Totally new to diesels and old American trucks, so thanks in advance for any help or ideas. The truck has the original engine with ~169k miles (odometer rolled over) according to the guy I purchased it from. It's a little hard to start cold as I am told the glow plugs need to be replaced, but once warm cranks and runs. The issue concerning me is what I perceive to be a rough/jumpy idle. This is worse when the engine is cold, but improves when warmed up. Even when warm it is rough enough at idle to cause a noticeable wobble to the entire truck. You can also see the engine jumping slightly on it's mounts. When revved up the engine smooths out. There is no smoke, but the exhaust smells pretty rich to me, so perhaps one of the cylinders is missing. I've probably put ~200 incident free miles on it since I picked it up, but want to make sure this isn't the sign of a serious problem that will brick the engine if I keep driving it. So far the only thing I've done is put 2 large size cans of seafoam through it, no change.
Things I've considered:
I am going to change the glow plugs this weekend, so while I'm in there I will be able to try some things out.
Some other minor things I'm chasing down:
Things I've considered:
- bad harmonic balancer
- stuck valve/bad valve spring
- bad injector on one cylinder
- bad fuel filter(s)
I am going to change the glow plugs this weekend, so while I'm in there I will be able to try some things out.
Some other minor things I'm chasing down:
- dome lights stay one when the truck is off and doors closed, assume bad ground somewhere, pulled the bulbs for now
- front passenger door won't close well, just ordered a couple new striker bolts for both front doors
- no dash cluster lights work, only speedometer and temp guage work, I pulled the dash cluster, looks like the PCB was bad, have a replacement on order
- the glow plug wait light doesn't come on even though I can hear the solenoid cycling, not connected to the cluster PCB so issue must be elsewhere
