First off, great board. Been a guest for awhile and got the itch, and can now say I proudly own a DIESEL!

I picked up my '89 K2500 really cheap. Guy owed me money and it was done. He hadn't owned the truck too long. It is definitely a work truck. You can tell it was run hard and maybe not kept the best, but still, it was very cheap.

Never owned a diesel before, but figured best way to learn is to get dirty. I've handled gassers, and turbos...but not a diesel.

So here goes. I got the truck today and I'm going to go through and do the routine replacement of belts, t-stat, gp's, filters, oils and all that stuff.

I took off the aircleaner and snapped some pics of the underlyings. Would like some opinions on what you see and think may need immediate attention.
The truck does smoke a bluish color for awhile....figure I need to do a compression and leak down test.


Thanks in advance for any comments, suggestions, and warnings......

Robert

Dont know much about the differences with the 1989. But, that intake looks as dirty, if not more so, then mine was with the EGR installed. Looks yucky.

blue smoke could be too much fuel advanced or incomplete burning in some cylinders.

The manifold doesn't look that bad to me. It just appears to be some oil mist coming thru the CDR.

I agree with John, that intake looks better than most I'd say, and I wouldn't worry about that at all.

The truck does smoke a bluish color for awhile
What do you mean, 'for a while'? Is it only when the engine is cold? On start up? At idle, under load???
If it does it under load, then its likely due to retarded (late) injection timing and can probably be corrected by advancing the pump a touch, you'll get a little more power when you get that cleared up too.
If it only does it at cold startup, thats to be expected.
If it does it at idle, you probably need a set of injectors and/or advance your timing.

To advance timing all you need is a 15mm wrench to loosen the 3 mounting bolts for the pump, and advance it just a lines width or so to the Drivers side and see if that fixes it.

Cool, I take it back then, I only had my old and new intake to base it on.

So what makes the difference, some CDR's working better then others?

TDG, the bluish smoke lasts on idle not under load. At first you see the white smoke but leaves shortly after. The bluish smoke is present after truck is idling for awhile. It doesn't get cold down here for anything. 11 months of summer-like weather. We're hitting mid-90's by noon time.

That oil that is present outside, in the 2nd pic, is that spillover (spillout) from the CDR?

Sounds like early signs of advance piston wearing out, try advancing the injection pump a hair and see if it clears up first.

So what makes the difference, some CDR's working better then others?A functioning EGR system will certainly make it a lot worse, but on HD non-EGR apps a very dirty intake is a sign of either a stuck open CDR or excessive blow-by.

TDG, well turned up the IP a hair and it has cleared up. Thanks for the suggestion. I looked at the CDR and it may be stuck, so I will replace it. As far as the intake, I guess I'll clean it out as discussed in another thread here.

I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. Odds are you still have the factory manifold gasket underneath, and you don't want to mess with scraping that off if you dont have to, trust me, its a pain in the @$$. Yours looks just fine.

Cleared up the smoke? thats good, any change in power??

Well, I take that back, I looked at your pic again and you clearly have the Aftermarket, specifically, Dipaco gasket underneath and they fall off no problem.

But still, I see no reason to suspect CDR failure, but if you want to test, you need to hook up a manometer to the dipstick tube and see if your getting more than 1psi pressure or ~1" vacuum.

I never did it but isnt there a way to dissasemble the CDR and clean it? And it should be done xxx amount of miles? I thought I read a post on that somewhere around here....

Its a very simple mechanism inside...Diesel fuel or a light solvent would clean it just fine. Reccommended service interval is 60k miles. And that doesn't mean replace, just check.

TDG, I did notice a bit more pep by turning up the IP a bit. I looked as best I could inside the CDR and it looks to be spring loaded and seemed fairly free of too much sludge. I figure I'll just give it a cleaning and stick with it. Actually the oil I had outside was probably more due to the hose being pinched at one of the ends and actually not forming a proper seal. I bought a new hose and that should also help.