yayfortrees

Really glad to hear it. You needed a little bit of good news for a change. If you ever catch the jerks that messed with your ride, let us know. I'm all for getting medieval!

Ron Helmuth

good to hear it is getting back to normal for you Ritz.

Hope the insurance coverage is as generous as you are with your time and efforts to improve our rides.

Thanks guys for jumping in with suggestions. It's a great community we have here online. We may not agree on petty stuff but the support is genuine and well intended. Proud to be a part of it.

yotaman85

most of us are pretty cool, we should start a fan club!!

Ritzy4Runner

iTrader: (1)

Once again to all of you ... THANK YOU

Ron Helmuth

So just to sum up-the starter itself is having some issues? or I am not sure I fully understand-I am a bit thick...I figure I got the ball rolling so I want to be sure we all learn from this...

Ritzy4Runner

iTrader: (1)

The Starter issue may still be hiding out there. the initial issue with the starter was that for what ever the reason, it was not able to fully turn the engine over without making really loud, ugly rock breaking grinding noises which also would literally lock itself up. this may have been a result of something to do with the possible attempt to steal the truck, or it could have been a partiall result of the battery going almost completely dead. But the bottom line was after several attempts to determine the cause, as other symtoms, it began to operate normally. With a charger on the battery maintaining power I was able to over come what appears to have been a flooded engine as well. Letting the engine continue to warm up to operating temperature seems to resolve the "white foggy exhaust" My fear here was that somehow the head had become damaged. It appears at this time that the issue is closed, not necessarily resolved. We can always hope and it was HUGE getting the inputs from the guys/gals here at Yota Tech! (Take a bow now Ron)

Ron Helmuth

thanks Ritz I was following along but wasn't grasping what the fix was-the starter was not getting enough juice to make a complete start is the way I would sum up.

Glad to hear this is getting better for you.

DeathCougar

iTrader: (23)

Sounds like they tried to steal the truck, and flooded the cylinders with fuel.

For the record, pumping the pedal on a fuel injected truck does absolutely nothing. Given that it doesn't have an accelerator pump, you are not pumping fuel into the motor.

Sounds like the engine just had too much fuel in it and was hydrolocking on the excess fuel. I have had this happen as well. The starter can often overcome this pressure, but it tends to make some nasty noises. The excess smoke was from the high amounts of fuel in the cylinders, which the motor was trying to burn all at once.

Same basic thing happens when I start my race car up after sitting over the winter

Ritzy4Runner

iTrader: (1)

Thanks DC, that does make sense about the hydro-locking. The sound was like the engine was trying to crush rocks and it would only turn over or at least TRY to turn over a single revolution if that and subsequent attempts. So by just bumping the starter would that have helped finally freed the cylinders from hydro-locking enough to allow it to turn the engine over normally to allow it to finally begin to fire?

Maybe thats what I ended up doing just trying to determine where the vibration was coming from . So having my son just bump the starter while I checked the starter for vibration may have done the trick to unlocking it? If tha tis the case then I will just tuck that bit of info away for use again if I ever encounter a similar incident. As I mentioned, we did that serveral times and then we noticed the sound seemed to be normal again.

Understand the issue about fuel injection, old habit of pumping accelerator but I do know that flooring the accelerator does assist in starting a flooded engine, at least thats what I have read, something to do with opening the butterfly valve fully for more air. Thanks again for the insight and for your help, it is ALWAYS welcome!

LifeOnABoard

I agree about the high compression knocking being the culprit. But on the topic of pumping the pedal. There are 2 things that this does on a fuel injected truck.

1. Assuming the throttle body is cable actuated, by opening the throttle body during cranking, you effectively allow more air to the cylinders. This would help in a flooded situation. More air allows for a more favorable A/F ratio. Of course, the IAC valve is supposed to do this job but it will only open to a programmed preset based on coolant temperature. It can't respond to the 02 sensor during cranking.

2. Many ECU's have a "flood clear" threshold. Meaning that if the TPS sends a signal to the ECU saying that the throttle is open past a certain precentage (80% for example) the ECU will not open the injectors.

So in essence, on a flooded fuel injected engine, it is perfectly OK to go WOT in an attempt to start.


Of course, this is information not known to people who haven't programmed ECU's before so it's not normally "on the record".