run it on seven

My suspicion, (not gospel) is that he will be fine especially if the injector is *not* spraying fuel. I have driven gassers for thousands of miles with a miss on one of the cylinders and the only noticeable problem was the engine ran rough, had less power and didn't get as may MPG as it did before.

50 miles is not very far being a little out of balance especially on a heavy duty engine.

Karl, on my 2000 Chevy Silverado (fuel injected) I had a bad spark plug. Tried to diagnose the miss but was unable. The service personnel told me that the cars computer shuts down the injector to any cylinder that is misfiring. My only point here is that a non functioning injector could be simply shut off by the computer and the problem might be something else.

Ivan Vegvary

OTOH if that injector is dribbling, he could get a couple of pints of diesel in the sump in a 50 mile trip. A gas engine, the charge is largely vaporised and the oil temperature is most of the time high enough to recycle any gas vapours that make it past the rings back into the inlet manifold via the crankcase breather. Diesel doesn't boil out of the oil anywhere near as easily, it just thins the oil down till it cant lubricate enough, then the bearings pick up and likely enough seize.

That would only be applicable if this is a recent diesel engine with common rail electronic injectors. All the older diesels are mechanical injection and the computer (if there is one) has no control over the individual injectors.

Pete, my engine is the 5.3 liter gasoline model. If I had read the OP more carefully I would have realized that it was a diesel. Thanks,

Ivan Vegvary

A guy I work with did that for a week or so with his Ford diesel until he could get it fixed. He ended up getting the fancy computer link for his laptop and it pinpointed exactly which injector it was. It turned out it wasn't an injector at all, but a plug on the injection harness where it passed through the valve cover gasket. Plug is apparently built INTO the gasket. Ford dealer wanted a couple of grand to fix, he ended up getting a new gasket and internal harness for a couple of hundred off the internet. Lasted until the next month when the other side went out, same thing. He said the worst part was clearing out the gubbins on top so he could get down to the valve cover bolts. Guess that fixed it, haven't heard anything more about it for a couple of years and he still has the truck. Total outlay was about $600 and quite a few hours of weekend work.

Stan

snipped-for-privacy@prolynx.com on Tue, 18 May 2010 10:45:16 -0700 (PDT) typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

Sounds like he forgot the old rule about shoelaces: If one breaks, replace them both at the same time.

Had a friend in the heavy construction biz. He said their procedure was to replace 'everything' if they had to open an engine up. It might be more expensive, but they lessened the amount of down time while they had to tear it open "again".

Yet another reason to be like an old geezer who when he bent over to tie his shoe, would ask himself "anything else I can do while I'm down here?" - you've gone through most of the work - fix it all.

"ouch" - but that is my budget talking. But glad he could fix it, and save the couple grand it would have cost otherwise. (I admire, and "hate" those clever guys, who can take a wrecked Jeep and parlay that into a bigger engine for the working Jeep, and a couple hundred dollars clear from parting out the wreck. Just not my skill set.)

pyotr

Help me out here, guys.

The last diesels I ever worked on (and still do with my Deutz tractor and John Deere mower) have an injector pump and solid injectors -- one per cylinder; no moving parts except the poppet valve in each injector, and the pump itself.

What y'all are talking about in this thread is an engine with electrically-driven unit-injectors, but no description of the fuel pressurization system, and no ideas about how one gets the 600-1000psi necessary to pump the fuel and atomize it into the cylinder.

I guess I missed a decade or two with diesels; I didn't know that there were electronic unit-injector diesels.

So... Help me out. How about some nice fleshy descriptions of what's going on?

LLoyd

The new diesels are fancier than that.

The Ford / International 6.4 (which I'm most familiar with since I have one) has a high pressure fuel pump that pressurizes the common fuel rail to ~26,000 PSI (no, that is not a typo). There is a fuel cooling system with it's own pump and radiator to keep the fuel temps from getting too high. The injectors have piezo-electric actuators moving the partially pressure balanced valve. The injectors may fire more than once during a cylinders combustion cycle.

This engine also uses a dual sequential turbo setup with a small high pressure turbo with servo driven variable geometry backed by a larger conventional low pressure turbo. The small turbo spins up fast for off-idle response and the large turbo catches up a second or two later.

"Pete C." fired this volley in news:4bf346a1$0 $22852$ snipped-for-privacy@unlimited.usenetmonster.com:

Whoa! I've got some _learnin'_ to do! Time to hit the books... well, the e-books.

Thanks.

LLoyd

Me Too! Last diesel I worked on had seven cylinders and each cylinder had it's own pump. If it wasn't performing you took a special handle and lifted each pump off the cam shaft. If the governor didn't open upwhen you did that, it ment that that cylinder wasn doing much. All this took place at about 300 RPM.