The story as told to me...
Old man drops his cigarette behind the seat of his brand new 1996 Cummins with less than 4k on the clock.
Cab goes up in flames.
He parks it in his field to rot away.
Guy I bought it from picked up at auction 5 or so years ago...

Engine compartment looks show room new less 15 years of dust. Other aspects of the truck seem to verify this story...

Anyway...I've put on a new lift pump and have run new fuel lines (directly to an to an 'auxiliary' tank with fresh fuel. New fuel filter. I'm getting flow upon cranking through the filter and through the injection pump but not a drop out of a delivery valve. When I pump the lift pump by hand I hear a slight 'squeeze' of air or fluid that seems to be coming from the injection pump somewhere. No exterior leaks at the input or output. It seems to 'squeeze' every third pump. Internal fuel pressure regulator or something?
IP cam shaft is turning...

What am I missing?

 

Fuel shutoff solenoid and lever are working.

 

Best thing I've found for a completely dry system is to pressurize the tank with a controlled 1-2 psi of shop air. Open the bleeder on the fuel filter and crack the overflow on the pump. Once the filter is bleeding bubble free fuel, close it up. Same with the overflow valve. Crack 2 or 3 lines loose at the injector and start cranking. Since you have an 'aux' fuel tank right now, a small inline pump run off a battery would also help to prime her up. Sometimes they are just a female dog to prime

 

I'm getting air free fuel through the overflow valve it seems. I don't know about the amount though...looks kinda weak. I'll try the electric pump.

 

Crack the inj lines and spin over till fuel comes out of them. Should crank, also check the shut off solenoid, wire it open if in doubt.

 

That squeal is the fuel coming out of the overflow. Once that start happening, you know the pump is full of fuel. Take the solenoid off and crank it. If it won't fire, I'd take the AFC and plate off and verify the rack is moving when you move the shut down lever.

 

Smoking kills!
My 88 year old neighbor died recently from a similar accident.
He was out on his tractor, dropped his smoke, bent over to pick it up, fell off the tractor and got run over by his hay baler.

 

How much pressure should I see in the injection pump at cranking speed?

 

I'm confident there's air free fuel through the pump and at pressure from various 'tests'.

I've got the AFC and shut off solenoid as well. Moving the shut off lever by hand it isn't visually doing anything down in there. The lever that's obviously attached to the shaft moves but it isn't applying pressure to anything.

In my searching I've seen reference made to 'make sure the rack isn't sticking' when talking about pumps that have sat a while. Should the 'fuel arm' (thing that rides the plate) be coming forward at all while cranking? Is this the 'rack'?

 

The fuel shutoff lever shouldn't have any pressure against it when its in the up position. You should only have pressure when pressing it down, which is cutting the fuel. Take the AFC and plate out and look inside as you move the shutoff lever. You should be able to see the rack (at the very front of the governor housing) moving back and forth about 1/4-3/8" of an inch. If its free, moving the throttle will also move the rack.

 

It's not budging.

Moving the shut off lever doesn't change the position of anything I can see viewing from the plate hole. I'm guessing it's stuck in the off position?

How do we free this up? A light pry with a screw driver hasn't moved anything either. But, I don't know exactly what i'm supposed to be moving yet. Trying to find a picture...

 

If the rack is stuck, then its pretty much time to get the pump rebuilt. Theres probably a plunger thats sticking causing the rack issue.

 

I still haven't found a diagram for what's going on with the rack/plunger assemblies. I've never needed to go this far into a Ppump...

 

Searching this board reveals that no one ever really follows up with the solution of their problems.

My problem was a stuck #4 plunger. Once I pulled the barrel out, sprayed a little oil in there and got the whole rack freed up she bled and started right up.

So if your junk won't prime check out the fuel shutoff lever. If the pin it hits on down in there under the AFC doesn't move forward when you pull it up your rack is stuck. The rack is hooked to the plunger which twists inside the barrel to allow fuel to pass. If one plunger is stuck then none of the plungers will open and your junk won't bleed.

Hope this helps someone.

 

Your correct a lot of people don't follow up with the end result/solution.
Thank you for setting a good example and glad to hear you got it fired up.