Oh boy.
Pulling my camper home over the weekend (about 9.5K pounds), about 230 miles from home I notice a slight exhaust haze in my passenger side mirror. It seemed to come and go a bit, but eventually settled on a definite puffing of black smoke out of the exhaust any time you were in the throttle. It seemed like one cylinder was putting out more smoke than the other. Clearly not a solid stream but a puff puff puff. Truck ran great otherwise. All temps were normal, power was good, EGT's were right were I expected them. Suspecting a bad load of fuel, I decided to monitor it closely and press on. The smoke level appears to remain the same for 225 of those miles.
Then about 5 miles from the house, all hell broke loose. Sounded like it was throwing a rod . Huge knocking. Massive amounts of white-ish, tan-ish smoke. Power was down noticeably, but otherwise the gauges were all normal. I was in the second to far left lane in traffic, and nobody seems to want to let a blowing up truck over. I had to run about a mile or so to get over and get off a bridge with no shoulder. It was still running, the knock seemed like it kinda came and went. Sacrificing my truck for our safety, I limped it up an on ramp and almost made it into a shopping center parking lot where I had to stop for an idiot running a stale yellow light. Truck died and would not restart.
Luckily, some nice guys in a Ram pulled my whole rig into the parking lot where I had to leave it for the night. Upon retrieval, I experimentally tried to start it. It cranks at a good speed, and sounds like it almost wants to fire, but then there is a "dead spot" in the cranking that sounds like it skips a beat. If it was a gas engine, I would say it jumped time.
I can't tear into till the weekend, so I am trying to come up with a plan of attack. My immediate guess is an injector issue, due to the black puffing for a couple of hours before the come-apart. Clearly had to be fuel and not oil and not antifreeze. At the last stop (pee break for the wife) it did idle with pretty good grey haze coming out of the tailpipe, but it was not steam, or oil smoke to my eyes. Injectors are fairly new (under 10K miles) 180/30s. I have heard (and read up) where some guys state a bad injector can sound like a bad rod knock. But this was awful. My wife asked what the noise was and my initial reaction was that the motor just blew up on us.
So... "hope springs eternal" and all that, I am praying that its just an injector issue. If so, would that be something I could see if I pulled the injectors? I would think that even with a single bad injector, it would start and somewhat run. I am well equipped with most mechanics tools, but I lack the advanced diagnostics stuff. I see an oil slick under the truck, but I did try draining the fuel bowl.
Can anyone offer up a road-map of where to get started and what to look for? Any help in developing a plan would be appreciated. I planned on yanking the valve covers and possible the injectors this coming weekend, but if there other things I should do first, I might be able to tackle them.
Tim
Pulling my camper home over the weekend (about 9.5K pounds), about 230 miles from home I notice a slight exhaust haze in my passenger side mirror. It seemed to come and go a bit, but eventually settled on a definite puffing of black smoke out of the exhaust any time you were in the throttle. It seemed like one cylinder was putting out more smoke than the other. Clearly not a solid stream but a puff puff puff. Truck ran great otherwise. All temps were normal, power was good, EGT's were right were I expected them. Suspecting a bad load of fuel, I decided to monitor it closely and press on. The smoke level appears to remain the same for 225 of those miles.
Then about 5 miles from the house, all hell broke loose. Sounded like it was throwing a rod . Huge knocking. Massive amounts of white-ish, tan-ish smoke. Power was down noticeably, but otherwise the gauges were all normal. I was in the second to far left lane in traffic, and nobody seems to want to let a blowing up truck over. I had to run about a mile or so to get over and get off a bridge with no shoulder. It was still running, the knock seemed like it kinda came and went. Sacrificing my truck for our safety, I limped it up an on ramp and almost made it into a shopping center parking lot where I had to stop for an idiot running a stale yellow light. Truck died and would not restart.
Luckily, some nice guys in a Ram pulled my whole rig into the parking lot where I had to leave it for the night. Upon retrieval, I experimentally tried to start it. It cranks at a good speed, and sounds like it almost wants to fire, but then there is a "dead spot" in the cranking that sounds like it skips a beat. If it was a gas engine, I would say it jumped time.
I can't tear into till the weekend, so I am trying to come up with a plan of attack. My immediate guess is an injector issue, due to the black puffing for a couple of hours before the come-apart. Clearly had to be fuel and not oil and not antifreeze. At the last stop (pee break for the wife) it did idle with pretty good grey haze coming out of the tailpipe, but it was not steam, or oil smoke to my eyes. Injectors are fairly new (under 10K miles) 180/30s. I have heard (and read up) where some guys state a bad injector can sound like a bad rod knock. But this was awful. My wife asked what the noise was and my initial reaction was that the motor just blew up on us.
So... "hope springs eternal" and all that, I am praying that its just an injector issue. If so, would that be something I could see if I pulled the injectors? I would think that even with a single bad injector, it would start and somewhat run. I am well equipped with most mechanics tools, but I lack the advanced diagnostics stuff. I see an oil slick under the truck, but I did try draining the fuel bowl.
Can anyone offer up a road-map of where to get started and what to look for? Any help in developing a plan would be appreciated. I planned on yanking the valve covers and possible the injectors this coming weekend, but if there other things I should do first, I might be able to tackle them.
Tim