ok well i might have seen that. it is sitting vertical and directly to the right rear of the air filter. Either way i will check it out tomorrow. thanks bro!

 

1986 and older glow plug relay behind the passenger side battery.



Small terminal purple wire is from the controller, small terminal black wire is a ground.
Large terminal orange and white wires are to the glow plugs.
Other large terminal, probably a red wire to the battery positive post.

Apply power to the terminal with the purple wire to close the relay.

At the rear of the drivers side head close to the intake is where the controller is located.
The threads in the picture screw into the head and into the coolant jacket to sense coolant temp.



Yes when it is installed it sits vertical with the wire connector to the right of the picture on top.

 

Outstanding brother. Thanks for the info, now that i know what heck it looks like i can probably be better at troubleshooting. Thanks a million to all of you fellas, dont worry though, it is not over yet! hahah

 

Thanks Dave,

I should of known to look in your photos for a picture of it...

Wreckinball,
Actually it's to the left ... Everything is, as viewed from the driver seat.
But you are right standing in front of the truck/motor.

-Enjoy
fh : )_~

 

fellas, how do i know which wire goes to what on the new GPR? it is two large gold bolts with two smaller silver ones. There is an I next to one small silver bolt and an S next to the other small silver one. The last GPR i had on there had only one small silver bolt with the two large gold ones. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks

Edit-----does it matter which? is there a flow of direction through the relay?

 

Well, are you ready to laugh some more?

There is no S or I on the glow plug relay by the small terminals.

Those markings would be found on a starter relay, and that makes a huge difference.

Starter relays ground through the mounting bolts.
Glow plug relays ground the trigger coil through one of the small bolts.

So in your uh "thing", the mounting bolts have to be grounded and the purple trigger wire from the controller has to go on the S terminal.
The I terminal gets no connection.

The two large terminals get battery power to one and the glow plug wires (orange and white stripes) go to the other one.
Which wire goes to which terminal makes no difference on the large terminals.

I guess next you are going to tell me those wires are yellow. LMAO

I don't care how hard you try to fool me on glow plugs or electrical, it ain't gonna happen.
Some of the wire colors change slightly from year to year, but that can be overcome as well.

Maybe I should have said the green wire with a red stripe is the ignition circuit, it goes on the I terminal.
The start wire is light blue with a red stripe, it goes on the I terminal.
But the the glow plugs would turn on when the key was in the start position and the engine would not crank, so I guess the other way above is the one you better use.

The left right confusion I bypass by saying drivers side and passenger side.
That works OK until someone that drives on the "wrong side" of the road stops in.

 

well i bypassed the controller to see how they would work by themselves and it started up first time, that was the first time it had started by itself since getting it home. Plugging it in all night was how i could just go out and jump it. So with the controller shot, i may just go get a momentary switch and bypass it permanently. I am just wondering how it is that there is so much to go wrong under the hood of a diesel. If i can eliminate one part of it, and here they are a couple hundred bucks, i will save a lot of headache. Yes i know it can be left on by the inept individual but that is the purpose of a push button momentary switch. Thoughts??

Edit,
i doubt you want to know that the wires going to the GP's are black huh, or that any wire besides the purple one are a different color! hahaha

 

A lot of what you are finding is because your truck has an F150 cab on it.
So that tells me that someone has done a lot of adapting and modifying before you got it.
Like what is an 86 and older glow plug system doing on a 94 chassis and engine.

Best way for you to install manual glow plugs on your truck is find a switched power source in the cab, one that is only hot when the key is on.
Take power from there and run it to one terminal of the momentary switch.
From the other terminal of the momentary switch run a wire to the S terminal of the glow plug relay.
The power source being switched makes sure the glow plugs can not be activated by children or a person that does not know what the switch is for and burning up the glow plugs.


Yes, there is a lot that can go wrong under the hood of a diesel, but it is still much less than can go wrong under the hood of a gasser.

Other than standard change the oil and filters, belts and hoses stuff you have on any vehicle I did very little to my truck in the first 200 K miles engine wise.

On an 86 gasser, I would have changed plugs, distributor caps, rotor and plug wires several times in the same distance and probably rebuilt the engine.

If you only look at the money spent on maintenance of the engine, a diesel is really not a good investment.
Parts and quantity of fluids is much higher for the diesel, which drives the cost up.

Where the cost savings comes from is at the fuel pumps.
And the other place a diesel shines is with what is really basic maintenance, the diesel is really much more reliable for many more miles.

 

For a continuous duty solenoid, which of the smaller ternminals is the ground and which is the ignition terminal? Also i have two of these things side by side, can i just drop down to one, the same wires jump across from one to the other except for the ones going to a voltage converter, as long as i hook them all up to the same terminals wont the one work?

 

Fellas here goes the mastercard commercial:

Buying your first diesel, used one too: 3500 USD
Isolating the starting problem to a bad GPR and getting the new one: $64
Breaking the new one while attaching the leads: free
Replacing it with a new one from what you learned here and having it start the first time without starting fluid: PRICELESS!!!

Fellas i cant thank you all enough, Dave, Fetus i mean Festus, and everyone else, man it feels good to do it yourself!! Thanks a million!!
Wreckin