Helping with a no start issue

So I have a friend who picked up an 87 F250 4x4, I haven't seen it in person yet but he's been going over things and can't get it to start. He's so far put on a facet pump, @Thewespaul 's feed line and fuel pressure gauge, pulled injectors and put in new copper washers, cleaned injector bores, new return line kit, new olives, new batteries, and new cables. He put in new glow plugs but put in diesel rx plugs (we can always fix that at some point) and the best he's gotten was some white smoke.

Being that it's an 87, I haven't seen it yet but it sounds like it's a 6.9 as he's put on a doner injection pump from the scrap yard and mentioned pulling the oil fill to remove the bolts to pull the pump (thankfully the timing gear and housing and everything have stayed put).

I'm guessing from what he's done his glow plugs aren't working at all, being that it's an 87 does it have the goofy temp sensor thing that fails on often still? I know 87 is a fun year and I've never messed with one, I'm hoping I can manually trigger the glow plugs after I test those and we can get it to fire. Going to check that the FSS is working and we can get fuel to injectors. Also can't remember if 87's have the 6.9 water separator on the firewall that sucks or not either.

White exhaust means glow plugs aren't working but you got fuel.

You can try to jump the relay to energize them, or give him a good pull down the road n put it in gear 3 or so when going. Or roll down a big hill...

Sometimes it's corrosion in the connector with fat wires feeding power to the gp relay, or blown fuse links, or the controller, or any wires to it.... my suggestion is to bypass everything except gp harness, see if it lights. Its easy to do a pushbutton and new relay, big fat power cable and fuse breaker. I made my own gp harness, I think someone sells them here too like @Thewespaul

Not knocking the upgrades but why were they performed? What diagnostics were ran, or is he throwing parts at it?

I would say throwing parts at it, but mostly because I think once he replaced the glow plugs he assumed he had a fuel issue since it wasn't starting. Originally I don't believe he had fuel but the truck was sitting for a bit. At least once we get it to fire he won't have 32 things leaking now that he already did these upgrades.

If you have white smoke you have fuel, I bet the diesel rx glow plugs are your issue, I had a customer put them in his turbod intercooler van (all day job) and they burnt out after a single use. You can imagine how happy he was about that.

87 should have the 7.3 style glow plug controller, the "all in one" unit behind the intake. The 6.9 style that screws into the head ended in 86.... but in the last 40 years, who knows.....

Ok cool. I'm going to look at it either tomorrow or Thursday so I'll be more useful then but I'm trying to lob him some ideas to look at before I get there just for the heck of it. This is what we're reviving. I bet if I disable the glow plugs and give it a sniff it would start but I want to fix it right for him as well. And verify its actually a 6.9 or 7.3 before I have him order good plugs and hear it run to make sure it's not super angry with internal issues or anything.

The 1987 uses the 7.3 style glow plugs. This is not the original 1987 6.9 engine (or else someone did a lot of part changing). The 1987 6.9s used the 7.3 style IP housing with the oil fill cast into the top part of it. There is a flat plate over the IP bolts like on a 7.3.

So we got to work on this tonight. It does have the screwed into the head thing still there but it isn't hooked up. The controller works but was short cycling real bad. It turns out either 4/8 or 5/8 plugs weren't actively working. We ended up pulling them all out and one of them wasn't too happy about coming out until we got a slide hammer. Plenty of fuel at the schrader valve and plenty of smoke out of the exhaust while cranking. Here's a video.


Shortly after I took this I jumped the glow plug relay for 7 seconds and it would run for two seconds or so and die immediately. I would guess it's not able to spin up fast enough to stay running given the dead plugs, we still had a little air in the fuel lines here and there. We tried disabling the plugs and hitting it with ether but it was the same thing, fire for a couple seconds and die.

I'd feel 100% instead of 99% if we got it to run after ether but we can't get it to cough and hack long enough to stay running. He did have the truck running with this IP for 15 minutes right after he put the glow plugs in it so I know it "can" run. He's getting some motorcraft plugs ordered and we'll go from there I guess.

I've never had luck starting on ether, idk if its the intake being too long and big or what. I'm too lazy to unbolt everything and try spraying the intake header directly.

If he was a manual transmission, give him a pull start. You can crank it for a while to purge air but when there's fuel at the Schrader you're usually good to go, doesn't take much at that point to fill the ip and fuel lines, if its running 2 seconds without ether you should have fuel, if ether its probably just burning that as fuel. You can crack some injector lines to see if it bleeds off air or fuel.

If it don't run from a pull you've got other problems. I would clip a hot wire to the fss temporarily, and manually glow 8 good plugs, and try to start it up, then pull.

Yeah, we thought about pull starting it but we want to wait and try again with good glow plugs and see if we can get it to fire that way. I've always had these start with ether if the glow plugs were bad and you were for sure getting fuel, but even with all of the cranking I'm not going to promise there still isn't some air that wouldn't come out easy if it was cranking way faster for a longer period of time. It just doesn't make sense that it sounds good for 2 seconds and dies, the FSS clicks so I believe the pump is at least good enough to run and we're getting visible fuel out of the injectors cranking though it's only a drop per firing revolution

Sometimes that air can be a PITA to get out. I've even seen an new engine run for 5 or 10 minutes and then have a shot of air go through. That can sure make your back side pucker up when that knocking starts.

My only thought on the pull starting was its a very fast easy way to see if the engine and fuel system are up to *****, purge any air, before wasting time on other stuff

If you got smoke, you got fuel getting into the cylinders trying to combust. You need more heat to ignite that fuel (better compression, working glow plugs, quicker cranking starter). Gasoline has a lower ignition temp so a lightly gas soaked rag over the intake with the glow plugs deactivated should help it fire.

If it runs for 5-10 seconds ,it is getting a shot of air. A bad fuel pump check valve, old return lines, or bad orings under the return fuel caps will all do that. As the fuel leaks back into the tank thru the return lines because somewhere there is a very small air leak. This allows air to enter the top of the fuel filter, it starts then dies and takes a lot of cranking to start. Original owner 86 6.9. First stop 7 miles ZBart. Been there, wrote the book. good luck

All this talk of a pull start... I have a question.

How do yall get the rope to wind around the front of the engine, so you can give it a yank?