Archived Is VP44 shot?

[dwymore]

A friend of mine has a 2001 with a FASS lift pump and has never changed the injection pump. He was pulling a hill and ran out of fuel. When it died he looked at his fuel pressure gauge and it read zero. As he was coasting down the other side he left the switch on waiting for the lift pump to pick up again. It never did and he went for about a mile. He shut it off and got some fuel, but after getting it started it ran rough so he cracked three lines to get the air out and it smoothed out. The problem now is that it will only idle. It wont get above 900 RPM. He disconnected the batteries for a minute, but still the same problem. Was the pump starved enough to ruin it? When my pump went out, the engine wouldn't even start. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[monkeyman]

What fuel pressure was he running? The injection pump needs very little pressure to operate, but it will fail if no fuel is delivered for a short period as it will over heat from lack of cooling. Did he check for codes? The 216 will not turn the check engine light on. What FASS does he have? Internal or external brushes, maybe the FASS failed.
Rick

 

[dwymore]

He runs 16 PSI, but when he ran out of fuel of course the pressure went to zero and it died. After refueling, the fuel pressure was back up, but the engine will not accelerate. I don't know which FASS he has, but it was OK once it had fuel again.

 

[dwymore]

Has anyone else had this problem? My experience with the VP44 is when they go bad they just quit completely, but maybe someone else has had them just put out enough to run but not accelerate. Please help

 

[Alan Reagan]

It sounds like the engine is in the "limp home" mode. It may take a code clearer to get it back to normal.

 

[dwymore]

Do these trucks have a "limp home mode"?

 

[BDeMartile]

vp 44's fail in a variety of ways ie different symptoms and in medium truck trim yes there is a power derate mode but usually a key off for 30 secs will clear that as long as there is no persistant (active) problem. Need to pull codes...

 

[dwymore]

He did disconnect the negative cables for 30 sec. We'll check the codes Monday.

 

[Alan Reagan]

vp 44's fail in a variety of ways ie different symptoms and in medium truck trim yes there is a power derate mode but usually a key off for 30 secs will clear that as long as there is no persistant (active) problem. Need to pull codes...

Good point on the persistant problem. I had a problem on my 01, it derated and it took a code clearer to clear the faults and some effort on my part to fix the problem. Key off for 30 seconds and disconnecting the batteries didn't do anything until I removed my VA box. Clearing the codes took the machine. Good news is that my VP44 was OK.