If he has a Cat and muffler, it would catch most of the oil. But I also think it's injector related.

 

I've never pulled injectors before. All my past experience has been with gas motors. I want to pull the injectors this Sunday. Right now the truck has all the tubes and "Y" manifold removed so I can't start it. But from what I've seen and the symptoms (no oil coming from exhaust, no oil leaking from the exhaust pipes or fittings, and the fact that it blows tons of blue smoke right from a cold start) leads me to believe it's an injector issue. So I should be able to figure out how (or find reading material) to remove the injectors, either get rebuild kits or just use the seal kits and do all 8 of them. I also have a vacuum pump with a small hose to remove any oil that may leak into the combustion chamber.

 

There's a video floating around somewhere that gives you the quick points of an injector change. Since these are HEUI injectors, there will be oil & diesel) that leak down into the cylinder. The vacuum pump is good, but it's also a good idea to pull the glow plugs after you put the injectors back in, then unplug your CPS, pull the IDM relay, or some other form of disabling the motor and crank the starter a few times. The compression will blow the excess oil out of the cylinder through the glow plug hole. Might also be a good idea to crank the motor over by hand with a breaker bar a couple of times before using the starter, just in case there's more oil left in there than you think.

Other than that, it's fairly straight forward. Pull the valve covers, there are oil rail plugs you can remove to drain some of the oil out of the rail, but I don't have a picture of those handy. If you can't find them, skip that step. Unplug the injectors & glow plugs and set the harness to the side for safe keeping. Inspect the wiring to make sure there are no obvious issues. Remove the bolt and oil discharge spout, then remove the lower injector hold down bolt. The plate that is used to hold the injector in place can be slid toward the center of the motor after the lower bolt is removed. It will slide up and over the upper bolt, and provides you a place to pry the injector out of the block. When re-installing, make sure the copper washer is on the tip, the o-rings are lubed up, and the injector is fully seated before tightening it back down.

Torque the lower injector hold down bolt to 120 in lbs, and while you're there, the rocker arm pedestal bolts to 20 ft lbs. Glow plugs go back in at 14 ft lbs.

If you notice the electrical connector under the valve cover looks like it's a little loose when you first pull the valve cover, you might want to consider the 50 cent mod, or get a set of shims to make sure these don't come loose.

Since I don't know how familiar you are with working on these, those are the basics. Feel free to ask any questions or for more detail.

 

Well ... I guess today was productive. I pulled out all eight injectors. I started with the drivers side and found no obvious seal problems. The passenger side was quite a different story. The first injector (closest to the front) was OK. The next one back had a very worn and degraded middel grove seal. Next one back was VERY strange. When we pulled out the injector, there was a very small nylon wire tie (about 1/4 inch in diameter) in the area between the upper seal and the middle seal. How in the world could THAT have gotten there!!!!??? The middle seal was also bad with lots of degradation and small rubber particles around it. The last injector (closest to the firewall)ALSO had a the head of a small nylon wire tie in the same area. I'm guessing the upper journal is the oil supply to the injector?

Now the obvious question is where did those two pieces of wire ties come from? If I can figure out how to post pictures, I'll take close up photos of the injectors AND the mystery pieces. Next, I'm wondering if I should rebuild the injectors or if there is a cleaning proceedure for them. I had the truck since new and only has 125K on it.

Should I contact Ford and tell them of my find ???

 

Ok .... So all injector seals relaced ... Everything cleaned up ... Now, how long does it take to start the engine? I added oil to the HPOP via the top hole. With all the fuel gone from the fuel rails and all the oil gone from the oil ports, is this a matter of cranking and cranking the motor in order to re-fill the rails and oil ports? I don't want to burn up my starter so I crank it for about 10 seconds and then let it sit for about an hour.

Any help here would be great!

 

Crank for 20 seconds, then let it sit 2-3 minutes, then repeat. Expcect smoke at start up and for it to run a bit rough for 50 miles or so. Sounds normal so far, so no worries.

 

TaDaaaa! The beast lives on! It took about an hour of cranking/waiting but finally the ol 7.3 rumbled and belched back to life ...I'm sure the smoke cloud could be seen from outer space! I drove it for about 5 miles and slowly it began to smooth out.

Overall the job was pretty simple (now that it's all done) ... But I just took my time, read through the blogs here and checked all my work. If I added up all the time under the hood and the time to do the detail work, it probably took about 8 hours total.

While I was at it, I did a complete detail under the hood ... Painted the air intercooler tubes and turbo manifold to match the color of the truck.

If I can figure out how to post pictures, I took pics of the injector seals and also the finished detail work under the hood ...

Thanks to all who chipped in with your help.

 

Glad you got it done. You may have to have 25 post before you can post pictures here. you can post them on webshots or somewhere like that then post the link. I would like to see the junk you pulled out.