Cold it is pretty much OK. After its warm it may take up to a full minute of constant cranking to get it to go. Plenty of power after its running. It is louder than my buddy's. The diesel clatter is louder. Blows a lot of black smoke when I accelerate occasionally. No mods. 2006 Mega cab 3500 four wheel drive. Fuel filter is changed. Ran a bottle of injector cleaner through it. Ran that full tank of fuel and thought it was OK but when I filled it after running that tank it took a good 30 seconds to fire up. Ran flawlessly once it started. Started to day OK. No confidence it will start easily tomorrow. Check engine light is on but not blinking. Oil is OK. 70K miles.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

there is a TSB for hard starts. if its huge amounts of black smoke I would guess a bad injector or two, hows oil level? going up? CEL I would have it read for codes. you can also get codes by turning key to start (but do not start engine) then off three times you may get some codes to show up on the odomenter.

 

Two bad injectors. They have decided to replace all 6 and the module. Don't have it back yet. No chip.....ever. Cummins have some bad injectors?

 

I never followed up on this. A few months prior to the hard starting issue I was getting sporadic big clouds of black smoke. My dealer told me that it's a diesel and that's what they do. I kept driving it. Then the hard starting injector replacement issue. It had gone too long. The engine was toast. The tech guy at the dealership was pretty pissed that I hadn't brought it in when I first noticed the smoke. I pointed at his boss and told him to talk to him. They replaced it for free under warranty.

The one thing that makes no sense to me is why dodge would knowingly leave trucks out on the road with a substandard set of injectors? In this case it cost them an engine.

This is all a long time ago now. Up until yesterday I've had no issues. Engine replacement at 75k or so. It now reads 203k.

 

8 yr old thread finally got updated?????????

 

^Dreams do come true.
It's nice to have that closure, especially when someone searches and finds a thread, to have the answer to it.