03 6.0l Air in fuel system?????

[03stroke6.0l]

03 6.0L Air Getting in Fuel After Inj/FuelPump Replacement and Tank Inspec.???

Good Afternoon Gentlemen, I have an early build 2003 6.0L F-250 (This is my first diesel). I bought the truck four months ago and have had problems from day one. It had 203K miles when i bought it, and it currently had 207K (Changed oil first day i bought the truck). So now I'll get into the nitty gritty:

Problem 1 (Has been solved, just more background on truck for your knowledge) When I bought the truck it was all stock. First thing I did was cut off the muffler and hollowed out the cat and welded a 4" straight pipe from the cat back, I also added a K&N cold air intake. This was prep to help with EGTs when I added the SCT livewire programmer. Once this was all added truck ran great but i notice after a couple of days that the truck was losing power upon acceleration and the turbo was only boosting to 10-11 tops. This cause of this problem was a blown up pipe coming from the exhuast manifold to the turbo. Up pipe replaced and problem solved.

Problem 2

IN A NUTSHELL: (IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THE LONG POST BELOW)

-What has been done: +Replaced all 8 injectors w/ OEM ford inj. +Replaced fuel pump +Dropped Tank Replaced all internal parts, screen and that black cone piece (sorry don't know the name of part) and tank was clean minus the broken cone piece. +Inspected Injector Wiring harness for chaffing +Tested the FICM Voltage and they matched Ford Specs +UNRELATED, Also replaced bad ICP, IPR sensors (screen was not broken on the IPR and not many metal shavings so i suspect that the HPOP is fine).

-Current Problem: +Truck will start and idle but once I try to accelerate it is loosing fuel pressure (as low as 10 psi WOT) and has more than 2" of striction (as high as 15"+). When truck dies and I pull the cap off of the fuel filter on top of the engine and it is full of air, so I cycle until I see Diesel then truck starts right back up. Once I start driving it starts stalling and dies again and is full of air again

-My Questions: +Is it possible that one of the injectors isn't sealed properly and combustion gas is being created in between the copper seal? Would this cause Striction in between the tank and fuel pump inlet? +Even though the tank was dropped and clean is it possible that somethings restricting flow from the tank? +Any other ideas??????

Here we go....... -Once the up pipe was replaced the truck ran awesome, turbo would boost to 22-24 and great acceleration all was well. I took the truck on a hunting trip to that weekend and drove about 500 miles that weekened. Truck ran great on the way there but on the way back i was traveling at about 75 mph and the truck all of the sudden started loosing power and began missing. ran the check engine scan on the programmer and it was faulting the cylinder three injector.

-Had a former 6.0 ford mechanic hook it up to the legit ford computer and he confirmed that I needed a new injector. I went the costly route and replaced all 8 with OEM injectors from Ford (I've heard to many nighmare stories with aftermarket injectors). I did not put these on like I said it's my first diesel. I let a former ford diesel mechanic who has 20+ yrs experience put them on while I watched so I could learn myself. He installed the passenger side while he had his buddy (former military mechanic) install the driver side for time sake since it was all eight. (This concerns me greatly because from what i've heard it's harder to torque the injectors down on the driver side and I honestly don't know his buddies background with diesels).

-Once the injector job was done I drove the truck 40 miles into town to take the cores back to ford. Truck ran great no missing on the way to the dealership. On the way home while merging on the the highway the truck had a loss of power and completely died out. I tried to start the truck back up no luck so I began cycling the key on and off to allow the fuel pump to cycle fuel assuming that maybe air was in the system. This was the case after a few fuel pump cycles the truck fired right up. Truck seemed hesitant but got it home. So I tried to drive it around a few times thinking with time the air would get out, not the case air kept getting in and stalling the truck. So I called the guy who replaced the injectors and he came to look at it. He drove it and it died on him and when he was trying to cycle the fuel pump to get it to start he said he couldn't hear it running and couldn't get the truck to start at all and said it was a bad fuel pump.

-So i replaced the fuel pump (Horizontally mounted on the rail). Once I replaced this it would start and ran better but once I got around 70-75mph it would not accelerate any more and would begin to miss. So my next course of action was to hook a PSI guage to monitor idling and running fuel PSI and a striction guage between the fuel pump inlet and the tank to see if there was something restricting flow.

-Idling PSI showed 55 PSI and around 4" of striction so this led me to believe that something in the tank might be restricing flow. I decided to drive with the guages and PSI went all the way down to 5 and the striction went all the way to 15"!!!

-So I had a guy drop the tank and he told me and showed me that the cone (don't know if that's what it's called) inside the tank by the screen was broken and big pieces were getting sucked against the screen. (other than that the tank was clean as a whistle). Ok so this made sense in regards to the high striction so he replaced the screen and cone and blew out all the fuel lines.

-Once the tank was back in I took it for a spin with the PSI and striction guage still hooked up. The good news was i could get the truck past 75 mph I accelerated to 110, but the bad news was i could tell the truck was lacking acceleration speed and HP and the PSI guage dropped down to 15 PSI (which i know shouldn't be under 45 PSI WOT) and striciton still at 15". So what the hell??

-I decided to drive the truck around a couple days to see if it would clear up, but no it only got worse and now I can't even drive half a mile without the fuel filter housing on top filling up with air and causing the whole truck to shut down

[dannyboy950]

There are several possibilities. When blowing the lines out they may have blown the little o-rings out of the quick connect fittings or otherwise damaged them. One or more fuel lines is not correctly seated, either will cause it to suck air.

If a floor jack was used to hold up the tank during mounting and it wasn't positioned properly the new foot valve could have been crushed. [Don't ask how I know about that]