Quote:
Originally Posted by rslifkin
No, not on a diesel. An under-fueled diesel will just make limited power, but it won't smoke.
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That's often true but, not always. I've got about a dozen diesel motors around here in vehicles, tractors, construction equipment, generators, etc. I have seen a clogged fuel filter produce some whitish smoke at the top of the RPM it'll get to with the reduced fuel. In fact, Sunday I got stranded by my Ford 6.7 because of a clogged fuel filter and it was producing some white smoke under load. That filter only had about 8,000 miles on it and, stupidly, I didn't have a spare in the truck so it resulted in a 5 mile round-trip walk to get one. I've got a spare now.
I've also blown turbos or had charge pipes pop off and you get copious amounts of black smoke when that happens, there's no mistaking it, along with NO power.
Anyway, what I've learned in maintaining all these motors is that 95% of problems with a diesel are fuel (which includes dirty fuel plugging a filter, by far the most commy), 4.9% are fuel system (injectors, injector pump, etc., also caused by bad fuel) and the other 0.1% are something else. This is hyperbole but, not far from reality.
I've had one actual motor problem out of all of them and that was a failed liner o-ring on a 1989 International DTA360 caused by the coolant not being right.
I've got a couple of Deere motors with over 6500 hours on them, one in an air compressor and one in a boom lift, neither have had any issues that weren't fuel related. So, it's smart to always start with the fuel and the fuel filter and, despite my failure to do so in the truck, to always have extra filters on hand.