Archived Won't start due to no fuel pressure.

[SDrake]

Parked truck on steep drive way, nose up hill, fuel tank full. Two days later won't start. It did sputter some but less and less as I continued to crank. Long story short, very little fuel and a few small bubbles will squirt out top of fuel filter bleed valve when cranking even after I backed the truck downhill onto a level place straddling a ditch to be off the road. I have been through the return line leaking air two or three times and used the fuel hose the parts stores said was correct which of course is a farce. They soften in a year or two and what a PITA to replace. I have ordered coast guard approved A1 hose that I learned about on TDR forums. As of this failure I have noticed leakage around the lift pump so had decided to replace the pump and all hoses to the tank considering the truck has 230K miles and I plan on keeping it for a long time and take her from stock to bombed in easy steps.



Here is what I need help on. I need to get the truck out of the current location where it would be almost impossible to work on it, into my garage 200 feet up a steep incline. Ask my wife why I live in a house on a hill with no level place outside the garage. I have a stainless steel garden sprayer that I am considering puting about a half gallon of fuel into and connecting it up to the supply line that feeds the fuel prefilter/heater and pumping it up to about 15psi and follow all the normal air bleeding proceedures and then start her up and get up the hill and into the garage quick.



One concern I have is the pressurization of the prefilter which is normally in a vacuum. Perhaps only 2 or 3 psi would be more appropriate. Will this work? Is there a proven safe way to get get fuel to the injection pump long enough for a short run in order to get out of a jam?



And a jam is what I am in. Please bail me out just one more time.

 

[guava]

Finish setting up your profile so people know where your located and what truck your talking about. Most likely, there is someone close enough to give you a hand with the 200 foot move up the hill.



Having the truck information will allow the right people to chime in with a helpful answer.

 

[SDrake]

profile

I thought I did a profile but noticed it not showing. I have done another but here it is in case I have not checked a box somewhere.



94 dodge Cummins 2500 auto 4x4 SLT with antilock brakes. Recently rejoined TDR and learned about KDP. TST tab kit installed. Pin was 1/8" out and easy to move. Bought truck new, now going on 236K miles. Keeping truck for another 10 years. Huntsville, Al





Anyone see any danger in force feeding the fuel as described in the original post, long enough to get into the garage.

 

[Joe G.]

I don't see any problem with force feeding fuel to the system just to move it a short distance.



Your lift pump is most likely ok. The fuel hoses are the prime suspect for the symptoms you have. Check all fittings. Remove the fuel heater. Test run it to see if any of that helps. Check out the "where is the air leak?" thread below and the "hard starting after sitting overnight" thread in the 12 valve engine forum.

 

[SDrake]

Yea!!!! truck is in the garage

Thanks Joe G. --- Truck is in the garage. For what it is worth. I used the garden sprayer with 6' of 3/8" hose T'ed to a pressure gauge, and connected to the fuel supply fitting from the fuel tank located just behind the fuel filter. Pumped up to about 3 psi, let fuel run out the filter bleed screw untill no bubbles, cracked the #1 injector fitting and the engine started up quickly. Drove out of the ditch, up the hill and into my garage and she died about one foot short. Why??? Almost forgot that fuel gets returned to the tank so my one gallon of fuel in the sprayer was gone in about a minute and a half.



But I now have starter, front drive line, fuel filter etc out and am installing all new hoses but this time the problem was actually the fuel heater leaking. NAPA had an OEM kit for about 26 dollars. I priced a fuel shutoff solenoid at dodge the other day and it was over $500 dollars. I was looking only for the rubber boot. Absolutely rediculous. Cummins had it for $164. A PCM at dodge dealer was $600. In a jam for a thermostat I paid the dodge dealer $46. This is all so unreal. Cummins had it for $13.



I need to at this time acknowledge my debt to all the TDR organization and all the members who post. I have learned too many things to mention but suffice it to say, I have had all the usual stuff to happen and I have taken care of all of it my self, often with knowledge I gained here. My truck has never been back to a shop once it was out of warranty. I subscribed to TDR when I bought the truck in 1994 but in 2000 I let it drop while I was away in school and the truck was somewhat neglected but it served me well. I recently subscribed again and learned about the Killer Dowell Pin. Ouch. Once I settled down from the horror of it, I got the TST tab kit and dove in. Actually the job was not bad and I got rid of a leaking front main seal in the process. The dowel pin was 1/8" out and could be pushed back in its hole with a screw driverdriver. Who knows how much longer it would have been until disaster struck. Without TDR this truck woulld have been a disaster almost from the time it was new. I recall, about 6 months after I got the truck, reading about the bad transmission line fittings. I crawled under and what do my eyes see but one of the lines on the drivers side showing exposed sealing surface and just barely connected with nothing to hold it there. One more commute and it would have been history.



Get my new transmission tomorrow and then the gauges go in followed by probably a number #6 plate from TST. Still studying on that. I don't get the relationship to the govenor springs.

 

[SDrake]

Where does my signature go.

My first post; no signature even though I thought I had done one. I created a new one and it show up in my next post. Now on my last post it is not there.

 

[Joe G.]

Your sig only shows up on the first post you make in a thread.



I'm glad you got it going.

 

[SDrake]

Learning while doing

Turned out that in addition to the leak in the prefilter/heater that the fuel lift pump check valve was gushing. While I was waiting for my new prefilter preheater kit to arrive, I decided to poke around a little more. Pressed the manual pump button on the pump and fuel came squirting out the intake side of the pump. Apparently it would send almost as much fuel back toward the tank as it pushed toward the filter on each stroke. With it parked on the steep incline it just would not cut the mustard. If I had never parked on that hill perhaps the pump would have worked a long time but then again it may have left me on the road side somewhere.



I now have a new pump and prefilter and all new coast guard approved fuel hose. But here is the neat part. I got to thinking about all the fuss and mess associated with fuel filter changes; installing fuel in the filter, bleeding etc and decided that we were missing the obvious.



Here is what I did. I installed the filter dry then I hooked up a shop vac to pressurize the fuel tank while the filter bleed screw was loose. Low and behold after about a minute or two, solid fuel squirted out with no bubbling beforehand. Tightened the bleed screw then loosened the #1 injector fitting, hit the starter and almost instantly the engine started and was running smooth before I could get to the injector fitting to tighten it up.



From now on I will not dread the job near as much. I think this is the end of the 911 story

 

[Joe G.]

You don't need to loosen any injector lines in a P7100 pump system. It will start by using the starter even if the injection line are completly empty. It takes a few starter cool down periods to do that, but it will start. In your case there was plenty of fuel in the system so it would have started almost instantly without touching an injector line.

 

[SDrake]

The reason I loosen the #1 cylinder injector fitting (it is the easiest) is to speed up the start. I have been in situations when it simply would not start and battery was getting depleted but then loosening the fitting got it going. Maybe coincidence, in that at last it was ready but having experienced several fuel outs due to the gauge being bad and the return fuel hose going bad and changing filters etc, I have found that if I bleed the filter and crack the #1 fitting that I do not have to go through as many starter cool downs. This happened in my case I think because apparently the check valve was leaking (kind of like a leaking heart valve in a person) allowing the fuel to bleed back into the tank between start attempts so instead of going two steps forward and one back I was going two forward and two back. Breaking the #1 injector got me three steps forward and two back and thus sucess.



And now that I know I can push fuel from the tank with the vacuum on blow I don't think it will ever take more than one starter cycle. I am thinking now that I should just bleed at a fitting on the pump (have to figure out which) in situations where I run out of fuel. I have loaned my truck to two different son in laws and both of them have run out of fuel even when reminded that that is a no no on these trucks. A 12 volt air matress pump is now in the tray behind the drivers seat.



Is there any down side to breaking the injector fitting loose. If you don't have a wrench with you it is good to know that the truck will start without it. Loosening allows some fuel spillage which smells up things but by then that has already happend to some extent and once things dry up the smell eventually goes away. even if you don't clean it up. But is there another down side to it?

 

[Joe G.]

I don't think loosening the fittings will help start at all with the P7100 pump. Experiments with my own truck show that if the fuel system is working it will start. If the fuel system has a problem it may not start or be hard to regardless of what you do. In one case, I removed the injector lines from my engine because the paint had chipped pretty bad and they looked horrible. I removed all the paint from the injector lines. Then cleaned them up with brake cleaner and blew them out. I put them back on and started with only one cool down. I was about ready to stop cranking for a second cool down when it started. The reason I tried that is because the owner's manual says that it will start if it runs out of fuel without bleeding the system. Since mine started without any bleeding at all with completely empty injector lines I did a few experiments. It always started. In one case I loosened the supply line to the fuel filter and let it die. It started with no problems except for a little longer cranking. I also loosened the line to the fuel heater so the lift pump starved. That is about the same as running out of fuel. It started with no problems. This may not be the case with other pumps like the VP44.

 

[SDrake]

Your experience is what happens on a good truck with all parts are working as the are supposed to work, but a weak lift pump that looses ground between pulses changes the whole equation on starting even if it works OK during running RPMs.



My theory now is that my experience has been a little different because my fuel pump has had a leaking check valve from the get go. The truck always ran OK with good power but when ever the slightest thing happened like a small air leak in the return line it would be difficult to start. The air leak,over a period of a month or two caused the truck to take longer and longer to crank after sitting for a while until the leak got so bad that a little fuel would dribble onto the drive way. I replaced the return hose (PITA) that was leaking fuel and my starting problem was fixed. I was told at the time that a bad check valve in the fuel pump would cause hard starting and was going to replace the fuel pump but then the fuel leak in the return line showed up. Fixed that two more times during the next was 130,000 miles or more ago. I hope never again with these Coast guard approved hoses. I could never quite figure out why a leak in a return line so small that no fuel would leak out would cause the truck not to start after sitting overnight. Of course I didn't suspect the fuel pump was weak at the time. With my new fuel pressure gauge I would have noticed what was going on.



One reason I think the fuel pump has been faulty all along is when my son in law, who is mechanically challenged, borrowed the truck and ran it out of fuel about 300 miles from home, he hired a so called diesel mechanic to come get the truck started for him and the guy said no problem, I start these all the time, but then they spent the day trying to burn up my starter. They fussed with it all day and the next thing I hear from them is that my injector pump must be bad. Injectors pumps don't usually go bad exactly at the point you run out of fuel. They said fuel was coming out the filter bleed screw so I thought maybe the injector pump was perhaps bad but I was determined to be sure before I authorized some unkown to put a new one in. I got back on the phone with my son in law told him to do exactly what I say and report what he sees. I first told him to crack the injector line. I wanted to know if there was any fuel there at all; it was just a shot in the dark as a start in process of elimination. I was next going to ask him to open the bleed screw on the filter etc. Well what do you know, it started after about 20 seconds and they drove home. In my earlier post I reported that after the truck ran out of fuel in the garage, I primed it with the vacuum and cracked the injector and it started almost immediately as in a normal start up with just a moment of rough running.



I have started many old worn out tractors that were so old they would would barely start on a good day; combination of low compression, week lift pumps and so forth. If we ever ran one of these out of fuel and all else failed, just loosen up some fittings and while one person is cranking away tighten up the fittings one by one as soon as fuel squirts and it had to start.



With my new fuel pump and if I ever run out of fuel, which I personally never have, I will expect it to start without any tools. Glad you confirmed this expectation with your experiments. Gets me back on the right page from all the wierdness of the past.

 

[Joe G.]

I had a four cylinder Buda in a small fish boat. No way would it start if there was any air at all in the fuel system. Same thing with a big Cat marine engine (red line was 900 RPM). Any air, no start. Same thing with other diesel engines I have been involved with. If you have an air leak of any kind before the pump then the P7100 pump can't overcome it. I hope you have yours is fixed because of a bad check valve. I was convinced mine had something wrong with the lift pump one time. I had eliminated all other possibilities I thought. It worked fine if I had it in my vise and worked the push rod by hand. If I put it on the engine it would start to pump ok, then fizzle out. At that point I had decided that the pump was pad. As a last resort I pulled the pump again. I assembled the whole mess from the steel line going into the fuel heater to the steel line going to the fuel filter. I then plugged one line and pressureized the whole thing to 20 PSI. When I dunked it in a five gallon bucket of water bubbles appeared from the fuel heater electrical connection. The fuel heater was burnt up inside. It looked good until I opened it up by drilling out the rivets. The truck would run, but it ran poorly. Hopefully, you have yours fixed.

 

[Kirwin]

Air an the P 7100 pump

I'd add one thing. The P 7100 will overcome all air issues except when the high pressure fuel lines are partially air filled. Then they act like a big air spring and the fuel doesn't move toward the injector and at cranking speed it takes a long time for the drain system to "vent" the air from the system. If this proportion is just right the engine will not start without loosening one (or more) injectors unless you crank a long time. I definitely had never thought of a bad lift pump check valve causing this type of problem though. Good thread to us 12 valve owners. Ken Irwin