blue exhaust

[BurningtreeFarm]

I have another 5450 question,5 cylinder and no matter if the engine is cold or warm I have fairly heavy exhaust and very diesely smelling, engine oil level is always good, engine seems to sound great run great, is this typical for this engine? or is it an injector problem or something else. thanks Tim

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Normally, blue exhaust is oil being burned. White exhaust is water, and black exhaust is fuel.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

My 5 cyl 4150 smokes blue abit when I first start it. The oil level stays fine, so at only 1200 hrs it's nothing. It runs strong so I've tried to just not worry about it, I've been around lots of diesel engines that smoke like hell at start up, and no ones ever alarmed, so I just worry about keeping an eye on all the fluids. Cheers FMK

 

[rbargeron]

My 4150 put out a little blue smoke until it warmed up - and my 5450 does the same thing. After it works just a few minutes it goes clear. If it idles for a length of time, it will put up some blue again until it works again. Oil consumption is not really measurable on the stick - maybe a quart in 40-50 hrs meter time.

Is it possible your thermostat could be sticking open so the engine is running colder than it should? Does the temp gage get up to the normal range? Just a thought.

Take care,
Dick B.

 

[BurningtreeFarm]

Temp gage does come up to wear the manual shows is normal. I guess my thoughts were leaning more towards to much fuel for the heavy smell that goes along with the exhaust. Could the pump be delivering to much fuel, ? fuel is fresh and reputable the gas man sells alot so Im confident there. Tim

 

[kubmech]

How many hours? Take a look at the breather tube while it's running, a good solid mist with some oil discharge usually points to rings. Also check if you have something in the hyd system running over relief. Drop the 3ph and see if it smooths out. If you have a fel how is it working? If you don't have a fel is the diverter valve open all the way? If the loader is removed did you reconnect the hoses so the hyd oil can return to tank? Sometimes grayish blue can be an overfueling problem, It does'nt necessarily mean oil control problems. You can have a bad spray pattern from one or more injectors and the engine will still run pretty good but the smoke is the give away. How does the air filter look?

 

[BurningtreeFarm]

kubmech, 1757 hrs. breather tube seams dry, 3ph has the stopper installed and adjusted for the over relief. Yes to the fel seams to run good maybe a little slow- up,dump, rollback but always lots of strength and is installed all the time, both air filters are new. thanks Tim

 

[kubmech]

If I had it in the shop I'd probably do a compression test and "pop test" each injector just to see what's going on. Those engines always seem to run a little rich but once they are good and warmed up you should'nt be getting any heavy smoke.

 

[rbargeron]

One thing I've noticed is not all petroleum diesel fuels produce the same exhaust smell. Some fuel I've gotten makes your eyes water - but the diesel at my local Sunoco station seems to burn much cleaner. It would be a relatively simple experiment to try a tank of some different brand fuel to see if there's an effect.

I also posted some time back that I'm using soybean bio-diesel fuel in my L5450. It has a couple of features that you might find interesting, and maybe useful. One is that it cleans out your engine - it dissolves deposits to a point, and may free up rings if they're not too stuck. The other is that the exhaust smells like the french-fry trailers at the county fair - might be fun to check it out. The fuel value is about 10% lower than petro diesel but the 5450 has so much poop that it's not an issue. There's no conversion to do - just pour it into the tank - ok to freely mix bio and petro. The soybean oil does stiffen up when it gets real cold - gels sooner than petro. Best feature is it doesn't contain benzene so the exhaust has 90% less carcinogen load.

As always, cheerful refund if info is bogus.
Take care, Dick