Injector pump hold-down nuts loose?

[The Warden]

Hello!

Here's a new one (at least for me)...

After dealing with an air leak for a while, I finally had time to redo my injector return lines, caps, O-rings, etc. Russ was nice enough to also send replacement olives (thank you again, Russ!! ), and I think the olives on my metal lines were original so I did them also...everything went well until I went to tighten the fitting on the return line coming off the top of the injector pump. I hadn't gotten the fitting tight enough to put a wrench on the other side yet, but at one point I thought I saw the entire injector pump rotate. Thinking I was seeing things, I tried it again...sure enough, the pump was loose enough to rotate with very little force

I almost immediately found out why...while the lower left nut seemed reasonably tight, the top center nut was barely even finger-tight. I haven't had a need to touch the pump mounting nuts in at least 6 years, and the last time I had the top cover off (maybe two years ago?), the IP was still securely on...so, the nut must have somehow vibrated loose or something like that.

Has anyone else had this happen to them?

I guess that's something else to be checking regularly...while the engine runs, I'm sure my timing's off now; going to take a look at the timing tonight before driving her to L.A. next week...

 

[The Warden]

BTW, got the timing reset tonight...all is well now but, we found that the lower nut on the starboard side was not loose...it was missing Very glad that we caught this before something bad happened!

 

[Exekiel69]

Wow, I'm going to check mine out now. Good thing You caught it in time.

 

[hesutton]

Lock washers there?

Never seen/heard of that before. Dang Tim, that sounds scarey buddy. How bout the three IP to gear bolts? Check them?

Heath

 

[icanfixall]

Tim.. This has happened to me twice. I found the passenger side nut and washer missing once too. Thats easy to locate the nut and washer. Any magnet on a flexible tool stuck under the intake manifold will collect them. Usually they are way towards the rear of the valley pan. I have no idea why this happens sometimes either but engine vibration is possibily the cause. These engine fuel systems create plenty of fuel pulse vibration. This is why we have the olives in the fuel feed systems I think. Even the line at the filter head from the lift pump has an olive in the 3/8 line fitting. But the lower end of that line is safe... It is a simple flaired connection. Guess thats not an area of vibration. So what was your timing found at and set too....

 

[SparkandFire]

Wow Tim! Good thing you caught that... When I got the brown truck from the previous owner he had mentioned having "alot of trouble with those nuts" and having to torque them every year or so... got tired of it and RED loctited them.

I guess he figured with 360k miles on that truck, it wasn't going to ever need an IP again...

Where did you get timed? I've been needing a time treatment on the blue truck...