Clapped out Ford IDI Diesel Doesn't Start - Can We Save This Heap?

all right folks here at watch westwork we strive for continuous improvement and today we're raising the bar this might be the roughest vehicle anyone's ever paid me to work on this is a 1994 ford f-250 at least on paper that's the legal definition it is powered by a turbocharged 6.9 liter idi diesel engine it doesn't run it hasn't run for about eight months the story i heard is that it was running fine and then it died the owner found a bad ground cable to the engine block he fixed that now it cranks but it will not start and there's there's a laundry list of parts he's been he's been throwing at it and he hasn't gotten anywhere all right folks drink it in so i think mortsky would call these whiskey dents that one might be a little stronger than whiskey tires are good well three out of four tires are good the mirrors are off something else i'm sure [Music] yep the big problem is she's got the full on structural formats there's no metal there folks the rocker is completely gone what about the seat belt yep that's that's not good okay well let's pretend we didn't see that box is pretty good really right side rockers are still there pretty crunchy though i'd say it's been hit in the front and the whole front clip's been pushed back into the doors the bumper is well it's not really attached yeah under the hood 6.9 idi that's an international engine of course with the turbo charger no radiator which is fun looks like she's got the standard oil leaks yeah new battery cable i think where do we even start what is this that's unplugged okay well i've got some batteries for it i guess we'll throw those in and yeah we'll start going through the list yeah max loves it it's right up your alley isn't it pop all right folks we're going to jump right in the owner gave me a list of things that he tried we're not even going to look at it we're just going to start from scratch not to be a jerk but if he knew what was wrong with it it wouldn't be here so i think what we're going to do is we'll disable the glow plugs by disconnecting the relay and then we'll give her a little shot of ether and just see if it'll run on ether that'll tell us if the base compression is good if the base part of the engine is good then we'll go after the fuel system well before we even get to that we've got some electrical problems i'm very suspicious about these battery terminals these things are just absolute junk yeah it's barely holding on then over here this is the starter relay but this side here comes right from the battery and that's that feeds every other positive 12 volt system on the truck and you see got wires cut this one's not going anywhere so i don't know what any of that stuff does i can check the glove plug controller over here and there's no power anywhere so i think what's going on is there should be a fusible link between these two wires here and this big wire there so that means that our glow plug system is already it's already defeated so we don't have to worry about that let's give her a shot of ether crank it see what happens let's try right in the turbo [Applause] you hear it pick up a little bit it's trying to go [Applause] that's weird i want to run on ether i don't quite understand that maybe it's just too cold anyway let's not get discouraged the key is on right now we should have power to the shutdown solenoid on the injection pump and we don't i fixed fixed the main wire to the glow plug relay which is that guy right there but with the key on we should also have power here and we don't so that's a problem i found a wiring diagram it looks like it comes right out of the fuse box but it doesn't tell me what fuse it is it just says k so i guess we got to look up the fuse layout well according to the diagram fuse k should be that guy right there but it should be a 20 amp not a 30. and that one is blown so that's a problem all right we got a new 20 amp maxi fuse shove that guy in there all right let's see what happens see if our weight to start light comes on it's been relocated interesting i think when it cycles like that it means that the glow plugs the glow plug resistance is wrong he told me he replaced the gold plugs but he didn't do the two underneath the turbo because he didn't want to remove the turbo so i don't know what we're gonna do about that let's uh let's crank it see if it'll start all right we got the fast idle screwdriver installed i'm just going to jump the solenoid or the relay sorry and uh we'll see what happens lovely okay better move that uh we got fuel leaking out of all the injector lines one two three four i guess that's good we're getting fuel to the injectors let me tighten those we'll see what happens well we got a problem on cylinder one it has this little extension not 100 sure what the purpose of this is but somebody cross threaded it really mangled it so yeah let me see if i can fix that i'll hit it with a thread file if we can't save it might be able to just eliminate it bend that injection line down a little bit so i don't think it's that critical well i did the best i could with it it's pretty mangled so these are m12 by 1.5 threads which are not a common size for fasteners but it is a common size for wheel studs i have this lang tools wheel stud thread restoring kit and it had the right size thread chaser so we'll give it a shot hopefully the nuts not mangled as well that should work let's see what happens oh where's my starter switch there it is got our fast idle screwdriver installed see what happens [Applause] uh i can see it gushing out of that one [Applause] [Laughter] ah there's no way there's so much blow-by [Applause] you can see all the blow-by coming out of that pcb it just doesn't have enough compression to run we're going to try one more thing kind of a hail mary here see if we can get it started got a little pair of vice grips on the glow plug primary wire here and i'm going to go ahead and jump the the relay to ground when we turn the key on the glow plug relay is going to be on steady instead of pulsing real quick like it has been we'll see if we can get the cylinders warmed up and maybe we can get her to fire i don't know all right here we go ether locked it all right we'll give her a minute to settle down tried to go there for a second uh [Laughter] oh lordy lordy lord hey it runs see if i can do this without dying [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] shut it off before we all die see if it'll restart i don't know oh perfect well there you go folks i guess you can't kill these old idis this one's pretty close though yeah good stuff of course it has no radiator so there's no cooling in it we don't want to run it too long get it too hot although i don't know if it's really going to make a difference on this old pig something's leaking real bad there must be the return line i don't know i see a copper washer laying down there i wonder if that's part of it yeah okay success question mark i don't know it's a result i guess all right folks it's the following morning looks nice and sunny and warm outside but it's actually minus four degrees fahrenheit anyway made some more progress on the old idi i think i see why we're leaking fuel on that injector what's that number five big old chunk of crud there stuck underneath the the injector line and you can see some metal shrapnel there somebody's cross-threaded that one too so yeah there's a big chunk of metal right there ah yeah well i guess that's why it's here kind of wish it would have come here a little sooner we could have saved this guy some some heartache pretty much the same story as that extension it might be a little bit worse so i'll try but yeah that's not good well it seemed to thread on there okay i guess we'll try it that little piece of plastic that was lodged in there is from the that return banjo fitting so hopefully that doesn't leak now yeah i guess let's uh let's see if it'll start it's been sitting for about 12 hours [Applause] well cool [Music] we fixed it question mark i think we've got eight cylinders now i don't see any big gushers yeah if it had a working throttle cable instead of this thing and a radiator might be able to drive this thing home if you asked me yesterday afternoon i would have said this engine was never going to run again the blow-by seems to be better now too that we got it running so [Applause] all right folks obviously this truck needs a lot of help but i think we've gone about as far as we're gonna go i patched up the wiring over here i was wrong there i was thinking there was a separate fusible link that gets crimped in here for the glow plugs but actually these two wires here are the feasible links that's reusable link wire 12 gauge for the glow plugs or sorry 14 gauge for the glow plugs 12 gauge here for the alternator don't know what that one is for but yeah the those two that pair of wires is the fusible link as far as the glow plugs go i'm not sure why that control module is cycling the relay all the time usually that means the gold plugs are bad but i talked to the owner and he said he replaced all eight glow plugs he just he didn't replace the two injectors that were under the turbo but he did replace the glow plugs so i think it may be a harness issue this glow plug harness is in abysmal condition the whole thing needs to be replaced the ends are bad over here on this side and yeah somebody's soldered in poorly soldered in some other connectors so it needs the whole thing replaced i don't think you can buy them you had to make your own and then i'm going to suggest to him you know besides pushing it off a cliff to just disable this glow plug control module and put a run a wire here to this white terminal and a momentary contact switch inside the cab shorted to ground and just control that manually you know this thing is way too complicated and you know we have manually controlled cool plugs for 80 years before this and it worked fine so that would be my suggestion uh yeah on the injection pump i don't know if any of this stuff works there's a some kind of a plunger solenoid here it's i don't know if it's a fast idle or or what it is i believe there's some kind of cold start timing advance inside this pump and then this is a position sensor for the transmission don't know if that works yeah i did a couple of other things just to make the truck drivable he wants to drive it up on a trailer instead of winching it onto a tow truck so i replaced the throttle cable the old one it's broken and it didn't work at all also it had no breaks the master cylinder reservoir was pretty much empty on the front side so what i found he replaced all of the front brake lines which you can tell by the scotty kilmer approved fitting there but he replaced these brake hoses and the copper washers these copper washers right here that came with the brake hoses they're too thin and the banjo fitting would actually bottom out against the caliper before it would ever compress this washer so all i had to do to fix that was just find and install some thicker copper washers [Applause] all right guys it's time for the jerry springer style final thoughts what do we think happened to this truck i'll be honest i have no idea and a very limited explanation for what we just witnessed uh let me throw out a possible scenario you guys tell me in the description what you think i'm gonna read the note that he left me says engine ground strap rear of engine to fire wall broke june 26 2021 cranks but will not turn over tried manually opening the fuel shut off but unsure if worked replaced injectors except two that go under the turbo possibly the fuel return lines not lined up properly notice oil in coolant drain coolant removed radiator lower radiator hose got cut needs replaced here's what i think happened the ground strap to the from the engine to the firewall broke and somehow in the process of that ground strap breaking or being replaced the fuse that powers the glow plugs and the shut down solenoid and also the fuel heater in the filter was blown and he replaced the ground strap but i don't know if he ever confirmed he had power back to the glow plugs or the shut down solenoid so now he has an engine that will crank but it has no fuel and no glow plugs then comes the ether and i'll bet they just hose this thing down with ether trying to get it started and i suspect that it may have had cylinder wash which is something that we think of with gas engines you know when they run rich the the fuel washes all the lubrication off the side of the cylinders and it reduces the compression i think you could easily have that same problem with too much ether especially if there's no fuel being injected because the shutdown solenoid's not working so now you have an engine with no fuel no glow plugs and no compression these engines have pretty low compression to start with plus this one's pretty clapped out so i think that could explain why we had so much blow-by when we first cranked it and tried to get it started and why it wouldn't run on ether plus you know sometimes engines just don't like ether i've seen that before anyway that set up kind of a perfect storm of parts cannon craziness he replaced the fuel tanks the sending units the fuel filter the fuel filler next the fuel hoses the mechanical fuel pump the batteries the bridge cable the starter solenoid the glow plug controller the glow plugs the injectors the fuel shutdown solenoid and various fuses he is not specific about that yeah i guess i don't know what do you think about that as soon as we got the injection pump working and we started pumping some fuel back into the cylinders it seemed to kind of come back to life i think we should probably not look a gift horse in the mouth it runs let's get it out of here and uh hope hopefully we won't see it again well that was a short trip it still has no breaks all right folks sorry if it sounds like i'm talking about my mouth full but the dentist told me that my mouth is full of cavities and she did a fair amount of drilling anyway after much pain and suffering we finally have a firm brake pedal but it was not easy to get there somebody's replaced this master cylinder and i think they didn't bleed it right so i had to take the the lines off and bench bleed it but of course that one didn't want to cooperate twisted the end of the line off so i had to unbend it and re flare it and then re-bend it and then re-bleed it anyway i finally got where we wanted to go so we're going to try to get this thing started and get it the hell out of here you know what's weird there's no door dinger huh all right let's see what happens here there we go you

Channel: Watch Wes Work

Views: 352,706

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Id: _P7FMFeRk5U

Length: 28min 19sec (1699 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 05 2022