LJ78 - Blue Smoke, Jerky Ride?

[fish78]

Heres a question for you diesel heads....

I've got a '90 LJ78, and ever since the cold weather hit, my truck has been acting a little off. I'm not sure if its the cold doing it, or if its just timing.

Anyway, heres the deal. When i start the truck up, I get a fair bit of blue smoke out the back, and the feels a bit "jerky", kind of like the engine is skipping a beat. It smooths out once the truck warms up to operating temp, and it used to go away completely, but now it sticks around, not as bad as at start up, but its still there. Every time the engine "skips" i get a puff of blue out the exhaust.

Has anyone got any ideas on whats going on? Any suggestions?

Thanks a ton!

[Tapage]

Well my first thought with blue smoke in a diesel engine it's timing in the diesel pump .. but I'm not sure if in your 2L-TE it's posible .. my second thought maybe rings ..

How much km .. on it . ?

[fish78]

it has about 150,000kms on the clock. I just had the head replaced in the fall. I wonder if maybe it could be linked to that?

[crushers]

compression test is in order...

hard starting could be glow plugs (typical with this unit)
run some seafoam and a new filter.
add conditioner with every tank.
buy fuel from only heavily used locations (fresh fuel regularily)
cheers

[fish78]

thanks wayne,

anybody in town you'd recommend to get a comp. test done?

[crushers]

myself or Mike at ProActive

[roscoFJ73]

Originally Posted by fish78

Heres a question for you diesel heads....

I've got a '90 LJ78, and ever since the cold weather hit, my truck has been acting a little off. I'm not sure if its the cold doing it, or if its just timing.

Anyway, heres the deal. When i start the truck up, I get a fair bit of blue smoke out the back, and the feels a bit "jerky", kind of like the engine is skipping a beat. It smooths out once the truck warms up to operating temp, and it used to go away completely, but now it sticks around, not as bad as at start up, but its still there. Every time the engine "skips" i get a puff of blue out the exhaust.

Has anyone got any ideas on whats going on? Any suggestions?

Thanks a ton!

Blue smoke is nearly always oil burning from worn rings. Im guessing one cyl is worse then the others and this what causes the miss and the puff of blue smoke.
Could be a valve problem
Compression test is in order

[fish78]

grrreat ......i'm wondering if i cooked one of the rings when i had the very high engine temps that cracked my original head...

[crushers]

lets see, 28 hours driving with a cracked head...through the mountains..,
you tell me if that is a possibility...

cheers

[2rivers]

Interesting. After a head swap on our Prado, I noticed on cold morning starts that it ran pretty rough like you say with lots of smoke until warmish. See my thread "Prado gone cold turkey" or something like that....

Question for you: try pumping your primer knob on the top of the fuel filter housing before start. Is there pressure right away? Can you pump it say 20 times? If so, does it make a difference in the rough start/smoke etc? If so, then you have some kind of fuel pressure leak or air leak in fuel system. I had this also, and I thnk Robin "lightduty" on here mighthave also. Ours has subsided on this habit now to tolerable levels (pluged in helps too), but I wonder if it has anything to do with the head swap. Anyone else out there have this experience? I wonder if it has anything to do with the crude EFI / TPS set-up with this 2l-te and therefore overfuelling on start? Or is it that the machine shop did a lousy valve re-grinD? HOw are these related or are they?

????

Of course, there is the old "check the glow plugs / function of" advice as basics.

good luck and keep u sposted.
Johnny

[light_duty]

Johnny, my problems pretty much went away after installing new glow plugs. I also downloaded the owner's manual online, which advised applying full throttle when starting on cold mornings. I hadn't been doing that previously.

Starts fine now, little smoke.