6.5 turbo diesel hard starting

The fellows who recognized the problem to be a glow plug issue were right on the money. The aftermarket Bosch glow plugs were all operating. The truck has an aftermarket engine in it with lower compression pistons and slower warming glow plugs. So the factory glow plug controller was not operating the plugs long enough to properly preheat the cylinders. We installed a starter solenoid along with a push button momentary switch to operate the glow plugs and the truck starts beautifully now. The push button circuit is installed in parallel with the factory glow plug controller and as it turns out the push button is normally only required for the first start up of the day.

Once you check the mechanical problems like glow plugs set your engine up for success.

Use synthetic oil, plug in at night and use a fuel treatment to increase cetane. Use no. 1 diesel in winter if available.

Some of the older diesels in motor homes had no glow plugs. If you have power at our site, plug in the engine. An electric dip stick heater will work fine down to below zero. I have found that synthetic oil makes it much easier to turn diesel engines over in cold weather. Add some fuel additive in colder weather if you do not have No. 1 diesel available. Buy it at any truck stop.

Turtle n Peeps wrote:

bucky wrote:
I believe very much in fixing things that are broken but I see no reference to plugging it in if needed.

Because at 22.5 to 1 compression the 6.5 almost never needs to be plugged in. Even if knocked down a few points of compression it's still got really high compression so it's just not needed in 99.9% of the cases unless you live in really, really cold weather.

The 6.5 and even my 5.7 starts a lot better than my Dmax in cold weather.

My wife's Blazer has never been a great cold starter. It would start (well, the old 6.2 would until it wore out), but took several tries and never pretended to like it. (Also, battery size and conditions was critical.) My F-350 always started more easily, despite having no starting aids at all. (It had a 6BT Cummins with no heat grid.) Sounds like something is wrong with your Dmax.

Turtle n Peeps wrote:
4x4 you can do what Cummins said or if you don't have a test light you can just take a wire and go from the + on the battery and just scratch the unplugged plug end. If it's good it will spark. If not, it's dead.

If your getting white smoke it's not going to be a fuel deal.

BTW when I changed my GP controller to a Napa brand it won't heat the plugs long enough. :M IOW's the Napa controller is junk. To get around this and not spend another 100 bucks I double glow it in the mornings.

Might be the wrong controller...I think the newer (electronic) 6.5's had shorter glow-plug cycles. My wife's Blazer also short-cycles the glow plugs...but I'd rather have to cycle them twice in cold weather than run them longer when not needed. (It's easier on the plugs.)

Plugging it in surely helps if that is an option, but that is hard to do if there are no plug ins at work and the truck has been cold soaking for 9 hours in the parking lot. If plugging it in is an option, I had mine on a timer that would come on 2-3 hours before I needed to drive it the next day.

My Toyota had a silly slow glow/high glow system that used 6V glow plugs. The controller would hit them with 12V for a few seconds and then drop to 6V to complete the heating cycle. Of course the controller never worked well and it would take several key turns to get the plugs hot enough and the truck started. On one cold morning, it just wouldn't fire so I jumped them with 12V directly from the battery (I didn't know about the 6V plugs that it had yet). While it worked awesome 1 time, it also fried all 4 plugs in the process. I then found and ordered some 12V plugs and installed a momentary switch.

I ended up moving to Colorado that had both high elevation and cold weather, so I grafted a Dodge Cummins grid heater onto my intake and had two momentary switches. One for the grid heater and another for the 12V glow plugs. 0 degree starting was never an issue with two starting aids on board.

Adam

bucky wrote:
I believe very much in fixing things that are broken but I see no reference to plugging it in if needed.

Because at 22.5 to 1 compression the 6.5 almost never needs to be plugged in. Even if knocked down a few points of compression it's still got really high compression so it's just not needed in 99.9% of the cases unless you live in really, really cold weather.

The 6.5 and even my 5.7 starts a lot better than my Dmax in cold weather.

I believe very much in fixing things that are broken but I see no reference to plugging it in if needed.

Just wire in a momentary switch so you can't accidentally leave them on for too long. I've found with both my Isuzu and Toyota motors that 10 seconds gets the plugs up to cherry red if it's below 30F. Use slightly less time if it's above 30F, but it's best to "test" one of your plugs to be certain how long it takes to make it cherry red at the tip.

As mentioned, a starter solenoid works well. I think a simple Ford style unit is rated to 200 amps, so plenty big enough for 8 glow plugs.

Adam

2003silverado wrote:
I bought a 1987 chevy with the 6.2 diesel from my uncle and struggled with the same problem. He replaced all the glow plugs with ac delco 60gs, which are self limiting glow plugs that are too slow to heat for the stock controller. I wired up the manual glow plug control with a starter solenoid and it is great now.

Important advice...when using a manual glow plug controller, make sure you use self limiting glow plugs. If you don't, you run the risk of over heating them and they will swell to the point you cant remove them and they will break off.

Thanks for the tip. I can't remember exactly what flow plugs we put in .... other than they were Bosch.