I think if you use the infrared gun on the cylinders,or pull our injectors you will see what your problem is.

 

A leak test when cold is what happens when the truck sits over night and basically, the head is removed to inspect if the injector was leaking fuel onto the cylinder (in otherwords it was open) This causes dramatic performance drop, loud starts when cold and pour fuel economy.

The pop test is when the injector is pulled from the block, bench tested to prove that it is opening under the specified pressure that it is intended to do so at. With out this test you can not be 100% certain that your injectors are good. Bare in mind that there is not a single dealership I know of that will be willing to do this on their dime as they have to normally send your parts to an injection shop or a big rig shop for this work.

The other thing I failed to mention is that all 3rd generation trucks (yours) have very poor protection against water inflitration in the block along the fuel feeder tubes (the piece that leads to the injector). As a result water will accumulate along this tube and settle on the injector o-ring causing a corrision and a poor seating condition. Again, poor fuel economy will be a result here.

The only other thing I can suggest is load up the truck with over 1000 pounds of payload or the largest trailer you can find and drive it hard for a couple hours. This will burn fuel but it will clean out whatever is in there that is causing you heart ache. The Cummins from 2004 and newer must be worked - it is not a grocery getter and will suffer if it is a daily driver under non-hiway, stop and go conditions.

 

IMHO 3psi at wot is too low. With my retrofitted in tank pump from the dealer the lowest I see at wot is about 5 psi. Sounds Just like the problems my dad had with his truck when an injector went south.

 

I changed the CP3 and the truck still has no power. Guess I'll have to look at the injectors next like you guys recommended. I did find a proceedure to check for injectors bypassing. More than 180mL per minute at idle means something is wrong. Just gotta figure out how to do this test. The strangest thing about all of this is when the engine is relatively cold it has descent power, when it gets to operating temp the power takes a nose dive.

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Found my problem. The book I got from a former dodge tech said to do an injector bypass test and if it fails the test to retorque all the fuel tranfer tubes. I skipped the test an retorqued all the tubes to about 42ft/lbs (book calls for 37ft/lbs) and now she pulls good. The only thing is that after changing the CP3 I get a funny whistling sound (not the turbo) from the engine somewhere(I can live with that for now). Also after a launch in 4x4 on the lightly snow covered pavement I think my tranfercase chain skipped a couple of times and then in 2wd when I mashed the pedal at 55mph the *** end wanted to pass the front. YAHOO! Thanks to all who replied and if she starts acting up again I'll be asking for help again.

 

how you would have done this test is to remove the return line near the fuel tank and placed it in a marked container, start truck and let it run for one minute, see how much fuel dumped into the marked container and go from there. good to hear ya got er done tho.