Gillumap
07-31-2005, 01:44 AM
1999 f250 7.3 PSD w/ 180,000mi Last week harmonic balancer went out while driving, serp belt came off and parked on road side. Pryed pulley on balancer back forward enough for the belt to stay on 1/2mile back to the house. Replaced harmonic balancer, refilled radiator with plain water(had to remove radiator to replace balancer) and tried to crank it. Starter engaged but wouldn't turn the engine over. Kept hitting the starter until it finally turned over and started with a puff of white smoke. Never seen any smoke until that time. Drove around the block and when I tried to start it again, same thing. This kept happening but when it started is ran perfect and sounded fine. Didn't happen every time, but each time it was hard to crank, I got that puff of white smoke. Had to keep hitting the starter until it would break free enough to crank. Replaced both batteries, cables and starter. No help. Replace the starter 3 more times (all reman crap from autozone, it's possible they could have all been bad), no help. Installed new Denso heavy duty 4kw starter and engine cranked but with bad noise. Turned the key off and tried to crank again and this new starter wouldn't even turn it over. But when I tried I heard that same noise again and haven't tried again. I've put around 1500 miles on it since this started and its ran fine just really hard to get turned over intermittently. Please tell me what's wrong with this thing.