MBN Smoking

I'd be more prone to believe it's the head gasket than an injector. Is the white smoke worse on cold starts?

 

Ok it smokes on 1st start up for about 3 minutes then I can drive for about 3 hours and stop and let her idle again on low rpm and she's gonna do the same thing like she did first time smoke again ...if I crank the idle to 1000 rpm then she will stop...

 

Here's what you need to look for. White to blueish white smoke on start up. After the engine coolant temperature goes above 160 degrees the smoke dissipates dramatically. When you manually cut the cylinder off and the smoke disappears, does the engine exhaust tone change or does it sound similar? If you can't hear much of a change then the cylinder wasn't firing completely.

Now you ask whether it's an injector or possibly a head gasket. You have to remember when you cut the injector off manually, you are turning the fuel off to that cylinder. So the smoke trail is an indication that the injectors is injecting fuel in. The smoke is a sign it's not being burnt completely. Could it be an injector? Possibly, but to be doing this the injector spray pattern has to be bad. My thoughts are a head gasket. Why? Because it burns clean after the engine is worked. The work load creates enough cylinder temperatures to burn the fuel more efficiently and the smoke dissipates. When you allow the truck to idle for periods of time, the coolant temperature drops and the lower compression of the cylinder with colder coolant temperatures, the fuel is not burnt as efficiently and it starts to smoke. At the 1000 RPM idle the coolant temperatures stay high enough that the fuel is burnt more effeciently ........so no smoke.

When doing the manual cut out test of injectors..........you will be able to hear the what sounds like a dead cylinder on number 4......the engine tone will not dramtically change while you have this cylinder turn off. You can also do a reverse cut out test........what I mean by this is. These engines when warm will run on one cylinder. Cut off the other 5 and it should be able to idle on cylinder 4.......if it can't then it's a dead hole.

You can take it in to a CAT dealer and have a compression test done to confirm this. They will have to remove the complete overhead and injectors to do this.

 

What do I need to get to fix this properly ...do I need to buy head gasket kit...what else I'm gonna need thanx

 

Ok I tried the cheap way first.... Replaced #4 injector and that didn't fix it...I start the truck and she smokes I drove it for about 15 minutes no problem as soon as I stop and and let her idle low she stays smoking ....now I'm wondering what else could be wrong ...

 

i dont know if it will work in your situation but it did in mine. on my old emodel i took out the injector on the dead hole and removed one of the headbolts beside the same hole put compressed air in the injector hole and had a pretty water fountain shooting out of the hole i took the headbolt out of. blowed head gasket and droped liner was the result.

 

Well I guess next step is compression test ...underpsi when u find out what's wrong with yours let me know thanx

 

Yes, you'll need a head gasket set. The problem is you'll also need to make absolutely sure the liner hasn't sunk. Otherwise you'll be doing this again in a short amount of time.

The head gasket failed for a reason, the reason is more than likely the liner protrusion is low. To fix this problem you'll have to remove the liners from the block, cut the deck surface of the block and install shims to raise the liners back to specs.

This is not something I'd recommend for you to do yourself. It takes special tools to do this correctly. Most CAT shops will have someone that can come out to your location and do it there, but the cost of doing this isn't cheap. You also maybe able to find a small independent shop that will come to you that has the tools and do it.

 

Ok how long I can drive like this is it gonna hurt anything else ....thanx for all the help Mr haney and others

 

I've seen people drive them for awhile and get away with it. I've seen others have major problems driving them like this. Sooner or later it will start pushing coolant out of the overflow tube on the radiator. You could also shut it off and have it hydro lock with coolant entering the cylinder. The problem will be that you're 1000 miles from home and will not know anybody in the area to fix it. Now you can at least fix it at a shop you're fimilar with and trust not to gouge you