starting has become hard?

[gattaca37]

have a 96' f-250 stroke and this year in michigan the stroke is starting hard. have a block heater which is good and working and have had her plugged in between 0-33 degrees Farenheit :so engine is warm at all times and here is what she is doing : turn on key, wait to start goes out and rolls for around 20 seconds to me having to turn off key to reset glow plugs and still starts hard. batterys are a year old and totally maintained with plenty of life in them, alternator was just replace with on that put out 160 amps. starter is good, ignition and all wiring to and from batteries is good. I just gave her a fresh oil change and I am doing fuel filter on monday, drained water/seperator tank on 1-3-09. now the manual says the glow plugs use two 14amp fuses and they are located by motor-started relay (where is that)? would a blown fuse be causing the issue or could it be the selenoid for the glow plugs? (where is selenoid and motor-stater relay) the truck is a plow truck. please give me you input and where to check on truck, please locate where part is in engine compartment (next to ...), I am not very familiar under the hood (when comes to small stuff), thanks for all the help.

[gattaca37]

would not let me edit so here is some more info: i am using winterized michigan diesel fuel, i think that is #2 diesel, and when truck is running there are no issues with fuel, so I am ruling fuel out of the problem, it is something to do with glow plug system. thanks again

[95and05]

Originally Posted by gattaca37

i put it as a new thread (hard to start) already but no feed back, between 10-40 degrees F, roughly 5-10 seconds for the wait to start light to go off.

try cycling the glow plugs 2-3 times with about 10 -20 seconds between times then turn over. it sounds to me like you have a couple bad glow plugs.

[Big_Dan97]

get new glowplugs, no autolites. Get 8 new ones, replace them all, as you pull teh old ones test em, keep the good ones for emergency spares. when they are out you test them by grounding out the body and hooking a hotwire to the top, be careful if its good they get HOT fast. If you want to test them in the truck, Im pretty sure the gp wires are the outside wires on the undervalve cover wiring harness(double check that). You want to ohm them, they need to be around 2ohms IIRC, but let common sense prevail if you have 6 that ohm out to x and 2 ohm out to y, the 2 are most likely bad, if youre short on money just fix the bad ones, but if you have the cash just do em all, since youre in there.
good luck
dan

[20stroker02]

^^what he said, I would put $ on it

[20stroker02]

I would check your voltage on the glow plug relay( sits to the left of the fuel filter, check the volts with the key on ) I went through a couple relays on both of my obs

[gattaca37]

you don't think the glow plug selonoid could be out, my dad's 2002 7.3L wouldn't start for sh... and his gp selonoid was shot, that is the selenoid under plastic cap by fuel/seperator filter? u really can't test selonoids they start going bad and then they are done the next day or so, selenoids become weak. want to start at the cheapest and go from there. u thinlk it is the gp fuses? there are located by motor stater relay (where is that?) thanks

[gattaca37]

what should the voltage read on that gp relay/selonoid?

[20stroker02]

you can test them, you will just need to know the operating voltage range

[Big_Dan97]

I wanna say 10.8volts.
You have a ohmmeter? Id ohm those gps while youre checkin that solenoid. glow plugs will be about $80, a glowplug relay from ford is over $100 and no reacharound included.
most guys get a stancor when they need a gpr, let me see if I can find the PN