Blowing black smoke and...

[dougbarnett]

I have a '04 F-350 diesel. When the truck is pulling a grade and the RPMs are getting down to about shifting to a lower gear, the truck acts like a gas engine that has a miss, and after each miss, or hesitation, the truck belches out a cloud of black smoke. Also, once the engine is hot, if you shut the truck off, it won't restart. When it does cool enough to start, it will start in the 450 to 500 RPM range and kinda putter for a few minutes until the RPMs finally crawl into the 600 range. Then the fly-by-wire accelerator will finally kick in and you can move.

[m-chan68]

Without seeing DTCs and monitoring live data, my money is on a bad FICM.

[CaDieselGuy]

Originally Posted by dougbarnett

I have a '04 F-350 diesel. When the truck is pulling a grade and the RPMs are getting down to about shifting to a lower gear, the truck acts like a gas engine that has a miss, and after each miss, or hesitation, the truck belches out a cloud of black smoke. Also, once the engine is hot, if you shut the truck off, it won't restart. When it does cool enough to start, it will start in the 450 to 500 RPM range and kinda putter for a few minutes until the RPMs finally crawl into the 600 range. Then the fly-by-wire accelerator will finally kick in and you can move.

I have run into this concern a few times. The truck runs ok but under light load on a grade it starts popping through the intake and blowing black smoke out the tailpipe. This is classic EGR valve. The EGR valve return spring is weak. Here's whats happening. Under light load climbing a grade you develop a lot of exhaust pressure and that pressure overcomes the spring tension in the EGR valve creating the popping noise and black smoke.
Replace the EGR valve and check inside the hole to ensure there is not and coking buildup or soot rocks. If there is you may have an EGR cooler concern.