Extensive Smoke on Startup

[shopteacher]

Hi,
New member here. Enjoyed reading your post and gained a lot of good information already.
My question is this:
I have a MF 1240E with approx 450 hr. bought new. This machine upon start (warm or cold) puts out what seems to me to be an extreme amount of diesel smoke. It always has. It also needs to use the glow plug, even in summer, to start up. Once started and daylight is once again visible it runs extremely well with no further smoke. Upon successive restarts during the day neither smoke or need of glow plug is required. I have a 8875 JD skidsteer and a 450C JD crawler loader and neither of them hardly smoke at all.
My problem is if started in the barn you could suffocate yourself. I generally like to allow a machine to warm up before moving it in cold weather and this makes for a very undesirable situation.
Would be glad to hear any thoughts as to the whys and possible fixes for this problem. Thanks.

 

[Outlander]

My Cub presently does the same thing and it is a bad glow plug...AGAIN!

 

[ray66v]

If you checked the glow plugs and made sure one is not bad, then the fuel injectors are the next place I would go, add some injector cleaner to the fuel that is made for diesel engines and give it a chance to work, Then see if it gets better.

 

[JerryG]

You will need to use the glow plugs even in the summer. After the first start of the day, if the engine is still warm you won't need the plugs.
It hard to say if the smoke is too much or not without seeing it in person. What color is the smoke?

 

[shopteacher]

You guys have given me some hope and good places to start.

JerryG: I think mostly a blueish color, never paid that much attention to busy trying to survive. I don't believe it smoked this much when I got it. I don't run it that much anymore, for most things I do it's to small. I use it mostly for the backhoe.

 

[lambs]

JerryG will know the answer to this one, but my two cents' worth:

Black smoke, all is well.
White smoke, cylinders not yet up to correct temperature and engine is blowing out some unburned fuel.
Blue smoke, burning some oil.

If you're getting white smoke, you can lessen it by using the glow plugs for a few seconds after starting. That will add additional heat to the cylinders. Don't know if your ignition switch is configured to allow this or not though.

Good luck.