TOM R

this truck is friggin killing me, she kept shutting off so I got her running and dropped her at a local diesel truck shop i deal with that works on cummins

so first it would not die on em then it did and they diagnosed it as a bad vp44 and could not get it to reprime so I ordered a new one (reman) along with the lowest upgrade injectors since they are right there, inj are new like 50hp or something, and had em adjust the valves while in there, they reassembled the truck fired her up and sounds great, shut her off and no restart,

now no comm with ecm ( I had this problem 1 time also) so we get a new cummins ecm for the side of the engine cummins progams it using the #'s on the side of my old ecm, install it and she fires right up they drive it off the lot to a bay and it dies on em

she it trying to start but just pumping smoke like it is flooding, so they recheck everything inj , lines, valves,cam sensor swap, and even pull off the front of the engine to check the timing gears and key way in the vp44 everything is fine, now they are gonna drop, clean and drain the tank and try fresh fuel this thing had me $3500 in the hole before they started tearing the engine down now it is probly pushing another $1k in labor and going nowhere, he says it is like the vp44 is not timed right or some of the inj are not working properly, or as he put it the inj pump is "dead heading" they got plenty of fuel at the injectors and not leaks, I cannot afford to keep paying labor let alone throwing thousand dollar parts on that are not solving the problem and no the ez edge is not hooked up truck has just under 200k miles on it, and i keep a locking gas cap on it so I doubt my fuel was tampered with

67HotRod

Maybe some gas in the fuel? We had a local gas station mess up and lots of trucks had problems till we figured it out.

TOM R

I always pump my own fuel

wadecool

Tom, I feel your pain. I darn near went broke replacing a nv4500, radiator & fan, vp44 & LP, etc. Its been running good for a while, but there for a while the wife was trying to get me to sell it. She called it the "money pit".

rattlerbob5.9

It sure sounds to me like you have an electrical problem of some sort and they have not stumbled upon it yet by THROWING parts at it.

Did they check for error codes BEFORE the vp-44 was changed ?

Might be a bad ground ,ignition switch,power feed or connection somewhere.

Could also be a defective reman vp-44

These can be some of the hardest things to find to repair.

Good luck with it i wish i could help you more .

lvmknsmoke..

dang trucks are awesome when they runnin but man they get expensive.. feel your pain. mine in the shop. drainin batteries. possible vp and lp as well. sucks.

johnh

i guarantee it's not a mechanical problem .... i t's electrical

rattlerbob5.9

Yours would be easyer to find pull fuses and check one by one to see what is drawing current with the key out that should not be.

Check you glove box light to be sure it turns off i have seen that one before.

Crazy D

I'm guessing this is a isb 5.9 turbo , right ?

Did they replace the lift pump ? That is electronically controlled . It is also before the vp44 . To me , it actually acts as a fuel filter , because it can catch stuff in it before sending fuel to the vp44 .

I have seen them clogged and will not let a truck start . But once this happens , truck usually won't start at all .

I have seen them fail intermittently and shut the truck down , and then a crank no start . Then 20 minutes later truck will strart up , only to shut down again soon after .

The ecm should be able to pick up the codes for the lift pump if it is failing electronically . I think the codes are like "low circuit voltage" or "no voltage output " or something like that . They will also usually be inactive codes . Also make sure the harness connector going into the lift pump is not oil saturated or corroded .

It would be better to start off replacing a lift pump that costs about 5 times less than a vp44 .

And about the injectors . There should be nothing wrong with them since you said they replaced them . If an injector goes bad , you will feel it in the engine like a miss . I have seen trucks run on 3 cyls . And still run . Very bad , but they still run .

The vp44 times itself electronically . And if it was replaced , there shouldn't be a problem . Although there is a sensor on the left lower side of the block that reads off a ring on the crank . I don't think thats your problem though .

And also , you didn't need to adjust the valves . You change injectors without touching the valves or rockers .

TOM R

Well we did the valve adjustment as maintenance, the lp is new as in when this problem started i went there first since there was no fp showing on my gauge, they did the cam sensor and this 2001 has no crank sensor, I am also thinkin electrical short, they said the short was in the ecm since it would not cummunicate sometimes just squigly lines

ctd89-99

There is fuel system relay under the hood you may want to change it. Thanks Steve B.

DR3500

Dad had the same problem with his, The Dodge dealer hooked their inj pump tester up and the truck would start and Idle(that is all the tester is designed to do)
They ended up replacing the ECM (not the Engine ECM, the one on the passengers side firewall) and it fixed his problem.

RCW

There are three things to check.

The first is bus errors from the ECM to the PCM. If they exist, or ever existed, then check the terminal blocks all the way from the injection pump to the firewall, and through the PDC and the battery power side of the PDC. Look for evidence of corrosion from some mislead person using a power washer on the engine. Also, check all grounds for corrosion. Yeah, I know lots of guys will say use of a power washer is just fine, but they all get their's soon enough.

If that is not the trouble, then pull the PCM, not the ECM, and have it tested. The ECM and PCM work in tandem, dumb process, but it is how they control the signal voltage that is needed by the processor in the pump that sets the idle timing and signals the ECM to tell the PCM to set voltage for operation of the transfer pump.

Also, pay particular attention to any jumper leads or cuts made into the wiring to the pump for any aftermarket fueling aids that may have been installed at one time or another.

Unfortunately, the nature of the beast is that the codes are just dumb enough to lead skilled mechanics down the wrong road, and many times mean that you have a number of problems that can only be found through replacement of the obvious parts first.

TOM R

ok i will have to run over there mon and see whats going on because I had thought i had a short causing all this and we have gone from the truck shutting off to now it won't run with all this work and $ spent

hyperrcng

You may not agree since your the one paying the bill, but that is the best thing to have happen. That may make the problem easier to locate with it not running at all. Intermittent problems are the worse thing to find due to it not acting up at the right times to diagnose.

Good luck