I need some help on changing the glow plugs on this van. I never had to change anything on this van and the dealer tells me that I need to change the glow plugs and valve cover gaskets on this truck. This truck runs beautifully and I never had to anything on it except change the oil and filter and the cam position sensor, which I was told needed to be changed every 35,000 mile. Can someone email me a manual on how to change the glow plugs on this truck or do I really need to change them? The truck takes three to five cranks to start up with clouds of white smoke bit then after 5 minutes of idle the smoke is clear and she is ready to go. Need input fellas thanks.

 

Thread moved to 1994.5-1997 7.3L Power Stroke Diesel engine forum. You should get some help here. And welcome to FTE!

-Matt

 

The valve covers are a royal pain to get off on the van, as I found out since I have the same truck. On the right side two of the bolts can only be reached through the wheel well opening. I haven't done the left side, but it is probably worse because according to the manual you need to remove the AC compressor 1st, which means evacuating the system and recharging afterwards. That engine is literally shoehorned in there, and everything is in close proximity to the firewall, etc.

I have the manual, but no way to email it to you. It's the diesel supplement manuel for the Econoline vans. For this job, mostly you don't need it, except to tell you things that you don't want to know like you are supposed to remove the AC compressor. I would try it without and see if it is possible to just move it out of the way enough to remove the left side cover by leaving it connected.

Others can tell you things to watch out for when removing GPs, such as being careful about having the tip break off, which may require you to pull the head to get the parts out. You can also test them with an ohm meter to see which ones are bad, and maybe you don't have to pull both valve covers, though it would be best to replace them all at the same time. Still, the ones that are still working might last a long time yet, if you install a manual override switch as described below.

How many miles on yours? Mine had the GPs replaced shortly before I bought it by the PO at about 100k, which I was thankful for. After reading up on things on this forum I decided I needed a way to manually control when the GPs are used, so I installed a dash mounted toggle switch so that they aren't cycled on on every single start cycle like yours do. It just interupts the circuit to the GPR, and prevents it from being energized if the toggle switch is OFF. They aren't needed in the summer and when the engine is warm, so reducing the frequency of use should greatly extend their life as well as the life of the little bitty UVC connectors that get burned due to over usage.