You had mentioned that air in the fuel system can cause iproblems, can you expand on this please. The reason I ask is that I gave my 96 PSD a seafoam treatment by putting it into the fuel filter housing, but I didn't notice the gasket that the lid seats against was deformed and I wasn't get a proper seal. So I was sucking air in through the housing for about two weeks until I figured out it wasn't bad fuel but a bad operator error. During those two weeks the truck was hard starting and dying while trying to warm it up, even once it was on the road it just didn't feel right. I probably put about 180 miles on it while it was sucking air. Do you think I have caused any long term serious damage, after replacing fuel filter, gasket, and a oil change the truck starts right up (no more hard starting) and runs like new even though 140,000 mi. Thanks, corey

 

Overall, no you did not do any significant damage to the fuel system for that short a time. The way the fuel system works is that the fuel provides the lubrication for the pump and the injectors. Take away that and replace it with air and you have no lube. You will ruin the fuel pump (if you're sucking air at the tank which is a common factory problem) or you can score your barrels and plungers in the injectors with lack of lube. This is what you would be more likely to see with the kind of failure you saw. While some small amount of damage may have occured I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I would also highly suggest NOT putting any seafoam in the fuel. I would reccommend sticking with something more like Standadyne or Powerservice as they work better with the engines. Whatever you do, NEVER EVER add any addatives of any kind to the oil.

 

Thanks powersrtoke73,
I'm glad you mentioned not putting additives in the oil, because a friend recomended that I start using 2 quarts of lucas with each oil change!

 

Just remember, the oil on that truck does more than just lube the engine. It drives the whole injection system. It goes through the high pressure oil pump and then goes to each injector and is used to drive the injector. Any kind of addative could cause problems there if it gums things up since the passages are very small. The only addative I would even think to run would be an antifoam agent from either Motorcraft or Navistar. Both of which are actually Navistar products in different bottles.

 

Thanks again, It's funny how our well intentioned friends can give us such bad advice, it looks like I'm going to have to research anything (additives or mods) I do to my psd.

 

well now I am getting smoke (light blue) from the exhaust, and lost about 3 quarts of oil in the last two weeks (appears to be some leaking due to bad valve cover seals, but not 3 quarts worth). do you think I damaged some seals and if so which ones? I'm also getting about 13mpg, I don't know if the two (losing oil & bad fuel economy)are related. thanks.