Lately I have been having problems loosing power. Truck wants to miss mostly going up hill and runs sluggish I'll pull off the road and let it idle for a minute and it will run fine. And it is only occasionally some days it don't happen at all and other days it happens quit often. New fuel filter, oil is good, had it on the scanner and isn't throwing any codes. Around 230k miles newer injectors. Help would be greatly appreciated

 

What's your fuel level? It sounds like a case for the Hutch/Harpoon mods. The fuel pickup in the tank breaks off and/or clogs up causing the problems that you describe. If it happens when fuel is 1/4 tank or less only then it's broken pick up, if it happens all the time it would be clogged intake. For clogged intake a temporary fix would be to pull fuel hose off of the back of the pump under the drivers seat inside the frame and blow some air back into the tank. Not much pressure and remove fuel cap first.

 

If I keep my tank full I don't have a problem. It happens 3/4 and below

 

The first thing I would do would be to blow air back through the line and see if it helps. Then drop the tank and work on it's innards as soon as you can get to it.

 

I'll try blowing air back thru the line. Hopefully it works! Always a pain pulling the gas tank. Thank you for your help!

 

Also check your fuel pump pressure at the filter. Should be greater than 50. Check with fuel tank full. Mine runs a constant 65psi and I monitor it with a fuel gage. But based on what you said it is probably the fuel tank.

 

If it only happens at 3/4 level and below, that suggests that you may have a corrosion crack or pinhole in the pickup tubing inside the tank at that level point, and your pump can suck air when the fuel level gets below that point. The fact that it is erratic makes the situation a little less straight forward to troubleshoot. The "when pulling uphill" scenario also matches a cracked/pinholed tube, though.

It could also be an issue with the plastic pick-up line "foot" being broken up with little pieces periodically coming across the suction tube inlet and partially plugging off the line until the flow velocity drops off enough for the little piece of plastic to fall back away from the tube opening.

If it were my truck, I wold drop the tank to do the Harpoon/Hutch mods. At the same time, I would also have a new piece of fuel tube (not hose, hard tube) available to replace the existing pickup line AND a new pickup "foot" to proactively replace the one that came with the truck. Even if your existing pickup foot is not broken up, it WILL be happening before long (unless someone else took care of that before you ever got the truck). Rubberized plastic does not last forever inside diesel fuel, and having to replace the foot is not an uncommon situation for our model years. Personally, I've had to replace the foot on three different 7.3's which were 2002 or 2003 year models... mileage is not the issue... exposure time is the issue.

 

I blew the lines out worked good for a few days so decided to pull the tank. And I'm pretty sure I found the problems. The filters in the sending unit were terrible

 

Yes, you found your problem.

To each his own...
Eliminate the foot, do not replace it.
The two options I suggest...
1)use a length of 30R10 hose clamped to the feed line or
2)use a short piece of metal brake hose attached to the feed line by a compression fitting
Option #2 must be carefully measured to get it right. Many of us go this route.

 

When eliminating those in-tank screens it is advisable to install a filter between the tank and the pump. There is a widely used Racor, which gets rave reviews and for a temp job you can through some sort of in-line filter in from NAPA. All you need there is a screen to stop big stuff from getting to the pump.

 

For the filter between the tank and the pump, I still use wix 33972, inline filter. Again, to each his own...