Power Smoke Adventures - 9 quarts low - 2002

I think I have an oil leak. By Matt Yore

So there I was, sitting at a stoplight discussing the virtues of law with Johhny Law Gordon after sucessfully finding some used tires for his trusty boat, when the old ford started to idle a little rough. Very rough actually. The light turned green, and since I had a bunch of cars behind me, I had to give it a try. It made it about 200 ft then died. I had enough momentum (lots of mass) to get her off the road. I was still stuck in the way so I tried starting it, and it fired and ran smooth for about 100 ft and then died again. This time I was able to coast right in to a Chevy dealership. I just knew it was the infamous cam position sensor so like an idiot, I traveled all over and found one in Sac for a pretty penny. We got back to Woodland and put it in, but it still wouldn't start. Thats when I started looking around. I didn't see the white smoke cloud when I was trying to start it, so I figured out there was no fuel which got me to thinking. I knew there was fuel in the tank, so it was either no transfer pump, or injectors weren't working. Thats when I pulled the dipstick and found it dry as a bone. Hmmm. No visible oil leaks. Well, put oil in it. Luckily walmart was down the street so we went and bought 16 quarts of delo. She drank 9 of them, which means there was still 5 in there. The pickup for the high pressure pump must be a little higher than the lube pump. With the oil topped off, she fired right up. I looked it over good for leaks again and then drove it the 10 miles home.

With some research, I figured out that I probably had bad o-rings on the injectors. So I drove to Sacramento and got new o-rings. When I got back, the dipstick was dry again... Major o-ring problem!

I squeezed it into the minishop again and started in. The injectors are a little hard to see with the valve covers on.

Figure 1. Left side.

With the valve covers off, you can get 7 of the 8 injectors out. But ol #8 requires taking the A/C plenum off which isn't very easy.

Figure 2. Right side.

Well, find anything ugly?

Figure 3. Check this shit out.

See that pink o-ring in the middle. Well, it looks like a mouse was eating on it. This just happens to be the #5 injector that was replaced just over a year ago that had a year warranty. This new injector actually had the updated o-rings that supposedly fixed the 0-ring problems the early powerstrokes had. Hmmm, the 7 originals looked good. Here is a variety of injector o-rings.

Figure 4. Right side injectors. L to R: Bad No 5, Original o-rings, replaced o-rings, no o-rings.

Well, the job was actually a lot easier than I thought at first. I just wish I had the bucks to send them to Hypermax while they were out, but I guess I will have to keep making smoke this way.

Figure 5. Oil slick.

This was actually from cleaning out the cylinders after the injectors were pulled and oil drained into the combustion chambers.

Well, that was fun. Whats next?