Well I was hoping to make my introduction on a brighter note, but unfortunately my truck has already failed... I just picked up a 92 d250 with 277k, I've always enjoyed the 1g's the most but have always been reluctant to own one (diesel in general) because of the expense of the injection pump, turbo, etc and also not being very experienced with diesels at all. I do have extensive experience with gas engines, especially turbo's and have been a mechanic for several years so hopefully this will be a good learning experience for me, just sucks to be dumped right into it!

This truck seemed right to me because it has had a new turbo and injection pump within the last 80k miles and 10 years, this is how long the previous owner had it for. Also since the new injection pump he has been adding 2cycle outboard engine oil to the gas (1oz per gallon) and having a mechanic background himself seemed to take really good care of it. It also has egt, boost, and trans temp gauges already installed on the pillar which is nice. It started and drove really well so I jumped on it, bought it for 3500.

Then it was home to the shop with it, Whenever I buy a new (to me) vehicle I change all fluids so off to work I went. I changed the oil, trans, pulled the rear axles and checked and adjusted the rear brakes. Then I went for a test drive to warm up the diff to change the gear oil. I let the truck warm up for 5 minutes or so and then off for a test drive I went. The truck was driving fine and about 4 miles into the test drive it shut off instantly, like I hit the key, and wouldn't even try to start. It cranked strong, but just gave no effort to start, prior to shutting off all was well, and when it shut off I was just cruising.

So I towed it home and cracked an injector line loose, nothing... Then I cracked the bleeder valve at the filter and did get fuel as it cranked. Next I removed the shut off solonoid and took out the plunger and spring and re-installed it. Still nothing at the injectors! Then to rule out bad fuel and lift pump I picked up a 7psi electric fuel pump and fed it from a 2gal gas can and replaced the fuel filter. I plugged in the pump and bled the filter housing, after that I cracked all 6 injector lines loose and with the pump running fuel started coming from the 4th injector. So then I cranked the truck over and fuel continued to come out of the 4th injector at the same rate, and when I stopped cranking the fuel continued to drip out of the 4th injector. I cranked it over 4 times with the same result.

So now I'm pretty certain I've got a bad injector pump, does this sound right? Are these symptoms familiar to anyone, and will this require a complete rebuild or is it fixable?

 

sounds like inj. pump.. prob. one of the plunger springs broke.. the pumps are not hard to do.. there is some great info that is stickys on this site.

 

Just checked the stickies and they are a huge help, I'm gonna try to fix it myself. I've got the dealer service manual which is definitely a big help, looks like I need to find/make some special tools and hopefully get the pump off by tomorrow. Then its time to crack it open and hopefully find something simple and fixable, if not, take it somewhere to get it rebuilt.

 

Check the shut off solenoid first!!!! the pump is probably fine if it was running good and shut off like that It may be as simple as the wire to the shut off, It needs power to run.

 

Yep, that was the first thing I did when I couldn't bleed it at the injectors, still no worky. Its pretty certainly the injection pump, I'm just hoping that once I remove it I can figure it out and fix it myself and avoid an expensive rebuild.