Pump gear off, or losing my mind

[quickster]

So I have been working on my new to me 87 F250 6.9 for the last 7 months and I got it all down to just body work now, but I'm still getting smoke when I accelerate hard. Only in gear- park and neutral are fine. Starts and sounds better than my 91 7.3. Still might have remnants of 6 year old fuel, but I've used hotshot, and 911.
So what I did today to try and get my head right was take the cover off the pump tower to check the dowel position. I set the balancer dead nuts on the timing mark. Then I go to check the bolts and dowel on the back of the IP. I can tell that it's not level, or what I'm saying is the bolts aren't parallel to the base of the tower. So I made up a jig to demonstrate to myself that I'm not losing my eyes. Look at the bottom of the white pc of trim. You can see the right side is up if you follow the base of the tower. I put my digital level on it and you can see that it is out. 2.7 degrees up on the right side. To me that says the timing is retarded. Now would that be enough for one tooth on the gear?
The guy I got it from said it smoked ever since the motor was rebuilt back in 2009. I put in a rebuilt pump and injectors.
Am I reading into this too much, or is this a legit problem. Like I said it starts and runs awesome, just under acceleration it leaves a cloud that smells like fuel. Sorry for the long post, but if someone else would comment maybe I wouldn't think I'm losing it. Thanks

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[quickster]

Ok so I found out 1 tooth is approx 6.7 degrees. A bit more than 2.7. I need to find some one with a timing meter!

 

[riphip]

Turn pump 1/16th towards the passenger side to see if it does better since it cranks/runs easy.

 

[The_Josh_Bear]

If you're smelling raw fuel under acceleration then your timing is too retarded, as mentioned advance the timing. Getting a meter on it is the best but you can always advance it a bit at a time until you're not getting fuel smell anymore, should run better too.
If it's running well outside of the WOT bit then you aren't a tooth off!

 

[quickster]

When I punch it, and not that hard, I leave a cloud of fuel. Not WOT. The guy I got it from said it was smoking since the rebuild, and the reason he parked it. Thinking I have to pull the pump and bump the gear a tooth.

 

[IDIBRONCO]

I'd still recommend trying to adjust the pump timing first. If that doesn't work, you can always try to move the gear. You'd be saying a lot of four letter words if you moved the gear and it ran worse.

 

[Dane Rickford]

I would also recommend adjusting the pump towards the passenger side. It is way easier and less dangerous than messing with the gear. Also, from my experience building and tuning these engines, you are nowhere near a whole tooth off. If it the gear was out of position, I doubt you could get the truck started without lots of batteries and (never recommend this) ether. In my opinion, just try rotating the pump 1/16-1/8 inch to the passenger side before you try anything else

 

[Dane Rickford]

Also, this can be a major factor, but where did you get your fresh pump and injectors from? Faulty components can cause symptoms very similar to incorrect timing

 

[CBRF3]

I second the injection pump or injectors these engines are super finicky about pop pressures and consistency if the injection pump is not correct it will be irradic on injection pulse events and uneven injector pop pressures will cause this also. The way injection pop pressure effects things are like this higher pop pressure adds a delay to the injection event and a lower pop pressure causes a early injection event so if the injectors are not balanced your chasing gremlins from cylinder to cylinder and uneven pop pressures will cause the issue you are talking about.

I will also point this out a low pop pressure also will cause the fuel to not atomize in the precup when it hits the precup floor and starts its ignition event meaning it will not burn completely and will flow out the exhaust as unburned fuel these IDI engines on the 6.9 and 7.3 are special and not exactly like other IDI's we have a swirl cup ( ricardo bowl ) in our pistons that takes the ignited fuel charge from the precup and drives it into the center of the cylinder in a swirling pattern often called a flame swirl other idi's use a different setup that is less finicky ours is super finicky.

I like to set my injector pop pressures to 1950 psi this gives almost perfect controllable fuel ignition in the precup I adjust my injector pop pressure by shimming them and buy replacement injector nozzles and use a manual injector pop tester which I advise anyone who has one of these engines to invest in its super critical and one of most important things to these engines to keep them running well and not slobbering and running like crap.

Improper fuel injector pop pressures and bad nozzles are main killer of these motors as they soot load the motor and cause fuel oil contamination which wipes out the bottom end of motor also fuel efficiency drops drastically with improper injector pop pressure and slobbering injector nozzles and this leads also to super high EGT's which destroy pistons / motors.

 

[quickster]

So to update on the pump issue, it looks like I was off a tooth. Pulled the pump today and marked it before I removed the gear. I used a hard drive disc as a mirror and found the Y on the cam gear. Also for the hell of it i did the counting 17 teeth to either side and putting a line on it. You can see the scribe mark I put on the gear and the marker. It's a tooth off. The hard drive disc is a mirror and works excellent

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[groovemonster]

Once you get it together let us know if it solved the problem.

 

[Dieselcrawler]

So your about 1.5 hr nw of me, but when you getting together and running again, I will offer to time it if you bring it to me.

 

[quickster]

I will definitely take you up on the offer Dieselcrawler. My son lives in Oley. I can stop by and see him after.

I got the truck back together and running. Advanced the timing a bit according to the marks. Just a small amount of smoke, which probably means I only have to dial in the timing now. Starts up immediately, no problems at all. If anyone ever has doubts about the timing or has smoking issues due to a previous owner doing questionable work , pulling the pump and gear is an easy job.