Yestarday evening I tried to start my truck after sitting for approx 3 days in sub zero temps and was very concerned with my struggles. Truck was very difficult to get started, would turn over just fine but would only fire if I played with the fuel pedal. After about 10 min of re-lighting glow plugs and cranking and cranking the truck finally ran on it's own with a huge cloud of black smoke out the tail pipe for about 90 sec or so.

I was unable to plug the truck in because of a lack of power source and I am thinking that this would have prevented this problem. The temp was -1 F and was at about 9500 ft but I have started my truck before in -15F with no problems at all but that was at sea level here at home.

After the truck started the CEL light came on and stayed on the entire trip home (did not shut the truck off for 20 hrs). When I returned home I parked the truck in the driveway and went inside, I came out about an hour later to retrieve the CEL code and found that the CEL was no longer on and I was unable to retrieve any code.

On the way home the truck seemed to run fine and power was ok but the fuel mileage was horrible, was getting about 6-8 mpg in temps ranging from -13 to +20 degrees at 70-80 mph pulling about 6000 lbs.

Obviously the truck is under warranty and I am going to bring it in but I was hoping to get a little info from here so the dealer does not give me the run-around because I am uniformed. Truck has approx 11,000 miles and is 100% stock except for pyro, trans and boost gauges which all read consistantly and similiar to the trip out there.

One of the other guys in our group had the exact same truck but a mega-cab with similiar mileage and his started perfect, lit the plugs and it fired right up but his mileage was only about 1-2 mpg better with a similiar load. Both trucks had Howes fuel additive for cetane boost and anti-gelling

Any info will be very much appreciated.-Frog

 

Thats' funny because the same thing just happened to me. Mine started hard but I cycle the grid heaters about 3 time before turning it over and put half a bottle of power service in the tank last time I filled up. It started first try and bellowed a little smoke. The CEL came on, but that's because of the temperature. It's a trouble code that has something to do with the batteries temp. Once the truck is warm and you shut it off and restart it resets itself. Nothing to worry about just put some type of anti gel additive in the fuel next time. It helps.