I was checking the glove box on my 89 and found a spring. I think its out of the afc housing there is one screw missing from the top. I was just wondering if this is bad. I know you can screw in the star head but I didn't know about the absent spring
The truck will smoke a decent amount but is that spring not being there harmful and is gray smoke bad I know black smoke is overfuelling but not so much on gray appreciate any reply

 

Its fine to not run an afc spring. In most cases you can hardly tell a difference with the spring removed. Maybe just a tad more smoke than normal. It just allows for more pin travel if removed.

 

If the spring is conical in shape, (smaller diameter at one end than the other) and is red at one end and green at the other, chances are it's the AFC spring. 901stgen is right, you don't really need it. Remember what AFC stands for; Air Fuel Control. It stops the pump full-fueling until there's 'X' boost. Or in your case, not any more!

Gray smoke? Mmm. Black smoke is not necessarily overfueling, (we're talking semantics here) it's just uncompletely combusted fuel, meaning there wasn't enough air or time, or both, to burn all the caloric value the fuel had to give.... Sorry, not meaning to bury you in big-sounding words.
Gray smoke is a little strange. Smoke is usually either blue, (burning oil) black, (incomplete combustion) or white, (a vapor of some kind, either coolant or unburnt fuel). So I'd have to hazard a guess and say you have a mixture of both regular diesel smoke, (black) and vapor, (white) which is hopefully not coolant.
Where do you live? If it's cold where you live I wouldn't worry about it, as long as the smoke goes to black after the engine is up to temperature. Chances are it's unburnt fuel from the engine being too cold.

 

well maybe its not gray maybe just white but from my mirror it looks gray but ive been known to be wrong before. It could be white and now that you mention it the engine could have been cold at the time. thanks for the quick replys
I just thought that black smoke was you shoving to much fuel into the engine that it didn't have time to burn it hence the black smoke

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ps does the messing with the smoke screw mess egts alot