2001 7.3 trouble
 

I have a 2001 F250 4x4 off road with the 7.3 V8 engine. I bought this truck back in January 2012 and have always loved this truck but lately it has turned into a love hate relationship. In October 2012 I pulled an empty 16' flatbed to Tulsa from my home near Enid and upon arrival to Tulsa my truck went to cutting out and smoking blue smoke. I drove the truck back to Enid and made 21 mpg and it seemed to run just fine. The next Monday morning I started it to drive it to college and it went to doing the same thing. After taking the truck to Smokin Okie Diesel I learned that 5 of the injectors weren't functioning properly. I had all 8 injectors replaced (figured after doing 5 what's 3 more) and truck ran fine until January. then the same thing came back... I took it back to my mechanic in Alva who did the injector job and he determined there was no fire in cylinder 2. After 2 weeks of headaches both him for working on the truck and me driving my grandpa's s10 Blazer he determined it was not getting electricity so he replaced wiring harness (note this was late February before I took it to the shop and did not get the truck back until middle of March 2013). After replacing the wiring harness my truck ran absolutely wonderful! better than it had ran since I bought it! for 3 weeks that is. This past week it has gone down hill tremendously. when engine is idling it misses and smokes blue smoke just as it had before. Truck still runs great down the road and averages 17 mpg if there is not much idle time per tank. Any ideas on what this could be this time? I'm thinking fuel pump but am tired of paying repair bills lately. Truck has 195,800 miles on it. Please help...

Since your constantly having trouble I would order an Auto Engenuity program with the enhanced Ford bundle for a laptop if you are somewhat mechanically inclined. Yes it costs about 430 bucks by the time it gets to your door but in the long run it will save you some cash if you can work on your own truck. You need to hook it to a good scan tool before taking a shot in the dark. If you have a fuel pressure gauge you can tie into your filter drain line to check the pressure. Who did the injectors come from? Have you changed out the cps with an oem one to see if that helps? Check oil level? Theres quite a few things to check but you need some tools to do so.

Okay thanks for the help! I am not sure who the injectors came from... my mechanic did it and my grandfather had to help me cover the bill so he has the receipt. I will look at ordering that program for my laptop. I would rather do the work on my own anyway. I grew up on the farm working on all the equipment out there but have never had to mess with a computerized vehicle(yes our farm equipment is older) so I don't even know what the cps is. If it is the unit of the computer that is under the dash and sticks through the firewall then my mechanic tried that when he found that the wiring harness was bad. Thank you very much for the help. I hope I can get the engine going good because I planned on doing a zf6 standard conversion this summer but if I can't get the engine going good enough I may have to give up on my poor truck...

CPS is the camshaft position sensor on the front of the motor near the waterpump.

Okay cool thank you very much! I will look into one of those programs and see if I can get this thing all straightened out! Thank you for your help

under valve cover harness may have come loose and caused the misfire!

well believe it or not the problem somehow seems to have fixed itself. I had been told to change the HPOP oil resivoir but also got told that it changed itself if you ran it wide open once so I finally got tired of all the misfiring and slammed the footspeed to the floor. As it reached 90 mph I had more black smoke come out than I have ever seen my truck do and truck has ran fine every since and my mileage is back up to a steady 19. Don't know if it is totally fixed. I am still going to check into getting one of those laptop programs and will probably be getting a CPS soon. My grandpa's '96 7.3 left him stranded Friday when his CPS failed and he says it was a very easy fix. Thank you for all of your help! It was much appreciated!!

Guess what I'm back. I knew it wouldn't fix itself but I had hope. Replaced CPS today and still having same problem. Runs great down road and if kept open up without idling I'm making 17-18 mpg. As soon it is allowed more than 10 seconds misses horrible blue smoke and dies sometimes. I had a little bit of slick terrain and ended up having to use low range to even have enough power to get it spun out of it. I have absolutely no power with footspeed flat on floor after truck sits overnight until it warms up. I don't know if anybody might have a suggestion for how to fix it. Nothing comes up at all on any shop computer I've had it to so I don't see how my own computer will help other than saving the $25 diagnostic fee per trip. I'm open to any suggestions.

Did you get brand new injectors or re-manufactured? Remmaned are always headaches. Very few have gotten perfect results from remanned injectors. Most sets of remanned injectors will have one or two that are no good.

Remanned will cost around a grand to possibly $1500, new injectors will cost around 2k or more. And did you go stock injectors or bigger, like 160/80's or something..?? Check that receipt and let us know.

if a shop does not know what it is doing they will not find anything. having AE is helpful if you buy it from someone that is willing to support it and knows what they are doing.