Silvy said:

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What kind of gas are you running? If you have e85 nearby, I'd switch over to it for a while.

ETA: Presuming Galveston County is correct, here's a map of e85 for you. I get mine from the Sunoco at 96 & 45.

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I have an E85 station right next to my office. I ran a tank full (with Redline SL1) when the symptoms initially showed up.

Are you thinking it could clean the cylinders up a bit? I'm almost thinking that despite the looks, it's probably a symptom that isn't affecting too much. Gotta figure out the root.

E85 to clean things up and it's also what your engine would run best on. With engine running in optimal condition, hopefully it'll make your diagnosing easier

Quote:

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Gotta figure out the root.

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You might run down the theory that you got a bad knock sensor thats affecting the timing.

If bank one or bank 2 is bad, or intermittently bad it could be causing chaos with timing.

ugh. I hope not.

Can you do an injector pressure drop test with ForScan? Basically, you hook up a fuel pressure gauge and record the pressure after key-on prime, then with the scan tool, activate one injector and record the pressure again. Repeat for each cylinder; you're looking for a consistent drop. This would pinpoint a leaky injector or rule it out if they're all the same.

Drewmeister said:

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Can you do an injector pressure drop test with ForScan? Basically, you hook up a fuel pressure gauge and record the pressure after key-on prime, then with the scan tool, activate one injector and record the pressure again. Repeat for each cylinder; you're looking for a consistent drop. This would pinpoint a leaky injector or rule it out if they're all the same.

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Well, I replaced them all with new ones this weekend so I'm thinking they're all good now.

(And of course, they're not the problem, but at 175,000 mi, I could do worse than spend $200 on injectors).

200 dollars? did you buy OEM ones?

sts7049 said:

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200 dollars? did you buy OEM ones?

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Bosch injectors, Amazon.

Second this.

And for those that don't know the extent of the issue, It's a bigger issue than most people realize. Amazon sellers will direct ship a lot of Chinese fake parts or reject parts to Amazon in cloned OEM boxes that look identical to OEM parts. When they get to the Amazon warehouse they get thrown in the same bin with all the other like parts.

So you may be ordering from a reputable Amazon seller but its coming out of the same bin as the shipment of fake parts.

This issue is pervasive, imo and moreso than anyone realizes.

Interesting. Thanks for the tip. Does Rock Auto have the same problem? They're even cheaper there.

Rockauto is good, I've never had any issues with them. They're basically Oreillys or Vato Zone with less mark-up.

Don't know about Rock Auto but over the past several years the general consensus is that for critical parts the only way to know for sure is the parts counter at the dealership.

Hear people say this for the past decade about Toyota /Lexus and Honda stuff specifically. With the popularity of Amazon and where anybody in the world can use Amazon as a a drop shipper.

Use to be just filters and stuff like that. But now it can be pretty much anything anybody can get their hands on.

Anybody anywhere can sign up to use Amazon as their drop shipper and send pretty much anything into the supply chain.

Are places like Rock Auto immune to that, maybe less so but still a known risk.

LT trims are happy now

is misfire issue gone as well?

fixer said:

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is misfire issue gone as well?

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Way down but not completely gone

sts7049 said:

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sounds like you bought fake injectors. next thing you need to do is pull those and go buy real ones. looking quickly it looks like the average cost is between 50-70 per for genuine bosch

don't ever buy "cheap" parts on amazon or ebay

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Just to clear this up, bought these from Amazon with Amazon as the seller. I checked every Bosch protector sticker and while these too could be counterfeit they all passed muster.

I'm not concerned about the injectors being fakes just because of decent pricing comparable to Rock.

well, hopefully they are legit. and they may well work for a bit even if fake. if you start having other symptoms again though i would yank them out otherwise you will be chasing your tail

Decided to test the evap purge valve today. It seems it's stuck open. Even when power is disconnected its staying open.

Well, as I've gone down the road a bit, there are still puffs of smoke on startup, there are still misfires being record on mode six (but not as many).

I've eliminated head gasket as possible (no coolant change whatsoever and did an exhaust gas check test in the reservoir). Plug coils are not at fault as I've rotated them around banks and numbers with the behavior maintaining. Injectors are not to blame as they're new. I also changed the stuck open purge valve and changed the PCV valve (it was working but gummy at 175K miles).

Overall the truck is actually running great minus the puff of smoke and me searching for misfires in the code banks (I'm not feeling them). Long term fuel trims have evened out nicely since the plugs/injectors/E85 usage. I'm gonna run a 4th tank of E85 through it and then switch back to gas to see how it behaves.

I guess for now I'll assume the oil is from valve seal leaks and that there is enough accumulating when I shut the truck off for 10+ hours to give me the smoke on startup and that startup is when most of the misfires are accumulating for now. Guess I'll just monitor oil levels and top off as appropriate until things progress further.

Only thing left in my mind would be to buy a bidirectional OBD tool that lets me run a Ford Cylinder balance test to really get an understanding of the misfires but throwing another $75-$150 at tooling isn't really what I want to do at the moment.