towing rig

[Frankenchevy]

How does that work? And good to know lol. Does it require key on amd wait ?

If not, then he is lucky by the entire virtue his engine doesn’t have them because he was pretty clueless to engine things it seemed

It’s a resistive heating element that sits at the end of the air horn. It heats the incoming air when starting the engine. Yes, you should wait for it to heat up for cold starts.

You must be registered for see images attach

…but Cummins or not, you would think that any diesel owner would know what glow plugs are. Although it sounds like the guy you are talking about is not big on maintenance or very mechanically inclined/interested.

 

[AuroraGirl]

It’s a resistive heating element that sits at the end of the air horn. It heats the incoming air when starting the engine. Yes, you should wait for it to heat up for cold starts.

You must be registered for see images attach

…but Cummins or not, you would think that any diesel owner would know what glow plugs are. Although it sounds like the guy you are talking about is not big on maintenance or very mechanically inclined/interested.

I doubt anything I told him stuck for more than 5 minutes not gonna lie

 

[Matt69olds]

How does that work? And good to know lol. Does it require key on amd wait ?

If not, then he is lucky by the entire virtue his engine doesn’t have them because he was pretty clueless to engine things it seemed

The wait to start light on my 06 is temperature dependent. If it’s warmer than 60 degrees, light doesn’t come on. The colder it is, the longer the light is on.

I have caught my wife starting the truck immediately in temperatures when I know damn well the light will be on. She says she occasionally forgets what vehicle she is driving. The truck smokes a little and runs a little rough, but I don’t think it’s a big deal.

 

[SirRobyn0]

The wait to start light on my 06 is temperature dependent. If it’s warmer than 60 degrees, light doesn’t come on. The colder it is, the longer the light is on.

I have caught my wife starting the truck immediately in temperatures when I know damn well the light will be on. She says she occasionally forgets what vehicle she is driving. The truck smokes a little and runs a little rough, but I don’t think it’s a big deal.

I've never owned a Diesel car or truck, though I do own an 84' Diesel tractor. So I'm guilty of that once in while at the shop. We really don't see many diesels, and sometimes when I'm in a hurry it's easy to forget. My tractor has heat coil on the dash that glows red, and if you don't wait a couple seconds after it's glowing I'll crank it and it'll flood, that's always fun. I remember oh about 15 years ago I worked with a guy that had mid-80's Ford with whatever their diesel was 6.9? The glow plugs were pretty much dead and he'd start it both at home and at the shop with a squirt of starting fluid. Sheesh, I always thought he'd blow it up one day, but didn't in the time I was there anyway.

 

[AuroraGirl]

The wait to start light on my 06 is temperature dependent. If it’s warmer than 60 degrees, light doesn’t come on. The colder it is, the longer the light is on.

I have caught my wife starting the truck immediately in temperatures when I know damn well the light will be on. She says she occasionally forgets what vehicle she is driving. The truck smokes a little and runs a little rough, but I don’t think it’s a big deal.

Id assume its just harder on the batteries and makes for a "rough" start like you say in the grand scheme? Kinda like pumping the pedal 7 times then holding it down and turning on a sbc, youre gonna have gas smell and stumble a bit clearing the flood but then it will catch up.
I could be wrong

 

[Grit dog]

It’s not really harder on the engine. It’s just harder to light non flammable fuel when everything including the cylinders is cold.
It’s harder on em to use ether as it burns much faster (obviously) and shock loads cold parts.
But any Duramax or Common Rail Cummins has enough fuel pressure that its gotta be pretty cold before the glow plugs or grid heater are needed or even beneficial to get them to light off quickly.

I don’t even think about waiting for the wait to start above freezing.

 

[Matt69olds]

Kinda off the subject of the original content of this thread, but relevant to the current discussion:

I have also never had issues starting my diesels in the cold. I spent a week in Minnesota on a snowmobile trip, the warmest it got that entire week was 12 below zero. That is ACTUAL temp, not windchill. The truck started right up without hassle, and the block heater wasn’t plug in.

Since my wife currently drives my Ram, it does get plugged overnight during the winter. I have verified with a scan tool, with the block heater plugged in the engine is around 100 degrees. That makes it MUCH easier to clear the windows. I think the cooling system on these trucks holds 7 gallons of coolant, it takes a while to heat up that much water when it really cold.

One thing that always made me scratch my head is the weird 4 cylinder “lope” these trucks have during cold warmup. After a couple minutes of idle if, the PCM automatically raises the idle speed, and shuts off the injectors for 2 cylinders. It makes the truck shake, and idles really rough. I have no clue why they are designed to do that.

I have also never had fuel gelling problems. Some people religiously add fuel treatment, occasionally I’ll run a bottle of injector cleaner thru the truck when I plan to really work it hard.

 

[Itali83]

Kinda off the subject of the original content of this thread, but relevant to the current discussion:

I have also never had issues starting my diesels in the cold. I spent a week in Minnesota on a snowmobile trip, the warmest it got that entire week was 12 below zero. That is ACTUAL temp, not windchill. The truck started right up without hassle, and the block heater wasn’t plug in.

Since my wife currently drives my Ram, it does get plugged overnight during the winter. I have verified with a scan tool, with the block heater plugged in the engine is around 100 degrees. That makes it MUCH easier to clear the windows. I think the cooling system on these trucks holds 7 gallons of coolant, it takes a while to heat up that much water when it really cold.

One thing that always made me scratch my head is the weird 4 cylinder “lope” these trucks have during cold warmup. After a couple minutes of idle if, the PCM automatically raises the idle speed, and shuts off the injectors for 2 cylinders. It makes the truck shake, and idles really rough. I have no clue why they are designed to do that.

I have also never had fuel gelling problems. Some people religiously add fuel treatment, occasionally I’ll run a bottle of injector cleaner thru the truck when I plan to really work it hard.

They do the 4 cylinder idle to make it warm up faster. Diesels don’t really build heat at idle because of how little fuel is needed to be injected. Even when up to temperature, diesels will cool down a little when brought back to idle. It takes more fuel and more heat is made from running on 4 cylinders while warming up than running on 6 believe it or not.

Ben.

 

[Matt69olds]

They do the 4 cylinder idle to make it warm up faster. Diesels don’t really build heat at idle because of how little fuel is needed to be injected. Even when up to temperature, diesels will cool down a little when brought back to idle. It takes more fuel and more heat is made from running on 4 cylinders while warming up than running on 6 believe it or not.

Ben.

That’s the story I have heard as well, I guess the theory is compressing air without the fuel creates more heat than injecting fuel into a engine under a light load.

On the flip side of that theory, I worked at a Cadillac dealership when the Northstar engine was first released. One of the “features” discussed in a training class was the ability for the engine to run up to 50 miles with no coolant. The PCM would shut off random cylinders and just pump air thru the engine to keep the temperature under control.

 

[AuroraGirl]

That’s the story I have heard as well, I guess the theory is compressing air without the fuel creates more heat than injecting fuel into a engine under a light load.

On the flip side of that theory, I worked at a Cadillac dealership when the Northstar engine was first released. One of the “features” discussed in a training class was the ability for the engine to run up to 50 miles with no coolant. The PCM would shut off random cylinders and just pump air thru the engine to keep the temperature under control.

I think the 4 cylinders remaining have more load and thus... work harder? No that means more diesel, maybe im right but im going with no LOL!

also the northstar is cool like that, and the 50 miles at 55mph. At 261 degrees the car switches off one bank of injectors and then those cylinders cool the engine by pumping air and also not combusting gasoline, then the banks switch every 30 seconds

 

[Grit dog]

That’s the story I have heard as well, I guess the theory is compressing air without the fuel creates more heat than injecting fuel into a engine under a light load.

On the flip side of that theory, I worked at a Cadillac dealership when the Northstar engine was first released. One of the “features” discussed in a training class was the ability for the engine to run up to 50 miles with no coolant. The PCM would shut off random cylinders and just pump air thru the engine to keep the temperature under control.

GM engineering at it's finest. Instead of designing or fixing a much maligned pos of an engine platform, they actually planned for it to fail unexpectedly and spent money on risk management vs a good running engine....

 

[Grit dog]

Its 3 cylinder high idle and yes it's for quicker warmup. More fuel per firing cylinder makes more heat than less fuel in all 6.

 

[AuroraGirl]

GM engineering at it's finest. Instead of designing or fixing a much maligned pos of an engine platform, they actually planned for it to fail unexpectedly and spent money on risk management vs a good running engine....

i think it took at least 7 years for cadillac to ever address the core issues relaed to those studds.7 years was a LOT of lost buyers, hurt customers, etc

 

[SquareRoot]

Here we go...