'01 smoking after changing fuel pressure regulator
(In case there's any doubt after reading the statement below, I know very little about engines of any kind, but I can follow directions.)
About 8 months ago I was experiencing regular "pulsing" of my 2001 2500HD 6.6 Duramax (330K miles at the time)when traveling down the highway, and was advised by a mechanic that my Fuel Pressure Regulator needed changing. So me and a buddy looked at some youtube videos and changed it. I put in a stock FPR from the local parts house. And I changed out my thermostat while I was at it.
When I started the truck back up, I immediately saw light-colored smoke coming from the exhaust. I figured it was because now that I was getting good fuel supply, maybe my injectors were showing up as bad.
So I took it to three different diesel mechanics, none who could confirm that my injectors needed replacing. Turbo was fine, (no oil inside? ) The truck runs fine, no rough idle or rpm, zero poor performance. One guy hooked up an analyzer and said that without actually pulling injectors and testing each one, all he could tell me was to live with the smoke. "It's an old truck and it smokes. Keep driving it." My mileage per gallon is holding steady, around 16 in town and 18-19 on the highway if I keep it at 65. Will still pull my 6000 lb trailer on 1,000 mile trips without complaint.
Great, except that it REALLY SMOKES, and is most evident at idle when clouds of smoke fill the intersection. Embarrassing at a stop light. The smoke is whitish-grey, not dark. Certainly not black. I have NEVER needed to add oil. The smoke smells like diesel in my opinion.
Is there something I could have done/not done when I changed the FPR? Do I have to go spend $2000 to pull injectors to find out why my truck is smoking even when there's no indication that it's injectors? Can anyone offer any advice?
One final note: I put on a BullyDog in '05, and it doesn't seem to work anymore. I can't adjust the program. One person told me that could be the problem, that I didn't get it hooked back up right when I put the truck back together.
smoking after FPR replace
hello loosedrag
I too am experiencing smoke after replacing the FPR. I replaced it with a Bosch. My vehicle is a 2002 chevy duramax 6.6 turbo. Have you found a fix other than having to replace the injectors? It gnaws at me to have to replace injectors because it was not smoking until after I replaced the FPR. Mechanic says injectors all show to be running in spec and that I have fuel in pipes and need to run it for a while but its been about 500 miles and it is still smoking. I have a few acres outside the city limits, if I have to replace injectors there is going to be a bonfire! So any other ideas are certainly welcomed.
I'm not a mechanic. Learn from my mistakes if not your own
I ended up buying a cheap set of "reconditioned"injectors on ebay from "injectorsdirect.com", reasoning that even if they only lasted me 10,000 miles, I would get an education in how to install a good set on my truck next time. I spent $1200 on parts, another $200 on tools, and at least 40 man hours (me and a buddy) doing the work. The truck started, ran fine, but was spraying fuel inside the engine compartment. I'm not a mechanic, so I did what I thought I should do: I redid the install making sure I observed all torque specs instead of "winging it". When I attempted to restart, I could not get the truck to fire up. I could fill the filter then the truck would run, but I could not get it to self-prime. After a couple of weeks of realizing I was not a mechanic and could not get solid "how-to" info off of youtube, I had my truck towed to my mechanic.
He told me he checked my fuel system all the way from the tank forward to the injectors, and he was at the stage where now he had to pull the injectors to see if they were the problem. I was into him for nearly a grand even if he just put the truck back together and towed it back to my driveway. So I let him at it. He pulled the injectors, had them spec'd at the local bosch-equipped injector tester, and their tests revealed 4 out of the eight injectors I had purchased were below spec, one so bad that it was, according to my mechanic and the testing facility, a probable cause for my truck not starting. Did I mention I'm not a mechanic?
My mechanic said that in order to warranty his work, I'd need to let him install injectors he trusted, at $300 each. In less than a week, my 17-year old truck, with 350K miles on it, was running fine, no smoke, with a $5100 bill hanging off the tailgate. Net cost of the injector repair on my truck was close to $7000.
Since then I've had several "qualifed" folks tell me I was taken for a ride. I know I got zero cooperation out of "injectorsdirect.com", eventually having to get my money back via my card-issuing bank rather than "injectorsdirect.com", who wouldn't even return a phone call or email once they realized I had provided them with bosch-certified specs showing their injectors were bad.
Long story short: I have some nice tools now like crows-feet ratchets and tiny finger ratchets I may never use again, and $5000 less in my bank account, a boatload of too-late experience, and a truck that runs fine again.
If you aren't a mechanic, don't change out your own injectors. That's my advice, and I paid dearly to be able to offer it to you for free.
Injectors the likely problem with smoking, but I'M NOT A MECHANIC!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dieselbreath
hello loosedrag
I too am experiencing smoke after replacing the FPR. I replaced it with a Bosch. My vehicle is a 2002 chevy duramax 6.6 turbo. Have you found a fix other than having to replace the injectors? It gnaws at me to have to replace injectors because it was not smoking until after I replaced the FPR. Mechanic says injectors all show to be running in spec and that I have fuel in pipes and need to run it for a while but its been about 500 miles and it is still smoking. I have a few acres outside the city limits, if I have to replace injectors there is going to be a bonfire! So any other ideas are certainly welcomed.
Dieselbreath, After changing out my FPR, I took my truck to as many local diesel mechanics as I could find (not the dealer) and none could give me solid reason why my truck was smoking so profusely. The consensus was that the truck had 350,000 miles on it, with 240,000 on the current set of injectors, so injectors were the likely culprit. No one could say without pulling them and testing them. As I just narrated in a separate post on this feed, I elected to go the cheapest route thinking I was smarter than the average non-mechanic. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. But I learned first-hand that I definitely wasn't as smart as folks who do this for a living. (The local bosch injector dealer would have tested my current set for $50 each and sold me remanufactured bosch for $300 each to replace the ones that needed replacing, with no testing charge on the replaced ones. In hindsight that's the deal I wish I'd taken.) So my non-educated, experienced opinion is that you probably should change your injectors if they have lots of miles on them. And avoid "injectorsdirect.com", no matter how much "good press" they say they've received. I know first hand they're not someone I'd deal with twice. Hope that helps. BTW, six months after the injector replace, my transfer case went out. Yippee!