Ram 2500 water in fuel?

[kenmac]

High pressure rail, no injector pump

Ok, we'll call it the HP rail pump, Fuel rail injection pump Or just plain ol injection pump. It does deliver (via the fuel rail) hp fuel to the injectors

 

[joshuabardwell]

Josh when you turn your key to the first click, can you hear the lift pump humming behind the cab?

It's hard to hear anything in the cab with the truck dinging at me, but if I stand near the driver side rear wheel well, I can hear a whirring that I assume is the lift pump.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using TractorByNet

 

[kenmac]

It's hard to hear anything in the cab with the truck dinging at me, but if I stand near the driver side rear wheel well, I can hear a whirring that I assume is the lift pump.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using TractorByNet

You can loosen the banjo bolt at the Low side or inlet to the HP Bosch CP3 injection pump if you just want to see fuel.You won't know what the pressure is or,it it;s maintaining correct fuel or pressure @ the pump

 

[joshuabardwell]

Small update. I changed the filter tonight. After changing the filter, I bumped the starter many times to re-prime the system, and I definitely heard the lift pump spinning for maybe 20 seconds after each bump. A ticking noise came from the engine, which if I had to guess, I would guess was air being pushed through a check valve or something out of the fuel system. The ticking got faster and faster each time I bumped the starter, and finally the ticking stopped.

If you are curious, here's what the ticking from the engine sounded like:

BTW, the engine is the fast-paced ticking. The slower ticking, around once per second, is my electric fence driver. You can ignore that.

Anyway, when that all was done, I tried to start the truck. It cranked like three seconds and then the battery died. Given that it was on the trickle charger this morning and was in "float" mode, this is totally unacceptable. When the truck is running the volt-meter shows 14+ volts, so I am pretty confident the alternator is charging. The diagnosis is now looking more and more like a pair of old batteries.

Just to settle my mind about the "water in fuel" situation, I also dumped some Sea Foam in the tank. I have a 30 gallon tank, so I put 2 pints in (1 oz per gallon). After doing that, I realized that there's only about 5 gallons in the tank, so I quick ran to the Internet to see if too much Sea Foam was a problem. Sea Foam's web site says you can run the engine on 100% straight Sea Foam, so apparently it's not an issue.

I sure hope new batteries ends up fixing the issue, because a set of batteries for this truck runs about $250. On the other hand, even if it doesn't fix the problem, the batteries are definitely bad (no matter what AutoZone's tester says) if they can go from topped off to totally flat in one day (less than 40 miles of driving total).

 

[Loadstar]

Voltage is half the battle, handling the load is the other half. batteries can hold a voltage and look good on a charger and when you put a load to them fall flat on their face. This is why their are battery load testers. In newer vehicles healthy batteries are essential. It's not like an older vehicle, erratic and strange happenings go on in modern vehicles with failing batteries. If they are suspected at all, load test them and correct issues associated with them prior to diving in.

(breezed through a lot of this thread so sorry if I am reposting what someone else may have said)

 

[joshuabardwell]

Voltage is half the battle, handling the load is the other half. batteries can hold a voltage and look good on a charger and when you put a load to them fall flat on their face. This is why their are battery load testers.

Yup. I confirmed that the AutoZone tester was a load tester, and the battery tested good, but I'm pretty suspicious of that result at this point. Maybe it just barely crossed the line, or I just got lucky because it had been warmed up from driving vs. being cold.

 

[sd455dan]

Yup. I confirmed that the AutoZone tester was a load tester, and the battery tested good, but I'm pretty suspicious of that result at this point. Maybe it just barely crossed the line, or I just got lucky because it had been warmed up from driving vs. being cold.

I posted about the load test a while back, when they did the load test, did they check each battery individually- they would need to disconnect one battery from the vehicle, and then load test it by itself, then repeat the test on the other battery you would notice that procedure. It has to be carefully done, you wouldn't want a loose cable to short to something it shouldn't, testing together can mask problems, or make one look bad that isn't (one battery with one shorted cell tied to a good battery, will pull the voltage down and discharge the good one...your truck still has both batteries installed correct... the fact that the truck could only be cranked over for a few seconds after being charged screams that one or both batteries are bad, did you look for the date codes... that could also show the batteries are way past their prime..

 

[joshuabardwell]

The guy definitely did test both batteries together. I'll check the date code on them tomorrow.

 

[PsRumors]

I think it was mentioned earlier, a trickle charger is not what you want to use to charge dead batteries especially if you left the two hooked together in the truck.

 

[Loadstar]

Voltage is half the battle, handling the load is the other half. batteries can hold a voltage and look good on a charger and when you put a load to them fall flat on their face. This is why their are battery load testers. In newer vehicles healthy batteries are essential. It's not like an older vehicle, erratic and strange happenings go on in modern vehicles with failing batteries. If they are suspected at all, load test them and correct issues associated with them prior to diving in.

(breezed through a lot of this thread so sorry if I am reposting what someone else may have said)