Diesel engine white smoke injector timing

I bought a 1958 Ford 841 Powermaster about a year ago. It ran,but had a bad rod bearing.It also blew a fair amount of white smoke.

I rebuilt the engine and it runs fine, but still blows white smoke. Per the IT repair manual it says to set the injector pump timing to 23 BTDC if it has a CONN9A543 injector pump (which it does). My original Ford shop manual says to set it at 18 BTDC. It was at 18 BTDC when I bought it, and I set it 18 BTDC after the rebuild. 3 questions:

1. Is white smoke right after rebuild normal? I've only run about 15 minutes.
2. Can this 5 degrees of timing be contributing to or causing the white smoke?
3. Can I get 5 degrees of timing advance without bending the steel injector lines?

Thanks. Joel
 
I'll answer #2, and the answer is YES. Retarded timing (low degree number) can cause white smoke. That said, more advance (higher degree number) is not necessarily better. I don't know where IT got that 23 number from, but moving it to 23 would definitely help the white smoke, however I would not go any higher than that.
 
What Bern said is spot on far as timing goes. My question is this though, what was done to the cylinder head? If the valves and seats were just reground only, THAT will make more white smoke due to lower than normal engine compression. Most diesel heads I see anymore need new valve seats installed to keep the valves where they belong. Diesel engines are much more critical than gas engines are far as valve head location goes.
 
These engines drive me crazy. You cannot buy a new diesel camshaft for these engines. I had 4 camshafts in one engine and could never get the timing right. Diesltech tweeked the pump, and I enlarged the slots on the pump. The best we could ever get the timing was 18 degrees. It is suppose to be 23. It runs like crap when you first start it, but it gets better when it warms up. Do not let this engine set and idle. put it to work or better put it on a dyno. These are the hardest engines that we rebuild to get the rings to seat .We rebuilt one back in the spring. We ran it on the Dyno three different times and mowed 20 acres with a 5ft rotary cutter before we got it broke in. Good Luck.
 
Thanks you all for the good info. I am using an outboard motor gas tank as a temporary fuel tank. Originally I was using all rubber hoses. I replaced sections of the rubber tubing with clear so I could see if there were air bubbles in the line. There was. Got all of the air bubbles out of the input line yesterday, but didn't have time to fire it up. Will let you know what I do and what happens. (Still need to adjust the valve lash when warm.)
 
Update. I set the timing to 23 BTDC and bled all of the air out of the system. Tractor fired right up and smoked a lot less than before. After warming up, very little smoke is visible. I am sure it will get better as I run it, but ok as is. To others reading this post, make sure when timing the injector pump to go to about 30 degrees BTDC and then come back until the lines on the injector pump line up and read the degrees off of your flywheel. This will take the slop out of the injection pump drive system (in the direction that the system normally operates) and give you an accurate timing setting.

Thanks all for the help.
 

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Back
Top