From: Alex (alex@glx.net)
Date: Sun Sep 26 2004 - 19:25:57 PDT
The story started a little over two weeks ago. In a fit of preventative
maintenance, I thought I should change all the fuel filters. Having only
had the truck a couple of months and having driven it less that 100
miles since I received it from the DRMO, I wanted to make sure it will
be ready for winter. Oil filters and oil changed the week before, I
thought I was up to the task. things are never as straight forward as
they first appear.
Went down to the local NAPA with all the numbers found on various places
on the net and bought the filters. Parked the truck in a nice handy
place to work on it and went to work. Guess what, the great looking
filters, both primary and secondary that came out, didn't look anything
like the cork ended filters that came out of the NAPA boxes. After
careful examination of the replacement filters, I concluded that yes,
they would fit in the canisters, but they were a far cry from the fit
and quality of what came out. (The filter hunt is a topic for another
post.) Two weeks later my new OEM filters arrived and I was looking
forward to a 30 minute task to get things going again.
Before I go much further, I'll mention two items that might have some
bearing on my current problem.
1) The truck always ran great, on those short trips I made, but tended
to start hard. It took about 3 tries of about 5-7 seconds of cranking
before it caught.
2) Whoever last replaced the primary filter put the lower cup on upside
down. This means the fuel was bypassing the element.
OK, I put everything back together (with the primary cup properly
installed) and installed 3 new filters.
Opened up the bleeder on top of the secondary filters, turned on the
switch, (dammed buzzer) and waited... and waited... and waited... and...
You get the picture. I could see the air bubble slowly move up on the
clear input side of the secondary replace by fuel but nothing ever came
out of the bleeder. I even opened the drain wing nut on the bottom of
the second filter... no fuel! Listened at the fuel tank and could hear a
whirring sound. The dammed truck ran 3 weeks ago when I turned it off!
OK I'm stumped. Can the truck run with a bad or very low output fuel
pump... is that how it was running. Did putting the primary filter
together correctly cause it to stop working? There seemed to be fuel
flowing at the primary filter input when I removed the pipe and turned
the switch on... but I didn't measure the pressure. Does anyone know how
much pressure I should have at the input of the secondary filters? How
about at the tank? Could there be something that is causing the fuel
shutoff to be not opening at the injector pump? I can see the plunger
move when the handle in the cab is pulled.
If I have to get to the tank pump... can this be done with the M35 box
in place, or do I have to drop the tank?
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Alex
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat May 07 2005 - 20:35:15 PDT