So today on my way to work, the Bronco stumbled then died. It lost a bit of power before dieing as well which kinda reminded me of my IDM failing before.

I first checked the hpop reservoir and it did seem a little low, but it still had oil. I did manage to get the truck running a few times however, but it idled super awful and surged before dieing.

I wasn't able to take the fuel bowl lid off because it was on too tight and I didn't have a big enough wrench/socket on me at the time.


The past month or so, I've noticed a puddle under my truck every morning that seems to be too thin to be oil so I believe it's fuel. My fuel pressure gauge I have doesn't work so I can't check the pressure unfortunately.


Does this seem to be like my fuel pump has failed? My injectors have been recently rebuilt, my IDM has been replaced as well as my HPOP, and my CPS has been replaced with a Ford one recently as well.

I want to make sure my fuel pump is bad before putting an electric fuel pump kit on my credit card!


Edit: Also, if it is the pump, should I be worried about other systems getting damaged if it failed?

 

need to get a tire pressure gauge and measure it


mirror under fuel pump while running and might be able to see drips


low pressure usually makes injectors knock louder and low power at higher RPM

 

The injectors did seem to be knocking semi loudly. If I can't get the truck running/idling can I still test the pressure during cranking? I'm not sure if tje truck will run anymore or not.

 

20 PSI when cranking

 

FIRST, you need to KNOW (not just "believe") what's leaking. If it's indeed fuel, then you need to determine where it's leaking from. The pump may be fine, which would indeed make e-fuel an expensive non-repair. But a leak from, say, the banjo connection to either head could easily make it run poorly. IOW, find and fix the leak before throwing parts at it.

 

I won't be able to test the psi for some time. I bought some gauges (glowshift) and the fuel PSI gauge never registered any pressure so I assume the sensor/gauge/ or my wiring was bad.

However, I don't have the schrader valve for the fuel bowl now since it was taken off to fit the gauge sensor. Also, I can't get the tire pressure gauges to fit in there if I did have it on.



I did manage to read some codes after getting home from work. They are:

p0344
p0340
p0236


It appears some of these are related to the CPS. However, I did replaced the CPS recently with a new FORD one. My old one also wan't bad (it was my IDM before) which I did keep. Could it be possible these codes come up because my fuel pressure is low?

I'll try to do some more digging around as well. I do want to order E-fuel because it's been something on my list, but it's currently not something I can easily afford. My truck sprayed oil all over the valley because I left my HPOP plug out on accident while I tried starting my truck after it died on the way to work. It's going to be very difficult to determine what is leaking now that everything is wet.



As a side question, the oil on my dipstick tube seems remarkably clean. It seems too clean really. Is it possible that fuel is mixing with the oil? If so, what would be causing that?


Edit: I decided to check the oil and it seems way low. I drained the oil into a 5 gallon container and it is maybe 1/2 full. I don't believe I was leaking this much oil, so maybe it's being consumed? My fuel filter isn't black. I did re hook up the crankcase hose, but I attached it directly to the air filter. Maybe that's sucking in too much oil? While there is smoke that comes out of the oil fill cap, there wasn't any pressure that pushed the cap off.

 

Well I had maybe 5 quarts of oil in the oil pan.... I probably had 1 to 2 quarts blow out when i had the hpop reservoir plug off though, but I'm still extremely low on oil. However, upon filling back up with oil, my truck started again. I believe air is in the HPOP lines a little because of the stumbling and erratic idle it had (also hard and long starts), but it seemed to clear up a bit after letting it idle for a while.

I know the truck has been leaking (and I still suspect it to mostly be fuel based on the color and consistency), but I don't believe it is leaking THAT much. The puddles have been pretty much the consistency of diesel fuel and are somewhat clear for the most part with only small parts of oil in the center. I think fuel is leaking down the back and pulling in residual oil from valley mostly. My fuel mileage has been down a couple mpgs recently as well (about 16 to 17 from the 18 to 19 when I first installed the motor), making me think the visible leaking is mostly fuel, not oil.

I've changed the oil twice so far (once a little after I got it and once about 5k miles into it) on this motor and have no had noticeably low oil for each change. I've gone about 2k miles maybe since my last change.



The only thing different I have done since the last oil change that could account for this is that I routed the crankcase breather hose back into the air filter. Before, the PO had it routed to the atmosphere.

Is there some reason why the crankcase setup may be sucking in too much oil and burning it off? Otherwise, what else could be causing me to loose this much oil assuming it's not leaking it all out?

 

Injector O rings make oil dissapear quick, turbo seals but you would of seen a trail of white haze at idle and running.

 

Thanks for the reply! I haven't seen any white haze at idle and running, but I do notice some if I hit the pedal pretty hard and I'm on one of the tunes. On the stock tune, I don't notice any smoke/haze.

The Bronco has been a little grumpy starting sometimes in these cold morning, but it seems to happen randomly. Sometimes it starts much better, even if it's colder out. I think my glow plug relay has something to do with this because the glowplugs are new Motorcraft ones and the relay is a new O'rielly brand one.

I somewhat recently upgraded my injectors to stage 1s from Rosewood with all new o-rings. I suppose I could have messed up with the install, but I believe I was pretty careful. Would there be other signs for bad injector o-rings besides high oil consumption? I would hope I didn't damage any O-rings upon install but know it's a possibility. My fuel filter seems quite clean, I don't notice any black to it.

 

I'm gonna tell you what I did when I took the IDM out. When I reinstalled it I tightened it to much and pulled the little brass nut out of the box about a 1/4" or so maybe a little more.
I think this caused a little connection problem. I took a c-clamp and a 1/4" socket and pressed it back in and I have not had a problem since.

 

Well turns out I never had my fuel PSI wiring plugged well enough into the gauge !

It also happens to be reading around 35 to 40 at idle. The gauge seemed to surge a bit upon cranking and I'm having very long cranking times now (I just filled the oil last night so the oil should be full, buy maybe the HPOP got some air in it?)


I believe I read the PSI at idle should be around 50 to 75 right? If my fuel pressure is low, could there be anything else that would cause that besides the pump, or is this a pretty good indication that the pump has went south?

Either way, I suppose the electric fuel system is looking more necessary now. I was thinking maybe I was just low on oil from the crankcase tube I routed into the 6637 intake sucking up way too much oil!

 

Check the HPO reservoir level right after shutting down, and then after the truck has been parked a while. If it drops over time, it's draining back into the pan, which would explain the long crank time.

Does the fuel pressure gauge surge intermittently / irregularly while cranking? Or is it just pulsing? Regular pulsing is expected, since it's a cam-driven pump.

 

The gauge is irregular while cranking. I'll test it a few more times to get a feel of what it's doing but it would kinda jump to 20, then go all the way down to zero for a bit, then want to jump up again. It was more towards 0 psi when cranking than at 20. I'll check the oil level again to make sure it isn't draining and report back!

When the truck actually starts, the PSI reads around 30ish to 40ish pulsing. It's pretty regular pulsing which is what I think is normal for the mechanical pump, but I think those numbers are low aren't they?


Edit: While cranking again, the psi was actually pretty consistently around 25 to 30. It then stays at about 38 to 39 at idle, but it still took way to long to start.

The HPOP reservoir was full before I tried cranking and it took about 5 or 6 full seconds to turn over. Maybe the ICP is going bad? I'm going to let it idle and warm up to full operating temperature then check the HPOP again and see how well it restarts. I did notice some semi decent oil spots (for sure oil this time) on the ground, but I think this may be residual oil from the HPOP reservoir spurting it all over when I left the plug off.

 

A couple quick thoughts on this one:

Number one, if the oil seems too thin, you could be losing fuel into the crankcase. The fuel pump can leak out the bottom where the tappet runs off the cam and leak fuel into the engine. That will thin the oil, but it would also cause the oil level to RISE not fall. If you have the truck running now, run it a little and then check the oil level. If it is rising at all, I would be looking at e-fuel.

Number next, the hard starts could be due to air in the HPO system from the low oil shutdown that you had. The HPO system more or less ran out of oil, which is why the engine quit. That introduces a lot of air into the system, so unless you've driven it much since then (which I doubt since you just started this thread 2 days ago) the hard starts are likely from that.

Number last, if you don't think the fuel pump is bad, do the "BB Mod" and bump the fuel pressure up to 70 PSI at idle and see if that makes any difference. The pulsing on the gauge is normal with the stock, mechanical (piston) pump. I've actually seen the gauge pulsate so much with the stock pump, you could hear the needle rattle (true story).

So, action plan: run it and see if the oil level rises at all. Find the source of the leak you're seeing (might need a mirror and a flashlight to see the weep hole at the bottom of the pump), and then drive the thing to get the air out of the HPO system.

 

My electric fuel pressure gauge often reads in the 40s when first starting. After it's run a while it gets into the 50s and stays there.

I attribute these variations to the interplay of the electric sender, the connecting wires, the gauge head and the small variations in system voltage.

I'd rather have a mechanical fuel pressure gauge, but there're complications and problems involving those too.