Got my first taste of what a broken powerstroke is like last Saturday. The Moose Wagon was hauling us to an early morning fall foliage steam excursion on the Reading and Northern, when about an hour into the trip, it lost power, started running real rough and had blue smoke at the exhaust. The fuel was low, and I was in the process of going to get some when this happened. It was pretty obvious that I had at least one non-functioning injector ( a solid miss) and a bunch of others that acted like they were fowled or just were not getting fuel. At one point, I had it floored, and it was crawling at less than 5 MPH. I had serious doubts that we were going to make the train ride. I limped into the truck stop, and filled up and added a full jug of Howes to the tank. Within 5 or 10 minutes, it cleared up and was back to normal. I've run the tank down that low before and never had a problem, so obviously something has changed I guess. Was this air intrusion, or what? I've run IDI's out of fuel before and they definitely don't act like this when the end is near.
Powerstroke scare
- Thread starter Agnem
- Start date
Jeep1947
Registered User
When you do get air in the system it sounds like the pistons are swapping cylinders I know this from experience when it happened to me I dumped a quart of tranny fluid in the filter housing fueled it up and it took about 10 miles of driving to straighten it out.
h2odrx
Anti-O
Tranny fluid in the filter housing?
Double-S-Diesel
parts seller
Mel
Ths CPS Is going bad.
Ths CPS Is going bad.
Your pickup tube in the tank maybe on its last legs Mel. FYI...dont run the PSD low on fuel, its really ******* the injectors. Youve got a couple thousand pounds of oil pressure hammering on an empty injector piston, stuff breaks and scores.
Double-S-Diesel
parts seller
did ya shut it off at refule?
69oiler
I don't feel tardy
when my CPS went bad the probmel was intermittent. i fixed it before it got worse.
h2odrx
Anti-O
when mine acted that way it was starving for fuel, how do you know when they are going to run out mine can be in the red for days and add 5 gal it goes to a 1/4 tank?
I run mine by the odometer.how do you know when they are going to run out mine can be in the red for days and add 5 gal it goes to a 1/4 tank?
My 95 would run for 100 miles on "E".
BigRigTech
Diesel junky
Sure sounds like a lack of fuel delivery to the injectors, once there is air in the system it takes a good bit of fuel to get it out. Once you get an engine started after an empty fuel system and it will idle I always let it idle, it's been my experience that the air will escape faster this way...Mercedes 4000 are bad for this - make them scream and they won't burp, idle them for 5 minutes and it goes away.
Fuel Gauges are worthless. The ones in my truck and firebird just plain don't work. The truck's gauge always reads empty, and my firebird's gauge reads full. The Saturn's gauge works, kinda. It's extremely inaccurate. I've used the Trip Odometer for ages
69oiler
I don't feel tardy
my fuel gauge works predictably. my low fuel light comes on with about 5-7 gallons left. i have put 36 gallons in my 38 gallon tank before. never had the engine act up from running fuel low but i do understand the principle of it. also it's bad for the electric fuel pump.
I never shut it off. I was too afraid it wouldn't start. So I refueled with it running. I can believe it may be a problem with the fuel pickup. It worked reliabily since I got it, and never had a problem with the gauge in that range, but there is always a first time. That will make 2 trucks now that need to have their tanks dropped and the pickups cleaned or replaced. 
joe_diesel
Registered User
One more I agree with.
I always track my milage so I know when I should fill up without just depending on the gauge. This has served me well on the road and while flying having had events occur that would have had a less than desirable effects had I just been reading the gauges.
