1994 F350 IDI Turbo help

[haleywp]

New here to the forum and have some questions. It appears there is a lot of knowledge on the forum. I bought a 1994 350 IDI factory turbo dually with 167,000 miles about 4 weeks ago. I am not a mechanic but have performed maintenance and small repairs. I owned a 1995 and 2000 power stroke trucks. I owned 2 Peterbilt (1 1994 machinal pump and a 1998 electronic).

I contacted 2 diesel repair shops here in the Baton Rouge, LA area and they do not work on anything older than 2000. Does anyone know of a repair shop close to Baton Rouge, LA?

• First thing (truck cold no matter what time of day) it starts up right away. When it warms up and you shut it off it starts right away. If you let it set (not for very long say 10-20 minutes) it takes about 20 seconds to start. When it starts it smoke white smoke and smells of diesel.
• I plan to check the glow plugs, glow plug harness, fuel return lines and injectors. I will probably replace them all.
• The truck seems to be using a lot of fuel. What kind of fuel milage should I expect to get in the truck.

Thanks in advance and love reading the post and replies.

 

[rreegg]

Welcome and awesome truck. I'm assuming there is an automatic glow plug circuit on this truck and as I have no experience with them will let others chime in. Mine came with a manual push button GP, which is frequently recommended on here to give the driver more control over GPs.

You will likely need to look into the fuel return line oring kits as that's a common/simple maintenance item on the IDIs.

With your setup I would conservatively expect to get above 16mpg on the freeway and above 12mpg in town - should be in the same ballpark as your power strokes depending on gearing etc. My non-turbo does about 15-16 mixed driving with 4:10 gears

Good luck and more than likely if you have the will you can DIY most necessary items with help from the forum

 

[IDIBRONCO]

Between your starting issues and the poor mileage, I will guess that your injector pump is in need of replacement. Just the hot start issue alone usually means that it's at the end of the road. To check this, the next time that the trucks sits for the 10-20 minutes, pour some lukewarm water over the pump. If it starts right up, that's a sure sign of pump wear. With 167,000 miles, it may be the original pump or it could have been a poor quality replacement. Unless you know for sure that they've been recently replaced, it's best to plan on replacing the injectors at the same time. The pump and injectors wear at the same rate. Despite what you might see on social media and You Tube, only replacing one or the other is NOT a good fix and will shortly lead to more issues down the road.

 

[Olds64]

Cool project!

If you replace the glow plugs make sure you only use Motorcraft glow plugs. The others are known to separate and leave the tip in the head.