Hi there all you experts:

I'm trying to figure out why my truck won't start for me and I hoped that I could find an answer or two here. It's a 1983 F250 with the 6.9 under the hood. It has about 200,000 miles on it give or take. The only mods made to it is the glow plug rewire to a push button and the removal of the bowl on the bottom of the air cleaner lid. This whole thing started about 4 weeks ago when the truck suddenly began to start nd run for about 2 minutes and then die. Starting it again after that was hard, but it would always start, eventually. Hot or cold, same thing. Finally, yesterday it started as usual, died, and will no longer start no matter what. I have checked out the glow plugs and they work according to the test light. The glow plugs are the Motorcraft/Beru units and have worked perfectly since I installed them 6 months ago. I for fuel at the Schrader valve by the fuel pump. Got no fuel spurting out. Tried checking there with the engine cranking over on the starter. Still no fuel. I'm thinking I need a new lift pump. Any ideas here? Oh yeah....where exactly is the lift pump on this thing and why are there 2 fuel pumps on it in the first place??

Thanks in advance for all your good advice. I have learned a lot from this forum and look forward to learning more.

Tortoise

 

sounds like a bad lift pump the pump is on the passenger side right behind the vaccum pump, its hangs on the side of the frount cover. but i am beiing on you are getting air into the system, do you have the stock water seperator still installed on the it is well known to leak and let air into the system causing the truck to run for a few then dieing,

 

Have you inspected the fuel lines along the frame back to the tanks?
How much fuel is in the tank?

 

I had about the same problem, with it dying and being hard to start. I have a 1988 F-250 XLT Lariet 7.3. I found the problem I think. I played around pushing on the wires on the fuel trasfer switch (the one within the frame under and behind the driverside cab. This fixed the problem for a bit and fiddling with the wires has helped with the same problem. Now due to small batt. and dead plugs/controller, I cannot test to see if i fixed the problem. Could your problem be the switch, could mine?

 

Could it be the cam positon sensor. I had to replace mine on 2002 F-250 7.3 D

 

watgad.........we have no cam sensor.............our trucks are basic, basic no fancy stuff.

 

Just trying to help!

 

yea, us poor folk with the old antique engines ain't got non of them fancy cam positionin sensor thingys.

 

We don't have headaches from them either.

Tortoise,
Several other things are possible.
A hole in a fuel line is letting air in instead of sucking fuel out of the tanks.
There are several metal lines against the frame that may have holes in them.

The fuel tank pickup tube has a crack in it. Common problem, it usually shows up somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 tank showing on the gauge, but the engine runs out of fuel.

Fuel return check valve on the filter is draining the fuel back to the tank. Truck fires and runs the fuel out of the pump, then dies. If the entire line is drained, it has a lot of air to pump out before it runs again.

Air intrusion into the return line somewhere, either the Tee's or another connection is letting air into the system.

The last to things will be worse when the truck is parked with the front end up hill. Parked with the front downhill and it may not be a problem at all.
Reason is there is more suction on the lines when the fuel tank is much lower than the rest of the fuel system.

The lift pump may be bad, but I have run them for several hundred thousand miles with out a problem. Not bad for the quality of parts these days.

 

Yeah thats right, we don't have cam position sensors, or anykind of sensor. Or a computer, or any other fancy crap. And we have less headaches. I had a problem with my glowplugs one time in my 84 and someone told me to plug it into a diagnostics computer. I asked him what in the world is that? I knew what it was but was playing with him. And when something happens to my truck, I know what its not, and its not electronic problems.