diesel truck issues

[stormi]

Got a diesel truck starting problem.

The patient:
2000 F250 Superduty, 4x4
Approx 280K kms

seems like the battery(ies) doesn't have enough juice to turn it over, but only when it's below -10ish (I picked up a battery tester, but it's only good to 500CCA, and I'm concerned about what a 650 CCA battery might do to it.
 
I get about 2 tries out of it, then it tells me to put the battery charger on it and go back inside and consider carpooling in this weather.
when it tries to start, it's go rrrr-rrrrr-rrrrrr-rrrrr-almost catch-rrr-rrrr-rrrr
Then there's no point in trying further, because it won't catch.

the truck insists on being plugged in below about 5C (I'm told this is "just a diesel thing", but in this weather (currently somewhere around the -25C range) it doesn't like a 1 - 4 hr warm up.  If I don't plug it in all night it doesn't seem to care that it's been plugged in at all.  This is going to be very costly over the duration of the winter.

So,.. here's what I know:
Truck was bought from a farmer.  Has been a farm truck all its life. And consequently, it's been "farmer-ized" a couple of times.
(Definition: farmer-ized: the act of jerry-rigging something to get it home, or, "just because", then never bothering to fix it properly, until it fails again, or until the item is sold, and it becomes someone else's problem.)

Truck currently has 15/40W oil in it ( I suspect that this is a HUGE no-no)

Even plugged in, it wouldn't start all last weekend (same pattern mentioned above) when it was below -30C, it would only start once the temps climbed above -15ish, then it started like it had been run all week.

Truck's air filter box has been modified to use a "big truck" filter, and has no cover and snorkel on it anymore.

The winterfront has been installed, as of this week.

Sometimes, when it fails to start, it will let out a "puff" of smoke from under the hood (close to the turbo area)

Sometimes, especially when it's cold ( the truck, not necessarily just the air), I can smell diesel when I get on the throttle.


I keep yelling "sell it" and booting it in the tires.  This doesn't seem to be fixing the problem.   
(I'm getting tired of my Ford being a true "Fix or Repair Daily", and it's been nickel and diming us since we got it in July.)

Anyone have any suggestions on how to make my "winter vehicle" work in the winter?

[pmackie]

Anyone have any suggestions on how to make my "winter vehicle" work in the winter?

But of course Stormi....

Truck currently has 15/40W oil in it ( I suspect that this is a HUGE no-no)

And, yes, this is a big source of your problem.

The short answer is:
1. Switch to Esso XD-3 0W-40 (or Shell Rotella T 0W-40 if you have to  )
2. Get a "Battery Blanket" and wire it into your block heater plug-in.

Additional detail:
There are a couple of specs you should be familiar with:
Pour Point - the point that oils stops being "solid" and just starts to pour.
CCS viscosity - Cold Cranking Simulator. A test that duplicates the cold start properties of oils.
MRV viscosity - Mini Rotary Viscosimeter Viscosity. Another method commonly used to measure cold temperature viscosities.

15W-40 oils have a pour point of approx -30 deg C. At -31 deg C, they are SOLID and will NOT FLOW. Minimum temperature for movement into an oil pump in your engine is usually 5 deg C above this temp. 15W-40 CCS viscosity is about 63 Poise at -20C, meaning that below this temperature the engine usually won't turn fast enough to start. 15W-40 has an MRV vis of about 290 Poise @ -25C and 700 Poise @ -30C. Max poise to flow to the oil pump is about 300.

So...15W-40 is acceptable to -20C and marginal to -25C. Colder than that and you are actually doing damage to your engine if you don't preheat the oil. Plugging in your block heater DOES NOT heat the oil, unless you have an oil pan heater (common on HD Trucks, less common on pickups).

For comparison, XD-3 0W-40 specs are:
Pour Point: -45C,  CCS vis @ -35C 57 P, MRV vis @ -40C 213 poise.

So...moving to 0W-40 will firstly allow the engine to turn over WAY faster, and likely start, but also will provide good lubrication once started, resulting in an engine that lasts longer.

Since battery capacity goes down dramatically as the temp drops, it can be beneficial to warm the battery slightly, as this will result in a little faster/longer cranking time. You don't want to cook the battery, but a heated blanket will help get the temp up in a shorter time. Here is a chart I found:



Anyway, you will notice the biggest difference moving to 0W-40, which will likely eliminate overnight plug in, increase starter life, increase engine life, etc.

[mwheat308]

The only problem I ran into on diesel engines is when the Glow Plugs get old and quit.
You have prob already checked that, but just my .02
Good Luck

[notagix]

If it turns over good for awhile give it a little shot of ether, also be sure you are using the winter fuel.

[Red01]

I keep yelling "sell it"

There's your best solution ^^^^^^, since it IS a Ford. 

(I'm getting tired of my Ford being a true "Fix or Repair Daily", and it's been nickel and diming us since we got it in July.)

Anyone have any suggestions on how to make my "winter vehicle" work in the winter?

Besides doing what the farmer did once he'd suffeceintly farmerized it (ie selling it), next time you get it running, you could wreck it and let the insurance company reimburse you.  Wait, I guess that's just another way of selling it. 

Given where you live, it seems to me a gasoline powered vehicle would make a better "winter vehicle."

[stormi]

Anyone have any suggestions on how to make my "winter vehicle" work in the winter?

But of course Stormi....

Ahh Paul!  I knew you'd come through for me.    I guess we'll use all that money we saved on additives this year on another oil change, even if this one is only about 45 days old.

Truck currently has 15/40W oil in it ( I suspect that this is a HUGE no-no)

And, yes, this is a big source of your problem.

The short answer is:
1. Switch to Esso XD-3 0W-40 (or Shell Rotella T 0W-40 if you have to  )
2. Get a "Battery Blanket" and wire it into your block heater plug-in.

K,.. I have no idea where to get Esso oil here, on a saturday.  Apparently Esso bulk dealers don't work saturdays here?    I see the Rotella in all the stores. 
Ryan's brother works for Ford, so we got 15 bottles of Motorcraft 0W-30 Synthetic (Specifically made for Power stroke diesel engines, according to the label), which Ryan's brother tells us is manufactured by Imperial Oil. (aka Esso :)) We got a pretty good deal on it too, so I don't feel -too- bad for throwing the old stuff out. ((less than $6/L including taxes and disposal levies, for full synthetic), it pays to have family in the parts department.)

I know, not quite what you recommended, but the closest we could get to an Esso 0W oil. :)

As for the battery blanket, we borrowed one from the neighbor, but picked up two of our own yesterday. To be installed today hopefully.

Additional detail:
There are a couple of specs you should be familiar with:
Pour Point - the point that oils stops being "solid" and just starts to pour.
CCS viscosity - Cold Cranking Simulator. A test that duplicates the cold start properties of oils.
MRV viscosity - Mini Rotary Viscosimeter Viscosity. Another method commonly used to measure cold temperature viscosities.

15W-40 oils have a pour point of approx -30 deg C. At -31 deg C, they are SOLID and will NOT FLOW. Minimum temperature for movement into an oil pump in your engine is usually 5 deg C above this temp. 15W-40 CCS viscosity is about 63 Poise at -20C, meaning that below this temperature the engine usually won't turn fast enough to start. 15W-40 has an MRV vis of about 290 Poise @ -25C and 700 Poise @ -30C. Max poise to flow to the oil pump is about 300.

Last night's temp at -least- -32C. 
So,... we currently have chocolate cake in the oil pan.  Awesome.  OK, so, yesterday's christmas shopping included: 2 battery blankets, an Oil Pan heater, and 15L of oil.  I feel broke now.

The Oil pan heater doesn't seem to have done much, it's marginally warm where the heater is, but nothing has radiated through the pan.  Apparently chocolate cake doesn't warm up at -32C.

Once we can get the oil out of the pan, I think we'll be OK, from what I read.  Unfortunately, it's not going to warm up to above -20C til wednesday at the earliest.

So,.. the plan today (-26C) is to pull the drain plug, and let it drip out, marble by marble.  Ryan's going to go out and tarp the truck and try to put a space heater or something under there, in the absence of a tiger torch.

So...15W-40 is acceptable to -20C and marginal to -25C. Colder than that and you are actually doing damage to your engine if you don't preheat the oil. Plugging in your block heater DOES NOT heat the oil, unless you have an oil pan heater (common on HD Trucks, less common on pickups).

For comparison, XD-3 0W-40 specs are:
Pour Point: -45C,  CCS vis @ -35C 57 P, MRV vis @ -40C 213 poise.

So...moving to 0W-40 will firstly allow the engine to turn over WAY faster, and likely start, but also will provide good lubrication once started, resulting in an engine that lasts longer.

Since battery capacity goes down dramatically as the temp drops, it can be beneficial to warm the battery slightly, as this will result in a little faster/longer cranking time. You don't want to cook the battery, but a heated blanket will help get the temp up in a shorter time. Here is a chart I found:



Anyway, you will notice the biggest difference moving to 0W-40, which will likely eliminate overnight plug in, increase starter life, increase engine life, etc.

Yay!! thanks for the suggestions Paul :)  We'll report back in later today to see if we got the darn thing started.

[stormi]

The only problem I ran into on diesel engines is when the Glow Plugs get old and quit.
You have prob already checked that, but just my .02
Good Luck

We haven't yet, but Ryan has all the info to check them.  According to the "best" diesel shop around here, the most common failure is the relay, and an intermittent failure at that.  However, I've been told that if the glow plugs weren't working, that the truck would throw a check engine light....

Thanks for the suggestion!  It's on the list. :)

[stormi]

If it turns over good for awhile give it a little shot of ether, also be sure you are using the winter fuel.

I've been told that ether isn't good for glow plugs???

Either way, the only diesel you can buy around here is winter fuel, so that's taken care of. 
 

[stormi]

I keep yelling "sell it"

There's your best solution ^^^^^^, since it IS a Ford. 

yeah, I hear that!  I don't really love Ford, I just drive them cos we get cheap parts. 

(I'm getting tired of my Ford being a true "Fix or Repair Daily", and it's been nickel and diming us since we got it in July.)

Anyone have any suggestions on how to make my "winter vehicle" work in the winter?

Besides doing what the farmer did once he'd suffeceintly farmerized it (ie selling it), next time you get it running, you could wreck it and let the insurance company reimburse you.  Wait, I guess that's just another way of selling it. 

Tempting, believe me.  I considered starting it, leaving it unlocked and leaving for the day.  Surely someone would grab it, right?

Given where you live, it seems to me a gasoline powered vehicle would make a better "winter vehicle."

True that, but this one is supposed to do double duty.  Pulling in the summer, and winter vehicle in the winter. The diesel was purchased cos of the great job it does of the first job.  That said, a V10 would do a similar job, just be harder on fuel.  And you can buy a lot of fuel for the cost of: buy in, maintenance, and higher diesel fuel costs.  Not to mention the added insurance of having to have 3 vehicles around instead of two.

It's looking more and more like we're going to sell the Mustang, and the diesel, and get me a newer truck that will pull the trailer that I'll drive year round now.

[pmackie]

I know, not quite what you recommended, but the closest we could get to an Esso 0W oil. :)

Yup...that will work just fine. I didn't recommend 0W-30 as I didn't have manuals handy to check the recommendations, but it will be just great. I also don't normally send people for OEM oils as they don't make them, and normally charge significantly more than other sources.

Once you get the old oil out, and new stuff in, you will be fine. Let me know how it all goes.

[stormi]

I know, not quite what you recommended, but the closest we could get to an Esso 0W oil. :)

Yup...that will work just fine. I didn't recommend 0W-30 as I didn't have manuals handy to check the recommendations, but it will be just great. I also don't normally send people for OEM oils as they don't make them, and normally charge significantly more than other sources.

Once you get the old oil out, and new stuff in, you will be fine. Let me know how it all goes.

*mutter mutter mutter*
Well, it took some time to get the thing firing, and here are the things I noticed:

It fires beautifully when it finally does.  It took upwards of an hour to get it to fire though, and that was with Ryan's truck boosting it. 
Possibly a sign of a frozen battery?

On the subject of a frozen battery, it would appear that we lost one or both in this whole ordeal, or else the alternator.  I'm voting for the batteries, cos we were planning on replacing those, and I'm not too cool with the idea of replacing both batteries and the alternator.

That said, everytime I've had a "lights dimming at a stop" issue, it's always been alternator related.  The F250 also has a neat trick of flashing the transmission overdrive light when the volts fall below 12V. 

We discovered all of this fun stuff when we took it for a drive to get it up to temps and charged up.

The other thing I noticed was in the Haynes manual, it mentions different times to heat the glow plugs at different temps.  It showed up to 15secs at -18C.

The neat part is that this truck is always 10secs on the glow plugs.  I can time it to the second.  Sooo,.... it could be that the truck was ready to start, or it could be this:

I asked Ryan to turn the ignition on, wait for the "wait to start" light to go out, then turn it off, and turn it on again.
20secs of heating the air.

Wouldn't you know that the truck fired up like it was 0C outside? (It was severely pissed off to be running, but it fired up like a champ)

So I wonder if this is all a symptom of the "barometric pressure sensor" not working, or if that 10sec setting is set by the PCM, and can somehow be changed, or if it was just coincidence.

[pmackie]

I asked Ryan to turn the ignition on, wait for the "wait to start" light to go out, then turn it off, and turn it on again.
20secs of heating the air.

We do exactly the same thing on our F450 Diesel Cube Van when it's really cold (and it runs 0W-40) and this also seems to help, but so does plugging in the block heater for a couple of hours.

I would have been nice to warm up the old batteries with a low amp (under 2 amp) trickle charger for an extended period before the full alternator amps hit it, but that's how it goes...but don't change them out right away.

I froze all of my motorhome batteries solid last winter (had a small voltage "leak") and I warmed them in the garage with a trickle charger. They are 4 years old and seemed to be OK this past summer. We'll see how they do this next year. I'm sure freezing them didn't help their life any, but it didn't kill them either.

[stormi]

We do exactly the same thing on our F450 Diesel Cube Van when it's really cold (and it runs 0W-40) and this also seems to help, but so does plugging in the block heater for a couple of hours.

Wow :)  I got it right :)  So,... why would it not adjust the time, like it says it should in the Haynes manual?  Or is this a fight I should just leave til another day, and be happy the thing has started like a champ the last few days ( as long as we've plugged it in for a few hours)?

I would have been nice to warm up the old batteries with a low amp (under 2 amp) trickle charger for an extended period before the full alternator amps hit it, but that's how it goes...but don't change them out right away.

We were getting only about 1 to 2 tries at it before it needed a battery charger even before the cold snap, so I figure the batteries were already weak.  Ryan picked 2 batteries up on Christmas Eve, and the truck has been our "only" transportation since that day.  It's been doing really well. 

The main reason we replaced them is the behaviour of the transmission with the messed batteries.  When the charge would drop below 12V, the Overdrive light would flash, and the transmission would delay shift into 1st from a light.  i.e. I step on the gas and it almost felt like it was sliding into gear.  Once it was moving, and the Voltage came up for the transmission, it seemed to behave fine, and the overdrive light would go out.  I just didn't like the idea of damaging the transmission while we were testing the batteries out.  There are a lot of lights in Edmonton and St Albert, and we have to stop at most of them.  I wasn't cool with several hundred dollars in transmission work, if $250 in batteries would solve that and the starting issue at once. 

That said, I'm still selling it in the spring, no matter how well it's behaving now. The plan is to sell the Mustang, and the diesel and pick up something more suitable for me for the whole year, that will also pull the trailer.  One less vehicle to insure, and if we can sell the house and move to an acreage, something that's more practical for dirt roads and uncleared driveways in the winter.

I froze all of my motorhome batteries solid last winter (had a small voltage "leak") and I warmed them in the garage with a trickle charger. They are 4 years old and seemed to be OK this past summer. We'll see how they do this next year. I'm sure freezing them didn't help their life any, but it didn't kill them either.

"All of"?  How many motorhome batteries do you carry?  We had 2 running at once, and a spare.... now we have a generator, and will likely not carry the 2 spares...

If the batteries hadn't been under-performing already, we would have done this. Heck, I wanted to, just to see what would happen.  But in the end we decided there was too much clutter around here anyway, and that the new 880CCA batteries were doing the trick, no need to find out we would have made it another 2 months with the old ones.  Of course we would have had to warm them in the basement, for lack of a garage, which I understand to be a no-no.

[kako]

i think most of the problems, was caused by your small battery. 650 just didn't seem enough even my 1.6L diesel engine has trouble starting with my 650cca battery. also i have been told that you want to try to start cranking it the second the start light turns off. because it is when the chambers are the hottest. either is not bad for the glow plugs its just a little unsafe as it might preignite in the intake because of the heat from the glow plugs, which would be bad. even my dads 06 250 diesel will start in -40 unplugged in.. sure it doesnt like it.. but i will do it when asked. on a side note... a little 400cc engine will not boost a diesel engine.. not even a 1.6l.

[stormi]

Interestingly enough, 650CCA is the "factory" size as well.  I suspect that the batteries that we had were significantly under-performing though.

I wouldn't doubt that that's the best time to start it.  After all the glow plug "element" turns off around the time that the light goes out.  It would stand to reason that it would only be getting colder.  Sort of lik when you turn off the heater in the passenger compartment.  Just gets colder from that second on.

I truly believe that whether a truck will start or not without being plugged in has a little to do with how it grew up.  This one appears to still need a (heated) security blanket, even with the more powerful batteries and lighter oil. That said, for the most part, it seems to be doing fairly well with a couple hours plugged in now.

Oh yeah, there's not a lot of power output by the bikes for a diesel.  Poor little bike!!