M1009 will not start

[chisky19]

Ive had my m1009 for about half a year now with absolutely no problems. Last week I did a Dana 60 (with a locker) and 14 bolt axle swap, 4 inch lift, shackle flip, with 37 hmmwv wheels and tires! Well since last week I have driven the truck about 50 miles between three days and then I let it sit for 3 days. Today I went to go drive it to my shop to do a crossover steering swap and could not get it started except for about 5 seconds and then it bogged out and shut off. My fuel gage is at 1/4 of a tank so I know I am not out of fuel as my fuel gage has worked normal since I first got the truck. I primed the fuel lines, absolutely no air in the lines, I pulled the pink wire off of the IP and it made the clicking noise. I pulled the fuel filter (full of fuel) and unscrewed the plastic + sign and had fuel coming out of the hose when I turned it over. Theres no fuel leaks anywhere. I pulled the glow plugs and they all seem to be working. Truck turns over and sounds like it wants to start but it just wont fire. I tried so many different things that I finally wore my battery down and drained it (its trickle charging right now). I have absolutely no idea what to try next. Everybody I have talked to said I probably ran it out of gas so i went to the station and got 5 gal and poured it in and reprimed the truck. No luck. I then checked all of the fuses just in case and no fuses were blown. Let me know your thoughts about what I can try next cause I want to get this thing back on the road! Thank you so much for the help!
I just want to!!!!

 

[tim292stro]

Welcome from Northern California

Couple of things to check first. It's been cold even in Huntington Beach - this morning was down in the lower 40's F. These engines need a minimum of 200RPM to combust the fuel, starter speed comes from voltage, and it needs to sustain the force against the flywheel to get it to spin and that takes current.

First thing to check is your batteries. Just a trickle charge is probably going to take a day or two to get recharged fully (each battery). The first thing you should do after charging those fully is a load test. A Carbon Pile load tester is a common/inexpensive way to check what kind of load the batteries can sustain. A bad battery may show a full charge if you only look at voltage at rest, but it may not be able to sustain a high current load.

If you verify the batteries are good, try cranking the truck again while watching the fan - if it's impossible to pick out the individual blades, it's probably spinning faster than 200RPM (yeah it's not a scientific test, you can use an optical tach on the crank pulley, but that's a lot of work, and a tool you might not have). If your batteries are good and you can still see fan blades fairly easily, that makes me suspect your starter - these die, and often right at the beginning of winter when it gets harder to crank that V8 over (obviously this would require a part replacement).

If your batteries are good and you can't see the fan blades, it's time to look at your fuel again. The IP should have a pink wire coming out of the top of it, this is the fuel cut-off solenoid, it that wire does not show +12V when the key is in the RUN position, your have a problem there. If it does show 12V and you don't hear a "click" when you attach/remove it to the solenoid terminal, then you have a bad fuel cut-off solenoid.

On the liquid portion of the fuel system, little air bubbles can screw up your system, so it's a good idea to at least look at the fuel return line for bubbles. These bubbles will get into your Injection Pump (IP) and then your injector lines - air is much more compressible than fuel, so it'll take a very long time to work this out of your injector lines by cranking. Air will get into your fuel system usually from before the lift pump (where fuel is under a vacuum from the lift pump), so any line or the fuel filter box between the tank and the lift pump is a suspect. The OEM filter box is the most common leak point, and this is why it's often replaced with a spin-on type filter.

You can use a clear tube to check both the supply and return to the IP for air bubbles. It may take a few minutes of cranking total, so I'd recommend borrowing or buying a "real" battery charger for this (24V if you have the stock electric, 12V if you've modified it) - crank for no more than 20 seconds, then let it rest for 40 seconds, keep the charger attached and let it recover for an hour every 5 minutes of cranking.