Tuesday night I was up at my mom’s house in Southern California and it was about 35 degrees outside. I went out to start my truck and let it warm up while I was packing up my stuff to go home and it started ok and was running for about 5 minutes then it died. I went out side and tried to restart it, but it would not turn over at all. I tried starting it with the throttle wide open, and it finally turned over, idled up to about 2800 then dropped all the way back down to zero and died. I drained about ½ cup of diesel from the water separator at the bottom of the fuel filter and the diesel looked clean. I run stanadyne every fill up which is also suppose to have an anti-gelling formula in it. As of right now I am getting ready to pull the fuel filter and put a new one on there, but if that does not work what else do you guys suggest I do? I don’t have any check engine codes at all and I don’t have a fuel pressure gage, but I think I will be buying one now in about two or three weeks.

 

Sounds like the starter dumped, starter contacts to be precise.
I gotta look, but I think you may also have a run fuel solenoid problem.

I have never went thru this, but I believe the fuel shutoff start signal comes through the starter contacts, then once you let off the starter, the run fuel solenoid holds it in. Have someone crank the truck while you watch the shutoff. When you get it to crank, you should see the arm come up, then see what happens when it dies. My bet is it will shut back off as soon as the starter is released. Betting somehow the fuse is blown ( fuse #9 ) or the solenoid up on the cowl is gone.

If you can't fix it, you can manually wire the arm up and truck will run until you manually let it off.

BTW, there isn't anything correlated between having the throttle on the floor and the starter engaging, so you shouldn't have to floor it.

 

Pat is on the right track but the fuel shutoff does not run through the starter contacts, it has its own relay about center of the firewall. Have someone turn the key to the on position while watching the fuel shutoff. It should move a couple or 3 inches. If it doesn't, reach in and try to push up on it. If you move it by hand any, go ahead and crank the truck and see what it does. If it runs fine, shut it off and try cranking normally. If it shuts off or does not crank at all, check the relay first. The relay has two positions or like hi/low, hi to pull the plunger and low to hold it on. The hi side burns out and it will not pull the valve open properly.

Something else to look at is make sure pullrod has not out of the solenoid. There is a keeper that holds it in the plunger. Over time the vibration will cause the keeper to fail.


Both has happend to my fathers 95, the keeper broke first, we made one from an old brake spring. The relay went bad later.

Good luck, let us know what you find

Daniel

 

Well thanks for your help, but it turned out to be a plugged up fuel filter. 30 dollars and 45 minutes of my time to fix and the truck runs GREAT. Tried to blow through the center hole on the fuel filter and it was definitely plugged up. I had no problem blowing through the new filter.