Hey guys,
I just picked up a '97 Powerstroke about a week ago. It's been running fine, or at least I think it has because I got it checked out by a mechanic before I bought it and got the green light. Today, I was out in front of my house and was revving it a bit and noticed some whitish gray smoke coming out of my exhaust. I had my wife come out and she said it was whitish gray mixed with some black. Now I know that the black smoke is unburnt fuel, but what causes whitish gray smoke? Also, the truck has a 3" down pipe into a 4" straight pipe and when I'm getting on the throttle (when buildings are next to me I hear it best because of the reverb) but it sounds choppy coming out of the exhaust. Choppy may not be the best word to describe it, but it just doesn't sound super smooth flowing; however, the turbo whistle still sounds nice and smooth coming out of the exhaust. I was thinking it could be a bad injector to make it sound sort of choppy, or is that just how Powerstrokes sound? Sorry for multiple questions, but I just figured they may be related because if it is a bad injector, I'd expect some smoke out the exhaust; however, I have no check engine light on which I would expect to have if I had a bad injector.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Powerstrokes always have that choppy sound to me and was the truck cold when you noticed the smoke? White grayish is raw fuel.

 

Yes and no. It always does a whitish gray puff of smoke when I start it in the mornings (usually around 35 degrees where I am at.) However, this afternoon when I was revving it the truck had been running for two hours, I had just gotten home from a hunting trip. So it was not cold when it did it this afternoon.

 

i would hook it to a scan tool and see if there are any injector codes, would be a good place to start, and check the wiring loom connectors going into the valve covers for bad pins in plugs, have a tendency to go bad on 7.3 powerstrokes, that is what controls the injectors and glow plugs.