Another "Warn Engine" Light Question

[DeMac]

Two Hoops

If I take off the cover shown in your photo above the hoops I actually get great access. Little hard to reach the bolts on the far side but I should be able to get those from the rear of the bus. Of course, if those hoops were removable that would be a great help, but they look welded in.

View attachment 68741

I haven't started working on it yet due to my son's birthday being this previous week, so I put a stop on all bus stuff to spend time with him. But I should be able to tackle it, at least more on the diagnostic part, this coming week.

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They are removable. (reciprocating saw w/ bi-metal blade)

Our RE300 was auctioned without the hoops. They had already removed by the county, at some point during its active school service. Okay for kids...

I cleaned up the cuts left by others & made a new cover.

A couple other RE owners have done the same. I think ewo1 & someone else, too?

 

[Clouse House]

---------------------
They are removable. (reciprocating saw w/ bi-metal blade)

Our RE300 was auctioned without the hoops. They had already removed by the county, at some point during its active school service. Okay for kids...

I cleaned up the cuts left by others & made a new cover.

A couple other RE owners have done the same. I think ewo1 & someone else, too?

Any idea what the purpose of the hoops is?

 

[ewo1]

---------------------
They are removable. (reciprocating saw w/ bi-metal blade)

Our RE300 was auctioned without the hoops. They had already removed by the county, at some point during its active school service. Okay for kids...

I cleaned up the cuts left by others & made a new cover.

A couple other RE owners have done the same. I think ewo1 & someone else, too?

Yepper, I did remove the hoops !

See post 103 on my build thread

 

[ewo1]

Engine compartment hoops

I also wanted to add that on the 2006 RE that we just did an in-frame on, we did not have to go inside the bus to access the rear engine bolts. All of the work was easily done from inside the engine compartment.

So I guess on this bus I won’t worry to much about needing access from the inside of the bus.
But I am also gonna take a better look to see if when removing the tranny, is access needed or can it be done from just underneath the bus.

 

[stixNstaples]

I wonder,do those hoops serve a usable purpose? Might modify mine. All engine bay under my bed.

 

[stixNstaples]

Ahhh heck, missed above post with hoop removal.

 

[Clouse House]

Just as a walkthrough for what I've done so far.
More of a reminder to myself, because by the time the injectors come in the mail I'll have forgotten everything I've done so far.

First I went ahead and cut off the hoops with a grinder, then ground it down to bare metal on all of the square tubing there and painted it black. I have plans of potentially welding the hoops to some flat bar and drilling/taping the square tube so I can bolt the hoops back on. They'd be removable in the future for other jobs like this.
I removed a bolt holding a clamp for some wire looms to a bracket on top of the valve cover. Then removed three bolts that hold that bracket to the valve cover. Removed three spacers that were under the bracket. Then I was able to remove all of the bolts holding the valve cover on. Three of which had studs on top of the bolt head for the spacers/bracket that goes on top. Next was to remove the PCV tube that goes into the valve cover, it has a bracket that holds it in place that slides over a stud on the EGR cooler. Unfortunately I couldn't reach that nut without removing a piece of the intake tubing, but after getting the intake tubing out of the way I had easy access. I undid that nut and pulled the egr tube out of the valve cover. Then with some choice words and one good tug the valve cover could come out of the access hatch into the bus.

After that I plugged my laptop back into the bus with NED and ran an injector test while sitting next to the engine to hear it better and sure enough Injector 4 isn't firing. I found instructions for an Ohm testing procedure on the injectors, and when I tried it out, injector 4 failed on the 1 to 4 pin test. It was supposed to have 0.5-1.5Ohms but I got an OL reading which means there was no electrical connection. As a way to double check that it was the injector and not a wiring issue I went ahead and swapped the plugs for injector 4 and 5 and reran the injector test on NED. Injector 4 still did not fire. Now I'm 98% certain that it is a bad injector.
Now I just need to decide If I want to replace just the injector that is bad or all of them while I have it open.

How often do injectors fail?
I figure if I end up replacing all of them, I might as well replace the valve cover gasket as well.

 

[cadillackid]

my experience and seemingly others with HEUI injectors (the fuel delivery system on this engine is similar to the ford 7.3 and 6.0 as well as the IH t444E and VT365.. (I mention this to give you more reading material on others' experience)..


anyway HEUI injectors dont often completely fail like yours did.. however they do get Lazy, or worse they can get gummed up and then not close all the weay drizzling fuel into a cylinder when they shouldnt.



my experience was around 10,000 hours (happened to be 185k miles) on my bus was that I had injectors getting lazy.. I used some archoil and got another couple years.. the injectors behaved after running archoil in the oil and fuel.. but then 2 started to go lazy.. (they would intermittently fail the Buzz test when cold but worked fine when warm.. slowly it took more warming to get them to work.. I had 1 worse than the other.. I swapped out all 8..




I read and hear a lot of the same stories of injectors starting to go in that time frame.. some go forever.. others have bad ones at 100k..



if that engine and bus were mine? thered be a set of 6 injectors on a brown truck headed my way.. but I also am of the mind to spend a little more $$ and do a job fully and hopefully not need to do it again.. if $$ is tight then replacing one to get you on the road is what you do..



if that maxxforce were mine and already in pieces id also probably be buying a bulletproof EGR cooler set as well. but again thats me.. having seen quite a few such failures .. yours may be perfectly fine..



I also live in ohio where i do as much work as i can in spring / summer so as t ohopefully avoid having to lay in the snow and fix broken stuff..

 

[Clouse House]

Thank you for the advice Cadillackid. I am heavily leaning toward all 6 since it is already open. Especially if 100,000 miles is a known failure point.

As far as the EGR, I'll have to take them off to know for sure but the PO I bought the bus from told me that he replaced them both already.

 

[stixNstaples]

If one or 2 are lazy can you send the set off to be cleaned? Although if in that far would just wanna replace all of them but understand $$$. When you buy new can the core be smaller size? Just wondering if you can buy bigger and core the smaller back In.

 

[cadillackid]

I got mine from dyn o mite and they expected the core to be OEM .. **** I even left my new set in the box for 2 years and they still cored my old ones .. they were nice to me to still pay the core back after 2 years. Not supposed to do that..

Anyway if you want bigger you need to understand what you are doing and I’d highly suggest buying an Orion from power hungry and tell them which injectors you will use.. as just stuffing injectors in without proper tune (and EGT gauge) can possibly destroy the engine of not careful

 

[Clouse House]

I got mine from dyn o mite and they expected the core to be OEM .. **** I even left my new set in the box for 2 years and they still cored my old ones .. they were nice to me to still pay the core back after 2 years. Not supposed to do that..

Anyway if you want bigger you need to understand what you are doing and I’d highly suggest buying an Orion from power hungry and tell them which injectors you will use.. as just stuffing injectors in without proper tune (and EGT gauge) can possibly destroy the engine of not careful

I did find a rebuild service:
https://getinjectors.com/products/2...-9-fuel-injector-set-of-six-6-rebuild-service

That you mail all 6 injectors too and $1250, then they rebuild your current injectors, replace o-rings, and then mail back. Was the cheapest alternative too new injectors I could find. Haven't bit the bullet yet as I'm still looking but if I don't find a cheaper option by Monday than that is what I'll do.

As far as a tune goes; Unfortunately Orion stops at the 2006 model engines and I have a 2007, so I can't use them.

 

[stixNstaples]

Yes,understand it would have to be tuned. I just always try to upgrade when replacing stock stuff. Hoping I have a minute, think at 72xxx miles. Is it worth just having cleaned? I know a bunch people used to send to turbo diesel injection in indy. Don't know if they are even still in business.

 

[cadillackid]

I totally forgot you guys have MaxxForce engines.. yeah orion doenst work on Maccforce.. the EPA made sure of that.. they are sending people to jail who tune Emissions engines...

 

[stixNstaples]

Unfortunately we are on the MF platform.

 

[Clouse House]

Finally got my injectors out, not even 30 minutes ago. And after looking at engravings/part numbers. I already have remanufactured injectors, all six of them. On a bus with 193,000 miles. Wish I had the information from when they were replaced as I might have been in for some warranty replacement but oh well, I guess if I follow the 100,000-mile replacement idea I'm pretty much right on the money anyway.
5010561R93 was the part number btw.

 

[Clouse House]

Finally got the new injectors back in the mail yesterday and installed them just now.
I did an injector test on NED and all 6 passed.

But I'm having a now start issue now. Yay.
I've tried cranking maybe 8 times now. She turns turn over and sounds like she might start. But there's a lot of other noises going on too. And of course the not starting.

Any advice?

 

[Clouse House]

Nevermind. Apparently the secret was to try it one more time. She runs!! So happy that she's fixed with no lights.
Gonna take her for a drive tonight and hopefully get back to working on the conversion. I haven't had any motivation to work on the conversion knowing that the engine didn't run.
But that's all taken care of now.