No cold start

[OLDBULL8]

new zd9 glow plugs,new controller,

Really frustrating when it won't start cold with all the components you've replaced.
Starting at the batteries. Charge them for a full 10-12 Hrs. overnight or more, at least at 10 Amps.
Turn the headlights ON for 4-5 minutes to take the surface charge off. Wait 20 minutes for the batteries to recover, then do the check.
Next Day:
If you have a battery Hydrometer and the batteries are not maintenance Free, check each cell for specific gravity, The Sg. should be ~1300 or above, if one or more cells are below that, the battery is failing, disconnect POS on one battery, check voltage of each battery, should be 12.5 to 12.8 possibly higher.
Connect batteries back up. Hook voltmeter POS lead to the GP wire side of the ZigZag strip side on the relay. Cycle the glow plugs while watching the meter, should start out at battery voltage for a second, then drop to 9 to 10.5 VDC, anything below that, the battery voltage is not high enough to push the needed current to heat the GP's. fully. Make sure each GP has a good corrosion free connection and all the GPC connection are tight.
You can do the above with just one battery, if there is a difference between them, then that battery is failing. It could be that one battery is sulfated. I know you said the batteries are just one year old, but they can fail at any time. If you do the above, please report back the results.

 

[DaveBen]

What you have, in these diesel trucks, is one battery in two places. These trucks use a lot of power to start and a regular battery just won't handle the amps. So they split the duty to two batteries. They should always be treated as one battery, that is if you need to replace one battery, you will have to replace both batteries to keep one battery (the old one) from killing the new battery.

Dave

 

[dlundberg1990]

So I took my jumper wire and unhooked it from the controler and hooked it up on the post for the z bar, then I turned the key to the run position and held the other end of the jumper to the positive battery terminal for 10 seconds and turned the truck over from the relay on the fender, it would try to fire at the first crank or 2, took me 6 tries 10 seconds on the better each time and it barely started last try. Weak glow plugs in conjunction with a cheap controler and relay?

 

[DaveBen]

The easiest and cheapest is to test your glow plugs using a ohm meter. You should see a value of about 1 ohm for a good glow plug. 0 or over 500 ohms is a bad glow plug. Use ONLY Beru or Motorcraft glow plugs! Any other glow plug is junk out of the box. If all of the glow plugs are good (which I doubt) it might be the glow plug controller. Good Luck!

Dave

 

[dlundberg1990]

Thanks for the input, they are zd9 beru glow plugs as mentioned in first post, and they have been ohms checked and test good.

 

[sjwelds]

^^^Dave he did say in his first post he has already replaced the glows and put berus in...

 

[DaveBen]

All I saw was ZD 9 for glow plugs. I don't remember what those are. I just did a search and I see they ARE Motorcraft glow plugs. Sorry.

Dave

 

[dlundberg1990]

So taking the jumper wire off and going to install the factory wiring back up to the controler and I put the factory wire on the lug on the controler and noticed it was moving, pushed on the and the 12v lug on the controler broke off. I put a used good GP controler on, I pulled a glow plug out and plugged it back into the GP harness and took a set of jumper cables to ground the glow plug and here is how hot it gets with this controler.https://youtu.be/CUB-7Rd_QAM

Jumper cable is grounded to the motor, GP is plugged into the harness. I only checked 1 glow plug this way I will give feed back tomorrow as to how it starts.

 

[icanfixall]

Well it sounds like you found the problem.. Sometimes things are nearly impossible to find causing a hard start. But persistence pays off....

 

[HS108]

That looks to be getting "white" hot which is what you want!!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR8qyQ6bmVc

These are what they look like, This video is also a sales ad for Diesel RX plugs so pay no attention to them, you are better off with the Beru

 

[dlundberg1990]

My truck started, cycled the glow plugs once and it didn't start cycled it another time and it started, started easy but still didn't fire up like the system is working 100% my after glow definitely isn't working right with this controler, but now I have somthing I can work off of. Thanks for the input guys

 

[jayro88]

Glad you got it tracked down. I had the same issue with the posts on my GP controller. It wasnt letting my GP cycle correctly/long enough. Now I just have to replace the connectors on each glow plug. They are getting kinda bad and I think they are keeping my GPs from working at 100% efficiency. It will still start in low temps, but not quite as easily as before.

 

[OLDBULL8]

Replacing the GP connectors, these are what you want to get for ZD9 GP's.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/271794433516

 

[FORDF250HDXLT]

wow.far out!when did they start making those,Bill?
last i knew everyone was forced to use blue butt connectors.i haven't seen those yet.


(who the heck says far out still? lmao.im so stuck in the 80's...but i love it here. )



edit;
oh reading the whole description,then are they simply blue butt connectors with heat shrink?
i thought someone made a locking clip for them again or something.ah well.looks like they probably do the job just as good as oem did anywho.

 

[OLDBULL8]

The OEM GP harness connectors has/had the white plastic connectors which degraded so they would crumble after being ~25 yrs old, these will be certainly better than just a plain butt connector as they have the shrink portion on them. Plastic never gets to the point that it stops curing.

A proper crimp tool should be used to crimp any connector, a dimple crimper is much better to use than a crush crimper.