every Oct/nov my truck starts losing prime for some reason, this has happened for three years now and no matter what i try it will do this until Mar/april when the temps warm up, I though it had to do with the cold weather causing a fitting or something to contract causing a leak, however today it dawned me nov to april is winter fuel mixing as well so I may have trouble when I am running #1, do you think winter fuel would have anything to do with exposing a prime leak. any help would be great as the truck fires perfectly all summer and even after sitting in aheated garage for a day or a week all winter will not start for at least 5-6 without bumping the starter.

 

isn't the #1 a little bit say "thinner" than the #2...plus if that's the only thing different, well besides it's colder than i ever wish it to be, i can't think of anything else...

to bad you can't get ahold of a tank or two of #2 and run it through the truck in the middle of winter and see if it is the fuel or not.

 

Smarter idea would be to save a tank of winter blend and try it this summer. Not much for a instant fix but better than the gel ha

 

well we had a bit of warm weather roll through to take us up to 12'C(50ish F) The trucks starts like a charm. The problem lies once the fuel is chilled it must contract somthing somewhere and cause the small prime leak and hard start, even with sitting in a heated gargage overnight the fuel will not warm up enough. I guess I will be chasing this again all winter

 

Do you still have your fuel heater?

 

yes I left it in for the cold reasoning up here

 

good thing i'm not paid to think...

 

i know how i am about thing like "fuel issues" i'd end up pulling every old/aging line off and replace them all.

 

my truck does the exact same thing and only when its cold. i cant figure it out . it will start if i plug it in though. it has been 2 year problem for me . i have checked lines for leakes and it did it with the previous fuel system which was two lift pumps and still now with walbro 392. could it be the grid heater not heating enough, i can tell that it is cycling on and off after it starts but are they heating up before it starts. also just pulled my 130 injectors out for the winter and no change after that ,having it all apart and tightened back up again.

 

Ive had the same problem for a few years also, funny things is, it can be -30 and if I run a blow dryer or heat gun on the injector pump for 5 minutes it fires right up, at anything below -5, i can crank and cycle the heater grid all day, without the heat gun it will not fire,once its warmed up its fine. Ive read on blue chip diesels site that the electronics in some of the vp44's get pooched from to many heat cool cycles, crystalline solder or something along those lines.

 

this reply is a little late but my truck has been unable to start now for a week and a half because of a cold snap here in alberta and i tried a hair dryer blowing on the injection pump for 5 minutes. she started right up like it was summertime. thanks for the info guys.

 

Sounds to me like you guys have worn out inj. pumps. When the little pistons inside the pump start to let fuel leak past them you will notice it when it is cold because they have contracted. This makes it hard for the pump to build enough pressure to open the injectors. When the pump is warm the pistons are expanded and allow it to seal enough to meet minimum pressure to open injectors. The fact that some of you can only start it if you heat up the inj. pump with a blow dryer will help back this up. It has nothing to do with the fuel being cold. Just my opinion.