white smoke is this a problem?

[proud73]

When the truck is cold it is hard to start i know i have to do the glow plugs most of them checked bad. But when it is cranking it blows white smoke as soon as it starts it go's away I just want to know if this is bad or not. thank you.

[scraph]

Don't worry about the white smoke. The white smoke that you are seeing is liquid vapor entrained in the exhaust. Under the conditions that you describe, it is most likely diesel vapor that was too cold to burn. Once the engine started up ... it blew that vapor out the tailpipe. You may even notice prolonged white smoking if it gets really cold (until the engine warms up)... Some may argue that it means a faulty glow plug system ... and it may very well be ... but who cares if the glow plugs work if the engine starts.

[scraph]

However ... be wary of hard starting in the winter. My last 7.3 had some real trouble starting cold (only in Virginia!). I believe the issues I was having were a combination of aged injectors and thick oil. I would crank on it for quiet a while and I could actually hear each individual injector finally get oil pressure and start firing. It actually started holding (a very rough) idle when about 3 cylinders were getting fuel. I'd get the truck moving and as I was accelerating on the highway onramp it would apparently flood the engine and not start again for a long while. Everything is trying really hard in the winter on a cold engine ... so make sure you have every cold start provision working that you can.

[proud73]

Thank you for the info. The truck is getting in the garage this weekend to get some maint done to it for the winter...wanted to have it done already but things happen lol.