Did I just have an injector stick?

Yeah always uphill but also revved up or under a severe fuel load. I'm gonna change the oil tomorrow morning and check the cdr just for kicks and also unplug the cold advance entirely just in case it's sticking.

I did just get off the phone with Mel and he's pretty convinced it's the pump internally starving for fuel / worn out. I'm gonna do what I was saying tomorrow and if that changes nothing then I'll just order a pump and injectors from him next week. At that point I feel like all the weird possibilities will have been exhausted.

The CDR is supposed to close off slightly in order to restrict the amount of vacuum the intake can pull from the crank case. If the internal diaphragm is ruptured, it won't be regulating properly and will allow excess oil into the intake. The lack of visible blowby in your video isn't really proof that its working properly. It's not proof of a bad thing either, but it's hard to simulate full load conditions when parked.

The oil being overfilled is also a bit of a red flag to me as well. Either something is raising the level, or the PO chose to overfill it.

Honestly I think it has fuel in it from the mechanical lift pump being partially ruptured which is why I wanna get it out of there. The oil isn't going up any higher since I bought the truck but it's not gone down at all either even with having what happens in that video happen during testing probably 10 times now.

Mel is probably right that it's been the pump the whole time too, but I'll sleep better knowing I ruled all of this out as I go. The truck runs so freaking good when this doesn't starve for fuel or stick or suck oil or whatever it's actually doing. Not giving up on it but I definitely want to rule out all this before I drop 1100 on a pump and injectors and whatnot.

So it turns out I might be an idiot and I'm not sure that I've fixed.. I'm pretty sure though but either way I'm embarrassed to admit what I found out today.

I pulled the truck into the garage to change the oil and as soon as I took the drain plug out I knew something wasn't right as what was trying to drip out was not the thickness of diesel oil. I got the truck between warm and hot before changing the oil and I added a little mmo when all of this started happening but not this much.

After waiting forever for the poor truck to drain whatever was in the engine out of it, I almost had to get another bucket. Not counting what was in the filter, I filled a 4 gallon white bucket to the brim with oil and what is gonna end up being diesel fuel that was in the crankcase.

I panicked after seeing the runny whatever the heck was in my engine and started to my radiator cap only to find that it is totally full just like it was a week ago when I bought the truck as is the overflow. Nothing has moved there.

Then I got to thinking, when the previous owner replaced the lift pump did he change the oil? I thought he told me that he did, but I also have two receipts for two lift pumps with all of the trucks paperwork from this year so did one fail and the changed the oil and then did it again due to the lower fuel pressure but not check the oil?

I also crapped out on the highway with the truck 3 days after buying it and had posted in the 911 thread because I couldn't get it started back up and had to be towed. It turned out that my water separator on the fender was clogged up but at the same time who is to say that that lift pump didn't slowly crap itself since we bought the truck?

Either way, I changed the oil today with regular 15w40 delo that my other IDI loves and put a new filter on it and drove it three laps around my "test route" and it did not do any of the sputtering trying to run away anything once. Then I drove it ten miles round trip after a half hour of driving my laps to top off what at this point is a fuel tank with so much power serve fuel additive that I'm back to trying to thin it out some and it didn't do anything weird. Even took it on the highway back home up a hill at pretty high rpm and nothing.

When we got back, the big thing I didn't think about that further has me hoped that this fixed it was the idle was magically so smooth all of the sudden but I didn't do a single thing outside of change the oil since the previous day of messing with it. Dad was even the one who mentioned it and he usually doesn't notice those types of things but the idle felt awesome.

I guess when you have upwards of over a gallon and a half of "something" in the crank case and it's not just pure oil, it would be pretty easy for one of these engines at high rpms or when lugging up hills to start vacuuming whatever it is either through the cdr or just straight up through the valves given the higher levels of the fluid and how thin it was and try to run on it. Which would also explain the bluish smoke which is also totally gone. Heck it was probably burning some of it at idle right past the cylinder walls.

I'm going to gradually take it on longer adventures and see if it ever does anything weird, but I think I made an embarrassing rookie mistake whether the lift pump dying on me on the road leaked into the case or whether the previous owner didn't check the oil after he put a new lift pump on it and I didn't check the oil while we were test driving it. I think I did, but couldn't swear to it. Hopefully my pump seal isn't leaking into the oil or an injector isn't leaking non stop, but it doesn't smoke at idle hot now at all so I think that closes the book on a leaking injector. Just gotta monitor the oil and make sure it isn't filling back up from the pump seal. I might still get a pump and injectors from mel just because I'm sure one of my idi's are going to need those parts eventually and my fiancé already told me to buy the stuff so the truck isn't junk... she doesn't need to know whether the stuff was installed on the truck or not lol...

Glad you got it figured out!


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Yikes. Well that’s a simple fix. Glad you got it sorted and didn’t have to throw parts at it. I’d run a detergent in the oil like mmo or seafoam and change this oil very early to help clean any remaining contamination.

At least I'm hoping so. I didn't check the oil when we got back but the truck was running for a solid 45 minutes. Dad's gonna run to my place and check the oil again and make sure it didn't fill back up while we drove it this morning. Since there's no more mechanical pump and it's not smoking if it's somehow filling back up with fuel the pump seal would be the only thing left causing that I would think. Especially with how good it magically idles and the total stopping of any smoke at idle.

The wisdom of the collective comes through again! I believe david85 mentioned oil in post # 56.

Good to see you got it sorted out without having to throw parts at it.

BrianX128 said:

my fiancé already told me to buy the stuff so the truck isn't junk...

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She's a keeper!

Well dad said the oil level was "perfect". He let it sit for 5 minutes after he moved it in the garage before he checked it.

I put about 10 and a half quarts in it as I only had a Fleetguard lf 3974 filter for it which is about the same in capacity as a FL1995. Didn't want to overfill it. I guess now I just keep driving and check it daily and see if it magically ever rises above full.

Still half nervous to take it from either of our homes but I'm gonna have to eventually. Driving it to work bothers me. Two giant grades which are very long as well.

Been following along and glad you got it figured out...knock on wood.

I have two boys and one is not too smart when it comes to cars. His first car was a mid 80's Toyota Cressida and I was always on him to check the oil...well he was throwing a quart in here and there if the oil pressure gauge was on the low side and eventually the car started running like crap and had no power. I found twice as much oil in the car then it needed...after correcting the level the car ran great for a number of years.

Glad you finally have some answers after all that frustration. We've all been in a situation where we had to go back and and re-evaluate what we thought we already knew.

If you start to notice some oil consumption from this point on, maybe try keeping the level between the bottom and middle of the cross-hatch on the dipstick. It won't hurt anything and may reduce the rate of consumption. My IDI would go through 1L of rotella for every fillup before I overhauled it. Mostly from loose valve guilds, I suspect. All cylinders were at 400 PSI and up.

Now with a mere 60k miles since the overhaul and the E4OD keeping my RPMs down, I can't even measure any consumption between changes. Still doesn't feel right.

Yeah I'll just have to keep an eye on it. Was fun to get to drive it again more than in a circle. It drives really good. That brand new clutch has a nice feel to it and the petal has such a longer throw for the clutch than my zf5 with clutch that needs the slave cylinder re bled.


Assuming it's happy and fixed i now need to move onto more fun problems. Reverse lights don't work [think it's just a bad switch on the trans] and the dash lights couldn't be a more dim useless color of green. And I need a windshield washer knob. Those pliers are to hold a mower deck between 3 and 4 and they don't like their adopted home.

Truck also needs a name but I refuse to name it until it drives a week without imploding.

You know, we actually had a member have a engine really runaway from the same thing. Crankcase level got so high that is was sucked through the cdr. It was a Jasper engine, Iirc.

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I can almost guarantee you mine was trying in the driveway. I'm glad I let the clutch out to help kill it when it kept going after I shut the key off. Looking back on it revving it up real high nose up was the stupidest thing I could have done without any doubt.

These things are tough. After all this accidental abuse I did to it, it ran better today then the day I bought it. I just really hope the oil level doesn't gradually rise due to a pump seal leaking. You'd think it would leak fast enough that after an hour drive today it would have risen some. Guess I'll just have to watch it.

The previous owner did call me today and felt bad I was going through all of this. He said it did have a new ip at 80k but can't remember where it came from aka who knows if it's junk. Injectors as far as since they owned it are original. I see stanaydyne or however you spell it on the injectors so they might still be original.

I just want the thing to prove to me it will run good for a couple of weeks. Like I said to Mel on the phone I don't mind spending the money, I still wouldn't mind a new ip for it but if you do one you might as well do the other. I just would like to drive it for a month before I'd rip the ip and injectors out of it to know I don't ever have to do it again for piece of mind but at least then I'd know the rest of the truck is reliable.

79jasper said:

You know, we actually had a member have a engine really runaway from the same thing. Crankcase level got so high that is was sucked through the cdr. It was a Jasper engine, Iirc.

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I don't think I could ever trust a reman IDI. Its not a very complicated engine, but there are some things that need to be done right. The other problem is many of the cores get run into the ground before overhaul. We love our IDI's but most of them didn't get much lovin' out there.