Hello all,

Am working on doing some mod's on this mid 90's dodge cummins and have had some issues come up. I took out the leak/failure prone pre-heater and installed an external heater and secondary inline filter so I had to do some fuel line re-routing. I filled up the stock and secondary filter with diesel as much as I could before installing filters and did what I could until my hands gave out trying to pump the lift pump bulb in hopes of reducing what air would be in the system.

The truck took just a bit longer to catch, but once it caught, started up and ran fine. Here's the problem:

Before this, the wait to start dash light would come on and then turn off relative to how cold or hot the engine was when I would first turn on the ignition and then stay off once the heaters would heat up which usually would take 5 seconds or so. This time, when I initially tried to start, even before turning the starter over just turning on the ignition and waiting for the wait to start light to go off, after 30 or so seconds, the 2 heavy gauge wires that go down to the solenoid switches started to get hot and noticed that the intake housing was getting warm as well and the wait to start dash light began blinking and I then turned off the ignition.

I waited a bit and then tried again with the same result but almost immediately went ahead and started the engine and with only slightly longer crank and some hesitation due to some air being in the lines, the engine started and things smoothed out and the engine proceeded to run smoothly but the wait to start light continued to blink.

I then shut off the engine and tried again but first got a meter out and checked the 2 power lines as I noticed what looks like they have heavy duty fusable links in the 2 lines that run from the battery terminal down to the solenoids that switch on the power to the heaters. There of course is 12v at the terminal and 12 volts after the fusable links and at the terminals of the solenoids but when turning on the ignition, the solenoids do not engage and no power is fed to the intake heaters.

I had a battery charger/starter boost connected to the battery as the truck had been sitting for a while but took it off after after the first try as it turned out I was able to turn the engine over ok w/o the boost.

Is there anything else tied to the "wait to start" dash light other than the intake heaters? I also disconnected the batteries for a few minutes after this happened in case there was any ECM sort of reset needing to be done. I haven't put an OBDII on it yet, but I don't see a check engine light coming on.

I also at the same time replaced the Governor Solenoid and Pressure Sensor on the 47RE transmission in hopes of correcting what seemed to be a common problem of things getting gummed up and therefore causing restricted flow, and adjusted the bands while in there, but can't see how that would have anything to do with the intake heaters / wait to start dash light system.

Any ideas in what I might have done or caused problems with the intake heater / wait to start dash light system? Evidently something is amis, as the solenoids are now not kicking in when first turning on the ignition and get only an extended wait to start light (about 15 seconds or so) and then from then just blinks and doesn't stop blinking even after engine is running.

Thanks!

 

Well, that was an easy fix! I had unhooked the back firewall loom from the head post so I could get to the plumbing on the fuel filter and the connector that plugs onto the intake manifold temperature is right there and it had gotten unplugged and I didn't see it unplugged due to the wire harness laying across it. Plugged it back in and all is well. I guess if the temp sensor were to fail and not report the intake manifold getting heated up, a similar situation would occur?

 

HUH.. guess so .. good you got it fixed