ok, I have searched and it looks like it may be injectors but not sure, so here it goes.

This just started this morning, went to start the truck and the "normal time" to crank didnt start had to turn the key a second time. Driving away thought I heard a stumble in the exhaust note. Went home and parked truck, now time to get kids from school and they dang thing did the same start problem but now there is a definate miss. It was blowing out a combination of greyish and black smoke, didnt barely want to move. Thought it cleared out as I was able to drive it down the road but now I am hearing pinging if I accelerate mildly. I am noticeing that it is occasionally blowing out black smoke and still a little greyish colored smoke. Get the kids picked up from the two schools average time now running about 20 minutes, everything seems ok but I am still getting slite pinigng while accelerating.

Ok the Truck is a 04 with the 5.4L3V it has 46,000 miles, running a TP 93 octane tune. The fuel filter was changed out at 36,000 miles. So I begin to think that maybe the gas at the Shell station I just bought had a bad batch of gas(lower octane than listed) so I go home and load the 87 octane tune, and check for engine codes. there were no codes to read.
well it takes about 7 minutes to load the tune and I still get the same start problem and it is still stumbling, only black smoke now. So I take it for a drive down the street and it consistantly stumbles on take off till I get to 1500 rpm's then it apears fine. Verified after several start and stop's that at 1500 it clears up. I made seveal WOT passes to blow out what I am thinking is excess fuel from leaking injectors and it is blowing black smoke out the tail pipes. So with this info do yall think I may have a bad injector or two? or could it be something else.

Sorry for the long post but I am just frustrated at his point. It acts like it is loading up if it were a carb motor, but I just dont know enough about fuel injection. Any help would be appriciated.

Thanks
Jack

 

Be careful, if you do have an injector failure which is very common on these, you dont want to hydrolock your cylinder causing major engine damage(ie bent rods/pistons).

An easy way to tell about which cylinder was having issues was to pull the plugs, but that has the possibility to turn into a whole other issue. Id say soak the plugs with Kriol and let them sit, and carefully remove them after they've say overnight. Then see which cylinder is running rich, which it seems like its doing. Course the Kriol might throw off your ability to diagnose the plug status.

Like I said, with the bad reputation of these injectors, I wouldnt drive it until you figure it out. Its sad that these injectors are of such poor quality, I mean the truck is only 2 yrs old for God's sake.

 

well it still hasnt thrown any codes so I am assuming it is a leaky injector and not a coil pack or plug. Taking it to the dealer in the morning to run diagnostics on it and a leak test on the injectors. If it does turn out to be a/couple bad injector should I replace all of them? May get them to change the plugs while it is in also due to the fouling that its happening. Am I missing anything??

 

as a ford tech, i have seen alot of injector probs with the '04 5.4l 3v. i would have all the injectors replaced with the updated ones. it will never be a problem after that.

 

What "newer" ones are we talking about here? And with fuel injectors being pretty damn expensive, is there any TSB out there addressing this issue while Im still under warranty so that I dont have to cover em out of pocket at a later date?

 

Ok, just got back from the ford dealer and we think it is probably bad gas with water mixed in it. It started up and was puffing white smoke this morning barley got it to dealer.

Worked with the shop foreman for 2 hrs trying to figure problem out. Had it hooked up to his diagnostic machine and we monitored a lot of neat stuff. There were no codes thrown, leak down test was perfect, rock solid. monitoring the cyclinder firing it was showing occasional misses on cylinders 7,6,5,8 all on the driver side which is also were the inlet for the fuel rail is located. Truck would run fine above 1500 rpm while accelerating but would lean out and stumble sitting still. Only thing that was slitely off was the O2 sensor switching speeds(probably due to being coated with water). Looking back it kinda makes sense....no rain for months then we get rain, I fill up and truck runs like crap. So I put two cans of seafoam in the tank and I will try to get enough gas burned up so I can fill it up with good gas.

Now comes the best part. The shop foreman seeing that I have purchased several trucks from there dealership and that he is on salary said todays troubleshooting was on him.... can you believe it 2 hrs and they didnt charge me a thing. He was very helpfull and I am glad that there are still some good dealerships out there. I will be replaciong O2 sensors once I get all the water out...

 

Good to see that things seemed to have checked out, but two cans of seafoam sounds like a bit much.

 

Id be interested to know what type of diagnostic equip would monitor misfiring and whatnot, that would be handy to have to troubleshoot individual cylinders.

Anyway, glad it was nothing serious and everything worked out.

 

Wait, Quintin says the 04 injectors are the good ones, andthe 05/06 injectors are crap. OK that's not a direct quote but are there two injectors models for 04?

 

My truck has developed a.. different sound below 1500RPMS.. Sounds like it knocking under slight acceleration.. I initially thought it was bad gas, nut I refueled and same thing..

Warrenty ran out as of last week.. go figure!

Sounds like a diesel knock/clatter..... It just developed this sound after 2.5 years.