My truck just pulled a Garfield.

[rapidoxidationman]

It was cold out this morning, like 10 below zero. Not super cold, but enough to notice.

My truck wasn't plugged in, nor should it need to have been.
Started as normal
ran for about 5 seconds (sounded cold, but again it was normal
then it stopped running.
It woke up, noticed it was cold, then put its head back under the covers and said "not today". Just like Garfield.

Repeated attempts at starting have been met with turning over but no fire.
I noticed a small leak at the fuel filter where a 12 gauge wire plugs into the top, only appears after priming.
Cranking is slow. I checked the battery terminals and tightened up the (+) terminal on the front driver's side battery.
It has been plugged in now for about 3 hours but still no joy.
Yesterday, I noticed that it took an extra second or 2 of cranking to start it up when it was warm.

Ideas? My first thought was gelled fuel but I've literally never had a problem with that. Ever. I use additive on every tank and the fuel stations around here are obviously in tune with the local weather conditions. That plus the liquid coming from the filter mount says the fuel isn't the problem.

Air?

[DIESEL/VETTE]

Best place to start is that leak, fix it, you are losing your prime. Go from there.

[rapidoxidationman]

Double checked the battery terminals (all 4), charged the batteries, and gave her another crank. 5 seconds of high speed cranking and a warm (been plugged in all day) engine and it fired up. Heading to Jackson tomorrow morning to get a new filter housing to take care of the bad O ring issue. Yes, I could rebuild the existing one given that there's no cracks, but my time is worth more than that. Out with the old, in with the new. Done.
225K miles on the truck.

[EdHale]

[QUOTE=rapidoxidationman;316394]It was cold out this morning, like 10 below zero. Not super cold, but enough to notice.

"Not super cold"? Man what we can get used to. It is 52F here this morning and I'm "cold", but then this thread has me convinced that cold is a relative term.

[More Power]

Glad you got it going. Here's a tech page written not long ago that could help with getting a truck ready for cold temps.
http://www.thedieselpage.com/features/coldweathercc.htm

[rapidoxidationman]

Thanks for the link!
I'll be rolling into my friend's heated shop in an hour or two to change out the filter assembly. I've been running the truck all day and aside from slightly longer starting crank times it hasn't had any issues. I left it plugged in last night.:)

Edit: An easy job to change the filter head. Pull the airbox and air line to the turbo, remove the flex union on the intercooler line from the intake manifold and hard line, disconnect the fuel lines and wire harnesses, remove 2 bolts from the head. Assembly is the reverse. Prime, start, done. Tomorrow morning will tell if the part took care of the problem; it is already well south of 10 below.

[Kennedy]

Every Dmax should have a lift pump. Once this is done there are almost never ant filter housing leaks because the orings stay in place and wet.

[rapidoxidationman]

Is there any evidence that shows a lift pump is beneficial? In other words, from a purely economical standpoint, can HPFP failures be directly attributed to the lack of a lift pump? As far as the filter head goes, I could replace it at least 3 times (more if I shopped online instead of picking it up at the local dealer) before meeting the cost of a lift pump setup either in time or parts $$. That's well over 600,000 miles, and I just don't see myself putting that many miles on the truck.

I will grant that having the system under slight pressure instead of slight vacuum relative to atmospheric pressure would allow leaks to be made obvious and would eliminate collapsed rubber fuel lines, but given that I have a stock truck and don't generally drive with my foot deep in the pedal I just don't have the fueling demands that another guy might.


It was colder this morning than two days ago. The truck was not plugged in but started without a hitch and the minor surging I had begun to notice last week is gone. :)

[DickWells]

I've never regretted putting in my lift-pump-filter (Fass, sorry, John:o); the only issue being that I apparently have a very slight suction leak near the top of the fuel tank, since I have had an air situation if I let the fuel get waay low. Doing the thing over, I would have dropped the tank and changed all the lines, down to the pickup point. Any issues that I had, before, with fuel loss at the stock filter disappeared with the new lift pump/filter, and I only change filters at ~20K intervals, now. Come to think of it, I'll bet I'm over 30K, right now!

[jbplock]

Back in the early LB7 days there was some good discussion in the forum about the need for a lift pump (a search in the forum for Lift Pumps will recall those early threads). Back then before John Kennedy made his current offering available some of us added the AC Delco EP158 or EP309 lift pump that was used on the GM 6.5 Diesel trucks. I added an EP158 with a Stanadyne 30 micron pre-filter and bypass pressure regulator on my 03 Dmax that has been running trouble free since 2003. The set up includes an oil pressure switch to prevent the pump from running unless the engine was running (a safety feature on the 6.5 that would prevent the pump from pushing fuel in the event of accident). I also added a timer that would start the pump running during the glow cycle before the pressure switch kicked in. For the initial installation I removed the factory hose and tapped in between the tank and fuel cooler. After the warranty was up I restored the factory hose and spliced into the steel fuel line along the frame. A few pictures of the set-up are attached. The setup also includes a switch under the hood to activate the pump to prime the fuel system when changing filters.:)