RTillery

My 04 has 243,000 on it. I have kept my maintenance up religiously on it. About 20,000 miles ago it started starting a little hard so I replaced the injectors with stainless bodies from Rip and Flux 2 nozzles that they installed. The truck ran great. I installed a GDP 2 micron big line setup to help protect my fuel system.

Today, I got in it, it started fine. I ran about 15 miles and pulled up to a light and noticed a stumble. MY fuel pressure gauge started to drop and bounce around, then sort of stabilized at its normal 15-17 lbs. I goosed the throttle a little to stabilize the idle and it started pouring black and blue smoke out.

I turned it around and limped it home to my garage trying to keep the RPMs up and the load as low as possible. It poured an eclipse of smoke out anytime I had to get on it a little and it would rattle. When I pulled in my garage, I immediately shot the exhaust manifold with my infra-red thermometer and did not find an obvious bad hole. I pulled the dipstick and my oil level is not high.

I am suspicious of a cracked or stuck injector but am not sure how to pinpoint it. I am also thinking maybe I have a stuck FCA but am not sure what symtoms that will cause. I do have a TST R39 on it (most of its life) and dialed it back to 0-0 with no change. I checked it for codes and I did set a P0336 a few days ago but that is not unusual with the TST. No other codes.

Any help on figuring out what the problem is would be greatly appreciated. My Baby is sick, Help!
Thanks!

rich

could be the fuel pressure regulator on the rail

lu798welder

I had an '01 with 150 horse nozzles in it and one of the injectors cracked on it and was doing about the same thing it sounds like yours is doing. There is a test you can run to see if it is injectors giving you the fits. I'm not sure where you can come up with one, but there is a cap made to block off the injector lines coming up off of your fuel rail and you could just go down the fuel rail one at a time start it up on each different line and if it smooths up the the line you have capped off will be your problem. I don't know if you can get it started or not, if not it may be your fuel filter, that'd be the first thing i would check, i'm sure you probably already have done that. I would be very careful on running it until you get it figured out. I know a guy that washed about half a piston out from just a cracked nozzle. Hope this helps. Good luck.

lu798welder

What is a tst r39 btw?

RTillery

It might be a TST R49 Powermax CR. I have had it on for well over 200.000 miles. It is an adjustable programmer that was one of the first for the common rails. Been great!

I am pretty sure I found my problem. I decided to give the FCA a try and I called Cummins. The guy first said they were out of them and had them on backorder, but he would check on an ETA. He said they had been going through a lot of them lately. I about died. Then he came back on line and said he had 1 in stock and he would hold it for me.

My neighbor drove me up about an hour away and I got it. My old FCA would not make a sound when I shook it. The new one had a very slight tick when I shook it back and forth. Good sign I thought.

I got home, threw the new FCA in and remounted my GDP filter setup.(Piece of cake to R&R the whole unit) Crossed my fingers and hit the key. Mighty Whitey roared to life and purred like a big cat. I went for about a 20 mile ride and she smoked a little to begin with but cleared up and seems back to normal.

Boy you forget how much you rely on your truck and when she has been as reliable as the Cummins normally is, you kind of panic when something goes wrong. Well, back to normal. I am thinking of carrying a spare FCA around. When this thing goes, you are hosed!

SuperGewl

OK I will ask, what the heck is a FCA

RTillery

FCA, Fuel Control Actuator.

It is a small "shot glass" sized gizmo mounted on the driver's side of your CP3 pump. It looks quite a bit like like a small starter solenoid and has an electrical plug going to it. It receives a signal from the ECM and controls the pressure that the pump sends to the fuel rail. Most of the sticky ones I have heard about cause a rough idle, hard start, loss of power, and not too serious running problem if it sticks in the lower pressure position. Mine stuck in a higher position and I was smoking like an old steam engine. Man, if you want to roll the coal, this thing was doing it. I feather footed it all the way home and I pity the poor people behind me!

I have a couple of hundred miles on her since the replacement and all seems well. I took the old one apart, cleaned and polished the little piston, checked for movement when I put 10 volts to it and it seemed OK. I stuck it under the back seat for a spare.