ok my buddy just purchased a 96 dodge ram 2500 4x4 that was a v-10 but the previous owner swapped in a cummins from a wrecked 96 2500(had entire truck) , the day my buddy brought it home it ran fine drove it for a few hours, was fine for 2 days drivin around town n such..but now it constantly shuts off, it will start back up after some cranking, a few probs we found 1, leaky injectors 2, low oil (not a whole lot) 3, cant find a water seperator.....but fuel filter seems new

so what do you guys think? none of them seem bad enough to constantly shut off but then again i dont own a cummins..or do you think it could be something els? thanks alot

 

You might want to clean out the prefilter it is located beside the lift pump on the drivers side of the motor.. then i would check the fuel pressure..

 

gotchya..how abouts should i do that? just remove it and flush with diesel? and how many filters are there suppose to be?

 

I think is is just a 18mm socket ( i live in canada use mostly metric)on the bottom of the bowl to remove it then i just used carb cleaner to clean it out really good it. and other than the one fuel filter up by the intake that is all i can think of ..

 

cool, so no water seperator then? only diesel ive been around was a modded one so it prolly had an aftermarket one

 

the water seperator is part of the fuel filter on the back of the head, get a look at the shut down solenoid on the side of the injection pump when it dies, leave everything as is when it dies, dont shut the key off, ect. grab the lever on the bottom of the solenoid and firmly pull up, if it moves, the solenoid or its electrical system has an issue, if it doesnot move, its in the fuel delivery

 

appreciate it we'll check it out..ill let yall kno if we figure it out or not

 

is the solenoid not supposed to move at all or just be hard to move? cuz it did move but with resistance.. and the dealership said it was an 800 dollar part? or is that the whole pump???

 

dont go to the dealer, but its still not cheap, they can be found on the net for around $100-$200, maby cheaper? it should not have moved at all, but it still may not be the problem, there should also be to relays near the firewall directly behind the injection pump, one relay is for the fuel heater, the other is for the solenoid,

here is a good start... there are three wires to the solinoid, tho i cant remember the colors at the moment, one of them is ground, one is hot with the key in the run position, the other is hot while cranking, obviously they are working at startup but something is getting hot and loosing connection, find the hot (with key on) wire and ground wire while everything is working normal, then run it untill it shuts down, then test thoes two wires again for power and ground, if you have power, change the solinoid, if no power, look into the relay system.

one other possiability, you can remove the solenoid, and set up a push/pull cable, if willing to deal with that, it does work great, but its kinda hokie...

 

thanks i really appreciate it, but now that ive actually gotten my hands on the motor there seems to be a problem with air in the fuel, we bled all the injectors wile cranking the motor and solinoid hooked up (couldent get fuel without it? manual says to do it without it hooked up) it wont start without a blip of the throttle, so bled all the lines, told him to blip the throttle to start it and it ran fine and idled for about 5 mins...then it allmost seemed like 1 cyl at a time started dying until it wouldnt idle, cracked the lines again and theres a ton of air in threre...would a leaking bleader screw on the water/fuel filter cause the pump to suck air? or a hole in any fuel line b4 the pump?...seems likely to me but i dunno, i told him to try n bypass the filter and feed the motor from a gas can and see if it runs right....on the other hand he said when it was running fine some vac hoses were messed up and his 4wd wouldnt work so he reworked them and after it seems the problem began...could mis routed vac lines lead to air in the fuel??? or just a coincidence?