This mornings cold start

[smokersteve]

No block heater, after seeing all kinds of poor cold start vids I was kinda worried.

YouTube - 2006 6.0 powerstroke diesel cold start

YouTube - 2006 6.0 powerstroke diesel cold start

I am doing another Saturday morning.

[f350powerstroke]

Suprised i didnt hear the "bang! clank clank clunk clock" noise at startup

[tuckman]

What are you running for oil?

[Hemicbx]

That's impressive!

I too was worried about cold starts after reading all the troubles some other guys are having. I added a block heater cord so I had that option available. I often start it without the block heater though and I may get 3 to 5 seconds of rough running right after it fires but then it clears right up and I have a nice smooth idle.

Hemicbx

[smokersteve]

Thanks guys! I am using Mobil 5W-40. It has 3,000+ miles on it and I put the bypass filter on a little under 2,000 miles ago. I have kept the oil changes under 6,000 miles. Back home (sac) 80% of the time I use a block heater and when I am in Tahoe I use it 100% of the time during the night, except for yesterday and today.

Today I will do another vid with the camera out side of the cab.

[mmandley]

I have a factory block heater and i was wondering how exactly do they work? I plugged mine in for like 6 hours yesterday and it was only 36 out and when i started i got the nasty clanky sound for a couple seconds.

I assume we should be plugging them all night? Every-night when its cold or was it not even cold enough to make use of it?

[smokersteve]

Once you plug in the heater it is on, unless there is an electrical issue. There is a metal element that heats up from the electricity flowing through. You should be able to hear it on the passengers side after ~5 seconds.

At home I have it on for ~3hours. Here in tahoe I have it on all night.

[Dave]

Awesome cold start man.

Everyone the key to having cold starts like that is having a good FICM

Along with a full synthetic oil.

As to the harsh bang clank clank sound the one guy described thats generally caused by two things

If it does it for a few minutes its a combination of dino 15w40 and injector stiction.

If it does it for about 2-3 seconds its tuning. Race tunes are known for that with cold starts

[mmandley]

OK cool thanks i guess maybe i need to change oil thickness. I have 15w40 in the truck as that's what it called for but i hear a lot of the guys here run 5w and 10w.

I just want to make sure its not hurting the engine, i already have the problem that even when i let it idle for 15 minutes it never warms up, and when i drive to work it takes like 8 miles for the truck to show temp on the gauge and i only work 9 miles from the house. So its running cold quite a bit in the am to work.

[Galaxie]

Sounds good for 9*!!!