My 03 3500 has black smoke under load or acceleration. Had it scanned , everythinng is ok except for engine load percentage, it is at 0-1 %, they said it should 2-3%. could some one explain engine load percentage. The truck starts ok, no smoke, it is a heavy truck 10800 pounds. Power seems ok.

 

Hey doorguy, welcome to the site. Can you fill out your signature, so the rest of us know what, if any mods you have done to your truck. Thanks

 

10800 lbs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You got concrete in the bed?

 

 

At 10800 LBS it must be the DTRs first lead bed liner.... sorry Hoss...

 

haha. Id love to see someone concrete a bed sometime. Just... wow. Anyway the engine load percentage. Basically what it is doing is calculating how much work its having to do. ( the load) The compute will calculate this by fuel rate, RPM,And i believe there is one more parameter but i cant recall what it is right at this time. Basically if you ever get to watch the test youll see a graph. With either 2 or 3 lines. What you would want to see is the fuel rate a LITTLE bit above the load. If you see load above fuel your bogging it down, Think if you try to start off in 4th gear on a standard, the load exceeds the fuel and you kill the engine.

So now that ive tried to explain that, ill explain the " "percentage" Basically the computer knows at this fuel rate i should be gettting this much power and then decided the load percentage. Every engine has a natual load, that it takes just to run the engine. Then you add A/c and altenators and everything and you have a higher load rate. Its hard to say why your load rate would be a lil lower, i cant say i would be ALL too concerened. could just be a calculation error. Which i would be maybe looking towards if your getting black smoke under acceleration.
The computer wont be calculating fuel correctly and adding too much causing the smoke. But if it all checks out and its running great. Dont fix what not broke.

 

Wow, thats the best explanation I have had actually the only one. The two shops I had the truck in said I have one or two leaking injectors when they seen the engine load percentage. Nobody could or wanted to explain why. The truck runs good, starts good, fuel milage seems ok( best 22mpg, worst 10mpg pulling an rv, avg 15-16 mpg) The black smoke does bug the **** out of me. One shop said to get the computer flashed but went to do it and dodge said that would do nothing. The mechanic came out scanned it, seen engine load at 0-1% and said I need new injectors. I just want to make sure I am getting correct info, I do not want to spend the money on injectors and then still have the black smoke.