Hello Fellow Cummins Diesel Owners,

First timer here so go easy on me, haha

I'm having trouble starting my truck when the weather starts to get cooler, I'm talking like when the temp get below 50F or 10C. The engine will turnover with great easy but just wont start, its like its having trouble getting fuel, I've cheated once and used a starting fluid and once its started it runs good. Most of the time I will plug it in and it will start after a few cranks. This problem only happens when its has been sitting for a few hours in the cool tempature. Its very frustrating not knowing if your truck will start or not.

Does anyone have any suggestion to why my truck is being so stubborn in the cooler weather.

Thanks in advancce

 

Be EXTREMELY careful using ether to start the truck.....it could ignite once it hits the grid heater and cause major boom boom !!!!!! It almost sounds like you have 1 or more injectors out of tolerance...aka, injectors are failing. That's a classic symptom.

 

Thanks Justin, I used the ether well the engine was being turned over, I was told that was the safer way.

 

Safer, yes....but make sure the grid heater element light on the dash is off before doing so.

 

Will remember that Justin, thanks for the tip.

 

I had the same symptoms with my '03 and the short story is it wound up being a leaky injector. I spent the entire winter starting with ether, plugging in the block heater even in 40' while I was trying to figure it out. I located it by capping off each port on the rail one at a time. Once you cap off the leaking injector the truck will start up on the other 5 cylinders. This quick test method will work as long as you only have 1 leaky injector.

The test cap is available from Geno's Garage for about $20 and the OEM style is available from Hoelsi Diesel for about $50

 

heavy,

get the motor checked out.

you must have something wrong.

my 2005, 62K miles
i just turn on the key and wait for the heater light to go out, i turn the key to the start position and the motor turns over a couple of times and starts right up.

are your batteries in good shape, have them checked,

must disconnect each battery to have it checked. otherwise a bad battery will not show up as the other battery will feed over to it, (this is my understanding of how they work)

i had new batteries installed on my 2005 last fall. it starts great and i use a fuel additive from time to time, diesel kleen, stanadyne, etc:

be sure you have a good air filter, i use the 4" thick mopar filter,

 

The ecm wants to see rail pressure before it will fire the injectors, with an injector that is leaking fuel back to the return the injection pump has to spin longer to get the fuel pressure high enough for the ECM to allow injection. This is a very common issue on these trucks, do like Kaysee said and cap off one injector at a time to see if you can find it that way. The other way to find it is to pull the return line off and measure how much return fuel is coming from the injectors. There is a spec for the amount of fuel you get returned versus the time of cranking.