Snowmobile trailer groomer trouble (Cummins)

[Turbo5upra]

Hey guys... I belong to a snowmobile club and run a groomer from time to time. The one in question is an 2004 powered by a Cummins 5.9 liter 24 valve engine...

The issue started as a power loss on mostly down hill sections. You would be going along and the peddle would become useless and the check engine light would come on- if you backed out of it an bumped the throttle a few times it would return to normal.

The problem has gotten worse and on Saturday left someone stranded. I did some reading on dodge forums as it closely match痴 the engine they use and a common complaint was the lift pump going... I looked around and somebody had one on the shelf- I replaced it and it fired up.

Drove it a little ways and it started to act like it had been- I wiggled the engine harness as the operator reported that killing the machine the day before and it died on me ( I need to pull it inside as it痴 been below zero most of the week and go wire for wire)

I relearned the throttle but that didn稚 seem to help.

There are trouble codes for tps (controlled by foot peddle)

A code for the egr

A few more that I can稚 find what they mean

The gauges also drop to zero and the multi function gauge which give most readings the ecu can display goes dead.

The company that sells and services they wants us to ship it 4 hours to them to have it serviced- not practical

Anyone on here know the Cummins qsb engines and have anything that might help?

Another thing is when it痴 acting up and I知 viewing throttle percentage it痴 not all over the board like I壇 expect with a bad tps- it reads about what I壇 expect it to.

 

[wmonroe]

Have you checked the battery connections, and any ground connections? It almost sounds like a loose ground.

Lack of fuel shouldn’t give an issue on a downhill as the load is reduced so my gut feeling is that the fuel system is not the problem.

What sort of egr setup does it have? The engine in the ram trucks from that year had an in-cylinder type egr where the cam lobes were ground to allow some exhaust gas to remain in the cylinders.

How many hours on it?

 

[ktm250rider]

Where is the fuel pick up in the tank. Could be some gunk getting in there when going downhill.

 

[Ivan49]

Ice in the fuel tank moving around and when you go downhill it blocks the fuel pickup tube

 

[coobie]

If it's the fuel pump get rid of it and buy a Fass fuel system.Much better than stock.Do you use a anti-gel product in your fuel?If not I would start.

 

[Turbo5upra]

There are roughly 4K hours on it. I知 not sure how the egr works on it- I知 by no means a diesel mechanic just trying to do what I can to get it running since the closest dealer is 4 hours away and they suggest bringing it in to have it checked out.

Last year when the issue was happening they drained the tank and added fuel from another source and verified the pick up being clear.

The battery痴 are new within the past few weeks and the connections seem solid as it turns over fine at -20... this Saturday I知 going to start taking things apart and clean them and meter then one at a time.

I did meter the lift pump ground- it was .01 ohms to ground

 

[wmonroe]

Any pictures of the engine? Is the fuel pump engine mounted, in-line, or in the tank? A better description of the codes that were pulled would really help.

 

[Turbo5upra]

I don稚 have any pics of the engine. The lift pump is mounted on the engine.

Codes:

Spn 1 83
Fmi 31

Spn 1 78
Fmi 8

Spn 27
Fmi 2

Spn 91
Fmi 4

 

[Mace Canute]

This past fall a mechanic friend of mine mentioned something about replacing the lift pump on a guy's Dodge truck and he said something about if the lift pump goes bad and isn't promptly remedied it can lead to main pump failure.

Is this one of those Dodges where that has happened?

 

[Turbo5upra]

The lift pump did not resolve the issue when I replaced it this weekend.

I would suspect since it runs great for periods of time that it痴 electrical but that痴 just a guess.

Saturday we are pulling it in the garage and going from one end to the other with a meter and cleaning grounds and such.

I値l report back with my findings