Sounds like your UVCH came unclipped from the glow plug tips. How did the GPs ohm out once removed?

 

Only two of the eight little plugs were unclipped. I actually can't get the harness to click on the glow plugs on those particular 2. Cheap dorman gasket. Probably going to have to squeeze the ends of the terminals with pliers to get them to click on to the glow plugs properly.

I played hell cleaning that oil cooler. With my issues in my wrists and hands, I couldn't scrub but for a short while at most before I was almost in tears from the pain and had to take a break. I unsure if it's arthritis or carpal tunnel or whatever else I could be but lately, after working for a little while at a time it gets so bad I can't pick up a wrench. That oil cooler was filthy too!

Unfortunately, I did not get to get any of the glow plugs out today. I managed to get the oil cooler out, and painted, CAC pipes off and repainted, valve covers off and painted, hpop reservoir off and painted, and I redid All of my battery terminals with the nice new ones I had ordered. I cut all of my wires back to fresh and crimped on nice lugs with heat shrink. I'm going to try to get an early start tomorrow and change the glow plugs out. The glow plugs may be perfectly fine. But I might as well change them now that I have new ones. Like Sous said, there seems to be an issue with the GPR or the wires on the GPR. I'm dissatisfied on the life I got out of my trombetta if that is the problem. I will try to get a warranty out of it. If it is bad it was probably caused by my injector feedback issue I had.

I'm going to keep the old glow plugs for experimenting with making a 12 volt soldering iron.... A super soldering iron. I have a few ideas that I can use a couple of good glow plugs for.

I don't regret buying glow plugs, it gave me a good excuse to take my valve covers off and paint them. And now that I have my valve covers off I've also realized the fault in the doorman uvch connectors for the glow plugs.

The reason I repainted my CAC pipes again is because the engine clear coat that I used over top of them did not hold up well. It has faded and started peeling in a couple of places. So I resanded, cleaned and repainted the CAC pipes.

I was quite happy with the oil cooler removal. I was a bit worried it was going to make a huge mess and be a difficult job. I just reread ssj's forum on how to do the oil cooler, and I managed to not spill much of anything. I might have to add a half a quart to a quart of coolant back but that is all. I drained all the oil, all the coolant, took the block drain out for the coolant next to the oil cooler, took the radiator hose and neck off the front of the motor so I could get access to the oil cooler, took out the five bolts and pulled it right outnthe back. After everything drained it probably only took me a half hour of Labor getting oil cooler out. And the only spillage I had was when I took the block drain out and my motor was still a little warm, and coolant shot out of the block drain past my bucket for a second. That was it though. Couple of little drips here and there, but overall pretty clean. I was worried for nothing. I also zipped the valve cover off speedy quick now that Ive done it a few times. Quite happy with that as well. I will switch the aih in to the GPR spot tomorrow as well. I will also thoroughly check the ring terminals that are crimped onto the OEM harness for the Glow plugs.

These are the wet paint pictures. After they got dried a bit, it looked so much better but it was so cold I packed up and came inside. And don't worry, I'm not leaving my painted parts out in the cold. I painted them in the back of my enclosed trailer, and I left a heater in there with the door shut. Nice and toasty in there! Anywho here are the pictures that I have. I don't have pictures of everything I painted yet just some of it.




I do realize I did not mask off the area of the oil filter screws on too. I'm going to clean it with acetone. How's having a hard time getting the tape to stick due to the oil. Even after wiping it off with acetone the tape was struggling to adhere. I figured I would just stay away from it but, it did get painted a little bit. Nothing acetone and or paint thinner can't take care of.

All in all, I think it was a pretty successful day. Excited to find out about the gpr.
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Speaking of the gpr, when y'all use the aih relay for the GP's, we all just put the GP relay back in the place of the aih to hold the wires? I would assume that would be the best way to do it. Thanks for everyone's help!

 

Busy guy. Glad to hear the oil cooler is going well. I'm going to be tackling that one in the driveway starting either Monday or Tuesday when this godawful weather shapes up a pinch. (Those darn Canadians can have their jet stream back lol). Did you get the Motorcraft gaskets and rings for it? I'm going to polish the ends caps with SOS pads since I prefer polishing to painting but the body of the cooler itself being steel I'll paint it.

Those battery terminals were looking bad. That might have been part of your problem with the low voltage. 12.1 is way lower than it should be after only sitting for 1-2 days. Might be a sign the batteries are getting a little weak. I know mine are getting that way but they'll be 6 years old in March which is precisely what Interstate advertises on the battery.

 

I bought one of those several years ago from CNC Fab and they sent me the 684-1221-012 as ESwift highlighted. Never installed it though...after 5+ years the Stancor is still working.

Sounds like he might have/had multiple concerns. GP harnesses not fitting right, bad + terminals, possible bad/incorrect GPR, possible batteries getting weak. Starter sounded fine in the video.

 

I had forgotten about this happening... If the GPR has failed, I would say there is a high chance this is the reason.

It looks like you are well on your way through repairing, painting and replacing the faulty parts. Good luck to you and keep us updated.

 

make sure and check the wires on the uvch where they go in to the main junction at the valve cover. i recently experiances a dorman uvch that that the plastic fingures retaining the pins in that connector were bad and would start to release the wires. i don't use dorman uvch for this reason but was making a switch box our of a set i had purchased off ebay by accident. glad i didn't use them on the truck or i would've been chasing run/start issues for some time!

 

I did end up using motocraft seals. I'll take some fresh pictures this morning of all the paint. I'll also take some pictures of my new battery terminals. Oil cooler is definitely not the most difficult job I've ever done on this truck. I was worried about it being difficult but it actually turned out to be quite easy. And, it's easy to not make a mess as long as you have a bucket with you! Well, with these big beasts you need a couple buckets!

 

 

I agree 100% that the Trombetta 012 series relay would be better suited for the application of GPR in the 7.3L, but I also believe that the Trombetta 212 series relay with the 25% duty cycle is also well suited for the application of GPR in the 7.3L. I did quite a bit of reading about relays and duty cycle late last night prior to falling asleep. Most of the documentation I could find was in relation to welding equipment and high amperage relays. Their duty cycle varied quite a bit from 20% - 60% in most cases though and were on a 10 minute timeline.

I don't know exactly how this timeframe figures into the 25% duty cycle of the 212 relay, but I am confident that the relay performs adequately during the GP's being fired for a maximum of two minutes during a cold start.

In addition, we have been told on more than a couple of occasions by at least one well respected FTE'r and mechanic that anything over ~15 seconds on the GP's is for emissions control only. Apparently the 7.3L should fire up with a GP fire time of ~15 seconds, but will produce more smoke out of the tailpipe if the GP's are not fired for the remainder of the time. This is why I only fire the GP's for 10 - 15 seconds via my GPR momentary switch in the cab. Also, I live in northeast GA, so our cold days are lows teens or single digits once and a while and normal winter temperatures are 20° - 40°.

I installed the manual GPR switch due to the PCM having a conflict of interest with the 160A alternator and GP's during some cold starts. It was not good in my opinion and I did not want to allow that to happen any longer.

Agree with this 100% too. He also had some very adverse running conditions through the GPR, which is now suspected faulty. I had forgotten this had happened and would have mentioned this much earlier if I had remembered.

 

Terminals look much, much better!

 

Now we're figuring something out! I still may have a problem with the GPR but, I only had one good glow plug on the driver side and it was one of the ones that wasn't plugged in. The tips seem to be a little bulged, I guess you would call it, and only one of the four ohmed out good. I don't know if I would call it bulged but, here is a picture of one of the bad glow plugs.

I'm about to start taking the passenger side plugs out. I haven't really thought through how I'm going to get all the oil out of the cylinders from taking the GP's out. I want to turn it over by hand but there's no oil in the motor right now and I don't like the way that sounds. With no oil cooler, no oil reservoir for the h pop, and no oil in it I don't really want to turn the motor over at all even by hand. But each GP is coming out covered in oil so I'm assuming the little pockets where the glow plugs screw in was full of oil so when I took it out I'm sure it dumped into the cylinder. Maybe there's not enough in there to hydrolock? Or maybe I'll just have to wait till I get the oil cooler and h pop reservoir on and put some oil in it before I turn it over.

 

Should get enough in there to cause issue.
I like to use low psi on air nozzle to blow oil away from plug before removal

 

Passenger glow plugs are out. All four of them tested bad. Out of all a glow plugs I had only one good one. I better make my 12-volt soldering iron work with just one LOL. No room for error.

So, before I even go messing with the relays, now that I know I only have one good glow plug I want to put the new glow plugs in and try it with the trombetta relay for a couple mornings and see how things go. If I still have trouble starting I will switch to the aih relay. Although at this point I'm pretty confident the glow plugs should fix my issue.

 

Did you mean shouldn't get enough in there to cause a problem?

​​​​​​​I thought about using a blow nozzle after I removed the gp's. Figures it was actually a good idea.

 

Why not clear it, like some do after injectors? Put the rest of the truck together, return the fuids to the engine, and key the truck over for a few seconds, (i recommend a sheet, or cardboard over the engine, to catch the ejected oil) with the uvch off. Then install plugs, harness, and vc's, and carry on with life.