I live east of Regina. About 100 miles from the border.

And the heat is now on. It is supposed to hit -12 today. And maybe warmer tomorrow. After all the warm weather we have been getting the cold was a real shocker.
And yes, these are Celsius temps. I don't know how to convert!

 

Celsius or Fahrenheit ...any MINUS (-) denotation is cold... Brrrrrr

When I lived in Alaska we saw deep minus temps a bit and I had no garage or shelter... battery heater, pan heater, and block heater... never let fuel level sit for any amount of time below 1/2 tank (air born water vapor condenses to tank insides and forms water in the fuel tank, lines, and filter(s)) always point nose away from oncoming wind over night and still some times needed ether to aid starting... there is nothing wrong with using "starting" fluids with or with out "ether" as long as every thing is working normally.

The V10 powered truck is one of the easier systems to spray "ether" into by just pulling the air filter and shooting a 1~2 second shot up the air intake pipe. On a really stubborn morning we would open the air box and blow hot air from a Hair Dryer with the starting fluid (ether) into the intake pipe while cranking with a lot of success.


MOST of the time with a gas motor in extremely cold weather the real culprit is the battery.... when very cold, a lead acid battery does not deliver enough Voltage and AMPs to spin the starter and still have enough juice/umph for a good HOT spark....very cold air and very cold gasoline need a VERY hot spark to ignite...

 

The problem with ether is most people (probably not either of us fred nor most of us on this site) don't realize that ether will ignite no matter if you have the vehicle flooded or lean or what not. Give and engine to much ether when it's already flooded and say good by to your head studs and bolts. I we use it regularly on the tractors (especially the ol 7030 Alis Chalmers) but since after watching the father inlaws ol man blow a couple if head bolts from using either on a flooded engine we tend to be a little carefull with it, especially on our more expensive stuff, lol!

 

Just a thought, but I'd sure hate to see what that stuff would do to an aluminum head like we have on our beloved 6.8L V10! Can you say ouch, I can just about pictuer it now, cracks in the head at each point where a bolt was stressed to the breaking point. I know what it did to an ol JD Cast Iron Diesel Head that took two men just to lift it!

 

Thats why I said not too much !
I've seen it do it also !

Glad your running ,as said before if your idle rpm is jumping all around change the IAC.
Rich

 

Metric discussion split to:

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/5...-to-start.html

 

Well I guess I should not relate how I blew a spark plug out of an aluminum Briggs and Stratton head and lodged it into my shin pulling on the starter rope while my son sprays a shot of ether based starting fluid into the carb... Naw..folks would just laugh at me...

It is damned hard to "FLOOD" a computer controlled fuel injected motor...possible ...yes..but truly hard to do unless something is very wrong already

WOT while cranking will not do it as the pulse duration of any injector is still a function of air volume not throttle position and there is no accelerator pump either..just that pesky IAC

 

I was thinking the same thing. In all my years of having EFI on my vehicles...never has one flooded. In the carb days...sure it happened on several occasions. But none recently...my '76 F150 390FE purrs like a kitten...and starts on first try...every try.


biz

 

If fuel is flowing, but the mix isn't igniting, darn sure the thing will flood. Try disconnecting all the COPs and turn it over - what happens? Lots and lots of fuel in the cylinders.

I've witnessed quite a few EFI cars that flooded. When they had no spark. Or not enough. Or I left the coil wire off. Not fun after you get it running and you hear BANG out the tailpipe - or the side of the muffler.

Also, with the lack of sanity checks in the OBD-I compliant 2-valver, I would think it's quite easy for the computer to be in open-loop (cold, not running), and flooring it would just *****-nilly increase the injector duty cycle.

For instance, with my 2001 one day, it was 50 degrees outside, truck was cold, having sat all night. I had removed the air box while putting in my manual oil gauge, did some other stuff, put it back and forgot to connect the MAF. Started it up, no MIL, idled fine, revved it up, no problems. It certainly wasn't monitoring the MAF. And no DTC either, I checked.

YMMV.



Maybe it's just time to "do" the plugs. Boots all around, dialectric grease, etc. Maybe it's worth the "high energy" COP upgrade.

 

I'll agree with you on the flooding fred, it is damn hard at that. It can be done, but like you said, normally there's already something more going on than it not just starting. I can honestly say though that over the last 10 years with fuel injection on all of my vehicles since then I have not ever had one not fire up no matter how cold it's gotten and I know when I was in grandforks for two years that I was unfortunate enough to see -30*+ F temps on more than one occasion! The ol cutlas was slow turning over and even though it sounded like a diesel for the first 2 minutes it started none the less! heck even my 1952 International Harvestor / McCormic W-6 will start on a cold day and can be done with the hand crank although I wouldn't reccomend using that damn arm breaker. If you make it around once I wouldn't suggest trying for a second swing right in a row, darn near a garentee you'll rip your shoulder out, lol.

 

Oh, more on that OBD-I thing:

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/5...t-come-on.html

 

The PCM strategy is that if it sees WOT throttle while cranking it shuts off the injectors. It assumes that the engine is flooded and you're trying to clear it.

 

^^ Correct.

Technically, the don't "flood" but they do foul the plugs from unburned fuel. The reason many say to hold WOT to clear a "flooded engine" in an EFI vehicle is because many (if not most) PCMs will turn off the injectors when cranking if you are at WOT. It was for that very reason.

I know the EEC-IV PCM that was in basically ever 5.0L shuts off the injects when cranking at WOT. If you added big injectors and had no tune or a poor tune/calibration, the only way to start the car was to crank it then go WOT to kill the extra fuel.

I would assume the PCM programming for the V10s do the same - can anyone confirm?

 

one guys idea of "FLOODING" is another mans idea of a very rich mixture

In a fuel injected motor it is also very hard to wet foul the plugs because of the spray pattern of the nozzle is not Right at the electrodes...

in very cold weather it is possible to flood one or more cylinders but not all of them by a injector pin sticking OPEN.... in fact it happens frequently on these v10s as I believe it is one of the explanation on why some of us experience a "HOT" start during cold weather.... you know those odd days when you flip the key and she roars to life for a micro second and the tach jumps up to 2500~3000 before falling Right back to 1100~1200 fast idle