No restart without ether...even hot
 

Hey all, new to register and this is my first post. First, you have a great forum here I've learned a lot from as a 'lurker'.

I have a 97 e350 extended 7.3 (we affectionately refer to as "the rape van") with a little over 300k. I've owned if for a few years with no real trouble to speak of. It had a diablo sport tune it on already when I purchased it. I posted in this forum because I have single plug valve covers and I think everything is the newer generation.

About a week ago I started it up, drove about 20 miles, went in to get some food and came back out to leave about 20 min. later and got a crank no start. It has good batteries and a brand new starter that cranks over nice and fast. First thought, cam sensor. I figured it would cool down and start up fine so I left it there for a while. It never started including the next day. I found it will start fine on ether and stay running, maybe a little rough for half a minute. It was a bit low on oil so I filled it up and checked the hpop reservoir. I removed the ipr, cleaned it, and replaced the orings. Ohm test came out good. I thought about the IPS and unplugged it...no change. My next thought was injector seals. When I bought the van it had a bad rocker arm on the passenger side, so I did the injector seals while in there. It occurred to me the driver side never got done, so this evening I did that (which is a blast in a van) along with glow plugs, UVCH, and valve cover gasket. Fired it up again with a little ether and it ran rough and smoked like a locomotive as it sorted its beans. Test drive, it runs fine and pulls great. I don't think I'm having a problem with the fuel system. I have a new tank but haven't changed the fuel filter in probably 15 to 20k miles. I pulled the filter out to see if the diesel was cloudy from a blown center oring on an injector but it looked fine. Any thoughts on what causes a no restart, even hot? I should ad that it WILL restart if I do it immediately after shutting it off, but if it sits more than a minute I have problems. It will start now after sitting 15 mins or so but cranks longer then normal. Any thoughts? Maybe a hpop getting week?

Somthing to do with the high pressure oil system most likely. :c:

Yeah that's my guess, bleeding off pressure when sitting and can't build it back up when cranking.

There's a few guys on here that know thier shit with the powerstrokes, I'm not one of them, just keep your thread bumped up and somebody will probably give you an idea on how to figure it out. If you have any codes post them up. :c:

I wish I had a scanner that could get in to it. I have no cel except the WOT one that pops up on hard runs from the tune running down the high pressure oil I'm assuming. On top of it all I revved the motor up pretty good a few times to clear out the oil from pulling the injectors (I sucked the cylinders out first, but I'm sure some remained) and suddenly developed a leak at the rear of the oil pan or the rear crank seal. If it's the pan anyone want to guess how fun it is...

Thanks for pitching in

Gotta pull the motor to change pan gasket :w2:

Since the turbo won't hit the firewall I'm hoping I can jack it up a mile and snake it out...I can dream right?

Yea keep dreamin :w2::c:

Well, I think I'm more confident I'm having a hpop problem. When the engine gets hot it has more trouble restarting, as in won't at all without an ether shot. From what I can decipher it must be correlated to the oil losing viscosity hot. Has anyone had this problem and found it to be the IPR leaking off? How often do HPOPs really go out at high mileage?

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Ok, I see quite a few people have read this, so here goes my conclusion for now...after driving a while it has apparently fixed itself, I kid you not. I don't know if an oring needed to seat or what, but after driving a day and multiple repeated starts is seems fine. In fact, the oil leak seems to have went away (I know...leaks don't fix themselves). I could see oil coming from what looked like the back of the pan with the lower shield off. I'm wondering if it's related to my friend cleaning the pcv trap for me and the ding bat used a garden hose to flush it. I didn't think about it until later but I wonder if was holding back some crankcase pressure. Anyway, until next time...

Sorry, just saw the thread...

Need to get a scanner on it to really get educated. Could be ICP related (injector control pressure) or it could be plum wore out injectors, or it could be something entirely differant. Without scanning it and watching some things live stream, its just a guess.