, bad for the IP, bad for the rings, and bad all around. But those are long-term side-effects from BioD usage. A half tank from a hippie isn't going to blow your motor or injectors.

I bet if you ran a section of clear hose, you'll find bubbles in your diesel. Did the new fuel filter help? Did you try running the your engine from a Diesel can? That won't rule out the IP or Injector issues, but it could narrow the focus if you have a semi-clogged fuel line. Did you notice a significant loss in power? What's your timing?

 

^So much bad information. Sorry for the dumb hi-jack and it's dumb consequences. This thread is about fixing a guy's truck, not about the gives and takes of biofuels and the more colorful ends of the spectrum.

Here's the skinny of it: Worst case scenario is that the bio had residual water, or glycerine which carries water. Corrosion from this is bad news. Bio is worse for this because glycerine will carry water past the water trap (fuel filter) which allows it to get places it otherwise would not. Sitting un-driven with water in the IP/injectors is obviously a corrosion issue.

BUT this is still somewhat unlikely, especially if blended. Glycerine is easy to spot in the FF if it was in there- it will have crystals of what will look and feel just like glycerine soap.

So if you don't see water or glycerine in the fuel filter when you pull it, this issue is pretty unlikely your problem. I suspect it's pretty unlikely without even knowing that detail though.

 

Fuel leaking into engine at the wrong time will make it smoke, a injector can go bad at any time, he said bio, not veg, bio can be made from animal fats, or vegetable type oils, its long washed out by now, I have run b10, b20 and b80, no problems no smoke, and up to 80% atf, and or moter oil, as fuel ,no problems, no smoke, in stock fuel system, a bad or worn, injector is my guess.

 

Care to explain the bad information? I just have 8 years of biofuel research, production, engine modification, recipes, and lots more, spanning 100,000 miles on my Jetta, 25,000 miles on my van, 250,000 miles combined with my business partner. I've seen all the success stories and all the mistakes, and this BioD run is not the problem here.


Exactly.

 

Here's an update.

I did the fuel filter change with trans fluid. Before I changed the fuel filter, the truck would take 4 or 5 tries to get it to fire, I would also have to give it a bit of pedal to get it to turn over. After it started, the truck would idle so badly it would die if I didn't continue giving it some pedal.

After changing the fuel filter with trans fluid. The truck started up first try without pedal. It still had a bit of a choppy idle but I did not have to give it any pedal to keep it running. There was still a bit of white smoke with the choppy idle.

I have now changed out the glow plugs. The truck turns over on first try, no pedal needed. The truck idles smooth and there was only a puff of white smoke. After taking it for a test drive and giving it generous amounts of pedal, to blow some of the cobwebs out, the truck no longer has any white smoke.

 

does anyone know why all purchases of diesel fuel are being recorded by gas stations? The attendant said the state wants to know?