Temp in the teens, no grid heater and no block heater.
 

15 degrees this am when I cranked her up with no block heater and no grid heater, and she still fires up better than one of those blue oval powerstrokes. [duhhh] She hit on the first revolution.

You could tell that the temp caused the timing to be a little delayed resulting in a little smoke for the first ten seconds. If it got this cold more often I would invest in a cord for the block heater.

Just an fyi

Good deal.

It was snowing a bit here in Marshall yesterday. Flat out cold this morning.

We got a little too, just enough to count a few flakes on the windows. As much as I love the snow it sure does hurt the ole wallet when it comes.

These motors are pretty amazing when it comes to starting. I think it has to do with the compression ratio and the long stroke, ample change to build heat. I have never had mine crank more than a few extra rotations even in sub zero temps.

My dad had a 3406 Cat with no starting aids at all, and that motor fired faster than any diesel I have ever seen, regardless of the temp (never got too cold, but well below freezing).

You are probably right... And the fuel pressure certainly doesn't hurt I'm sure.

When I worked as a fleet mechanic all our I6's would bust right off in the cold as long as you could get the cranking system to turn them. LOL

I like to think that real trucks don't need glow plugs. I would have had to crank on my old service truck till the batteries where near dead if I didn't plug it in. (powerstroke)

Hey Blake! Long time since i've been on the forum!

HOWEVER................
Truck would not start this morning. Temp around 22deg. Had to jump her off with the wife's swagger wagon!!!! [duhhh]

Anyhow......i don't know if it's the batteries or maybe a block heater would help the situation?????

Around December of 2009, my local Dodge dealer replaced BOTH batteries under factory warantee. So i'm declined to think it's the batteries due to the fact that they are not 14 months old. But you never know!

I have noticed, on the very limited cold days we get down here in Texas, that it is very sluggish to start when cold.

Thoughts, ideas?

Mike

All it takes is one bad battery to pull them both down, and with temps in the teens it is ~45% harder to turn the engine over than if it were 85* outside. My money is on the batteries.

I just now had to jump off my International 4600DT with my truck!!![verymad]

Sounds like batteries. Have them load tested. Also make sure all of your connections are tight.

OK, went to Dodge dealer...........They can not load test the batt's w/o taking both of them off then testing each one individually in which each test takes 1-1.5 hours and then once test completes it re-tests to make certain it tested right the first time!:o
Well i don't have 6 hours to see if my batteries are good and EVEN IF they were bad (Keeping in mind that Dodge put 2 new batts in my truck on 12/9/09 under warantee) the Dodge service dude said they would not replace the batteries under the warantee because it was not an "out of pocket" expense on my part because they replaced them under warantee and now that my truck is out of warantee the battery replacement would be my responsibility! Apparently it does not matter that is reads CLEARLY on the top of each batter "18 MONTH NO FAULT REPLACEMENT"[verymad][verymad][verymad]
So with that.....................
I motored on over to O'Rielly auto parts and they put their fancy little battery/alt checker on the truck. Batteries are apparently good however the ALT is putting out "irregular" voltage according to the tester! 11.47volts!
It would jump up to 14+volts and stay there for a minute but would come back down. I even noticed this on my dash volt meter. Would got to 14 then down to 11-12 then back to 14 and so on. This does not happen all the time though!!!

So, unless you or anyone has a better idea of what's happening...........i'm taking the alternator off!

Sincerely
Mike
[yuk]

That is the grid heater cycling. Let the truck run for at least 2 minutes before testing.

x2, that is what I was thinking.

Hey Mike

Sounds like a bad battery to me too. Had one go out on the mega and caused all kinds of weird issues.

Make sure your truck is nice and warmed up so the grid heater doesnt cycle.

OK.....it's cold out and i don't really want to take my intake off in order to get to my alternator so i will do that!
However sounds like i need to go back to O'Reilly or somewhere and dissconnect battery leads and have them check each battery individually.

You have a heater just not a cord. Just order, install, and plug up.

http://www.genosgarage.com/prodinfo....EATER_CABLE_FL