Quote:
Originally Posted by Dubyagee
The tbi of that era was notorious for losing one of the two injectors randomly resulting in four of the cylinders (dual plane intake) starving for fuel and skipping. If you watch the injectors while it is idling you will see a difference in spray patterns. The injector that is not spraying a conical fan spray has failed.
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I looked at the spray patterns when I had the air filter out, I didn’t notice your part about “at idle,” but when I revved it slightly the patterns looked good, the same on each side. I’m guessing would be good to look more closely at idle - problems might reveal themselves more obviously at idle as opposed to higher RPM.
At any rate, gory hallelujah, my van feels like new. I asked my mechanic Ky, pronounced “key”, if he thought I should get the heads done, as he agreed that the smoking could be a valve guides issue, he said no, just run it.
I’m thinking that I would be happy to get trouble free usage of it for numerous months before spending large again, this whole episode cost me about $2000 - Ky was $1600, I probably spent about $300 on parts myself - I’m happy to cut the cash spigot off for now on this one.
For that $1600, parts and labor, I got CAT welded in, fuel pump installed plus tricky fuel pressure test enabled, front suspension lubed, and knock sensor installed.
As for the cloud of smoke at start up, I feel a bit guilty about it, not sure how bad that is on the air pollution index. I am sure however that getting the heads redone would be a major, major event in terms of time and money. I’d rather wait a few more years and get a new engine. I’ve read numerous times that the mpg on the 5.7 is almost as good as on the 5.0. It makes sense, because you’re still moving the same tonnage around. Seems that extra gas usage would mainly happen on hard acceleration.