Poorman
Registered User
Been fighting this smoky startup (bad) for awhile on my "86" 6.9 f350. I'm on a manual switch, last week I pulled the glows out and I had 5 bad ones, they were only 1.5 years old with 5000 miles on them, they were Beru. I needed to get the truck going to deliver some wood. I could only find AC Delco 8g locally so I bought 5 and put them in thinking I would do more research and order more online. Putting the 5 new plugs in didn't make much difference. I ordered in a set of Bosch 80034 and installed them last night. I was surprised that 4 of the 5 AC delco plugs I installed last week were dead but all three of the Beru's that were old were still good? I put new connectors on the harness to match the Bosch 80034"s (narrow spade) and installed them. Cycled them for 10 seconds and it fired up, smoking terrible and missing so bad I could hardly keep it running, I tried a few after glows but didn't change anything. The symptoms I've been having were much worse after installing the Bosch plugs. After thinking it over I remembered there's been a few times over the last year that I've hit the glow button and my ninth plug in the cab didn't light up, but always would on the second try. I didn't have a 9th plug in last night. Could it be that the solenoid relay is acting up? (rhetorical) Can a solenoid work but not pass on the proper amperage? Intermittently? And I think the Beru's are 6 volt and the Bosch I think are 12volt, would that put more work on the solenoid and make it more prone to failure? I'm going to replace the relay but would like to better understand what might be going on! Compression is good and if I leave it on the heater for 4 hours it starts pretty clean. THANKS