Okay I have heard so many different opinions I am going mad my problem: My truck started smoking recently when I stepped on it this was after a half hour of idling or more and it was in park and it puffs blue white smoke with a burnt oil smell to it and unburnt diesel and as well I took the dip stick out today while it was running and noticed smoke coming from the tube the truck didn't do this a month ago so I am wondering if my fuel has gone rotten. The truck sat all winter but I started it regularly but it has the same fuel in it that was put in last november/december so I am wondering if this might be the problem but I am not sure here are some of the ideas I got from other guys some have lots of expierence with these trucks others know almost nothing but here they are if you guys can help me out that would be awesome I need the truck on the road asap and am strapped for cash! still in school
Here they are: head gasket gone, injectors gone or tips gone, injection pump shot or something wrong with it, rings gone or just cold there might have been other ideas but I can't remember them now and I don't wanna run my truck and ruin it. Thanks in advance for any helpful advice guys

 

Half an hour seems too long to idle the truck but the blue smoke wouldnt explain head gasket being blown, it would usually be white exhaust smoke.

Edit: saw you said blueish white smoke but still dont think it could be headgasket since its been sitting and youve let it warm up.

Injectors could be a maybe, how many miles does the truck have? Blow-by from the tube is pretty normal i think, i could be wrong. IP idk, pretty simple machines and not too much that can go wrong besides if you burn em up.

Others should chime in... Hope i could help a little

 

I have ran fuel lots older than that with no noticable issues.

I don't think you have a serious problem, but "advisors" will have you tearing down the engine.


Dump a couple quarts of Marvel Mystery Oil in the fuel and drive it normally for the duration of the tank-ful and see what happens.


Are you religiously adding 1-ounce/gallon of TC-W3 two-cycle oil to your fuel ??


If not, you should be.

 

Half an hour : eek: NEVER EVER let your cummins idle that long 5 minutes tops they got a fast idle for a reason they burn holes in the pistons if you leave em idling to long never mind the temperatures

 

Okay so don't idle them is the theme so far and I have no clue how old the oil is in the rig but I have new oil and filters sitting in my room just waiting for some time lol and 330,000 kilometers roughly 200,000 miles I think and never heard of TC-W3 oil what purpose does it serve? and thanks again guys

 

The 2 stroke oil will keep the VE all lubed up and happy... Change that oil lol! If you dont know how old it is then its probably been too long. Like bear said, just run the thing and put the oil to the fuel. At 200k i wouldnt suspect injectors are bad but every truck is different and variables change.

 

basically it helps lube the injectors since these new low sulfur fuels came out they don't lube things like the fuels used to and it helps to keep seals gaskets n o-rings soft

you can get that at lordco id recommend getting a small bottle of the howes diesel conditioner if you can't get it at lordco husky or shell should carry it get a small 250 mil jug n dump the whole thing in with some fresh fuel.

 

Okay and the other thing the truck doesn't run on the hi-way at present she is sidelined because of front end problems

 

k is it 4wd or 2wd?

 

2 wheel the truck in the pic is mine wish it was a 4x4 but we don't always get what we wish for

 

k well mine may look 2wd in my picture that's just cuz I sunk it to the frame in what seemed to be solid ground yesterday.

any idea whats the problem.

 

So what is the real story on idling?
Are you talking about Cummins or all diesels in general?

I have left engines idling for hours while sleeping, almost every trucker has and for hundreds of hours,

Also several times I have left my truck idle at about 1000 RPM in the summer with the air conditioner on as I slept with no apparent ill effects other than a stiff neck, I set an alarm to wake up every 20 minuets to check the gauges, the temperature never got past normal although it did seem to load up though.

Jim

 

I've never heard such a ridiculous claim. I'll admit idling to too long is not the best for them but burn holes in the pistons? Seriously? Maybe if it had a bad injector, but that would be an isolated incident.

 

I have also heard about the burning a hole through the piston from a John Deere tech but I didn't believe him. When you idle the cylinder gets colder and you get diesel washed in the oil, not so hot you melt stuff. BTW when my truck started smoking like that it turned out I had 3 cracked injector tips. $350 later it it was good to go.

 

Cummins recommends that for extended idling the rpms should be raised to 1200 rpms. I should think that 1000rpms would be fine. The reason is that there is so little fuel injected at normal idle that combustion temps drop so much that the fuel spraying from the injectors will not completely burn and wash the oil off of the cylinder walls.

That is the reason for not extended idling. I supposed you could extend this reason to most diesel engines.

Burning a hole through the piston. thats a new one. haha