WTF is going on with my '01 powerstroke? It used to smoke a little bit when starting it cold but now when you cold start it she kills every bug for miles there is so much smoke. Glow plugs gone? I already changed the relay??
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white usually means bad injectors. blue is oil. a little of both is pretty normal on cold starts. how long does your wts light stay on (check exactly how many seconds).
If it starts fine but still smokes bad, it is the intake air heater or air heater solenoid. pretty common on the smokers. Clip a power probe on the Intake heater side of the relay and stab the light in the negative of your battery. If you start the truck and the light comes on chances are it's the heater, no light and you got a bad solenoid.
I've got a 96 that does the same thing. Never any smoke when warm, runs well. Starts right up cold no issues. But, on a cold start it smokes a ton of white smoke and wreecks of fuel something terrible. I recently have changed the injector o-rings and that did not help that problem. I changed glow plugs about a year ago and has a fresh glow plug relay. I am not familar with the air intake heater??? Does the 96 model have this? If so, where is it?
First, check your coolant to ensure you don't have antifreeze getting in the cylinder via a head gasket etc. that will cause white smoke too. (see note about injector sleeve at the end if you are using coolant). Second, if it starts up fine (not runs fine but starts right up) like you say it does but smokes WHITE then ask yourself if it is missing/stumbling? If it is missing then you probably have an injector issue (burnt tip) raw diesel will smoke white/black in a cold engine. The engine will shake at an idle just as if a plug wire was off. If it is running good then I am leaning towards one of two possibilities either glow plugs/relay not cycling (they had to come on to start) or the fuel heater is inoperative/malfunctioning. The only other thing I have seen is a cracked injector sleeve which can cause coolant or fuel or oil or a combination of any (depending on the length of the crack) to get into the cylinder, but it usually won't go away. This is something you have to have special tools to remove and install. Usually you won't see this until 300,000 miles +. Let us know what you find, good luck.
This sounds like my truck. It not only rolls smoke on a cold start,it idles very rough, like a gasser with a dead plug. Until it warms up. Then the idle will smooth out and run fine. the other thing that makes me think I have an injector sticking open is that I can check the pressure on the valve on the side of the filter housing and have 0 psi as soon as I shut the engine off. It jumps instantly to 100+ psi when cranking on the motor, but goes back to 0 as soon as you kill it. They way I understand these motors, it should hold pressure for many hours. The lift pump is new. How do you check the injectors to try and figure out which one is the bad one?
Couple of questions: 1.) Rolls smoke but you don't say what color? 2.) What are you checking the fuel pressure on the filter housing with? This should only have lift pump pressure at this port. 100 lbs is way out of line. You are correct in that it should hold pressure, but not 100 lbs. More like 8-12 if I'm not mistaken. Take a look at the link posted by ???? provided above, seems like a lot of good information for both the novice and the experienced. Gotta go get ready to ride!