UtahMurph
04-17-2012, 14:14
I have a 1995 Chevy Tahoe 6.5 turbo diesel with 190k miles. A couple of weeks ago, the truck was running perfectly but it had a major diesel leak and a minor coolant leak. I took it to a number of mechanics and the last shop fixed the diesel leak by replacing all of the return lines and tightening a loose injector. The day after I got the truck back from the shop, it began having starting issues (no prior starting issues). It was progressive, beginning with hard starts and growing to no starts. Initially, cold starts and hot starts were okay but warm starts were a no-go (between 25 minutes and an hour and a half after turning the engine off). I should mention that when I got the truck back from getting the diesel leak fixed, the coolant leak had gotten significantly worse and it was a couple of days before that was fixed. I assumed the coolant leak led to an overheating of the PMD (which is remotely located). However, after replacing it with a new Dtech PMD, all the starting issues still remain. It has also died a few times while driving down the road (slow speeds, mid speeds, and high speeds). Pouring cold water over the injection pumped did help a little with warm starts initially, but it does not help anymore. When it did work, it was still an incredibly hard start. A manual glow-plug override switch also helped initially with warm starts, but does not help at all anymore. The current status is that all starts are hard regardless of temperature and often times it will not start at all. All glow-plugs have been checked and are good. While I realize this looks a lot like a failing injection pump, it just seems weird that the issue started right after getting it back from the shop. Wondering if there is anything that could have happened there to cause this? The shop, of course, says no. Also- there's lots of smoke along with the hard starts- usually white/grey now but in the beginning of the problem there were a few big black clouds.