Detroit 60 series issues

[crane operator]

1998 Detroit 60 series. Thought I had fuel line issues/ sucking air. Had one fuel line show leakage when using air pressure to test it. Went ahead and replaced all lines, drained fuel tanks and new filters. Had a little algae in one filter. Treated fuel and refilled tanks.

Truck idled fine at shop. Went for a test drive bobtail, drove for 15 minutes no problems, ran great.

Hooked onto lowboy trailer, total driving time now of 20 minutes or so, less than a mile from my shop, dies in the middle of the road. Acts like no fuel. One fuel filter when pulled, shows not completely full of fuel. Blew lines out on side of road with air (thinking maybe algae plugged in splitter block, no luck) took the fuel line off splitter block and put in a fuel container, still no running.

Jim (my mechanic guy) thinks the ecm is bad- poured cold water on the ecm, and the truck takes off running. I got maybe another mile down the road and put in a parking lot before it died again.

I had a little problem a while back with the throttle pedal, jakes would pop on and off, but if I would fiddle with the throttle pedal, they would work, so I put a new position sensor on it a week or so ago.

Throws no codes when it dies. It runs like a top when you first start running. The first time it did this I was maybe 20 minutes into a equipment move, and made it to the site, then limped home (runs, misses and kind of dies, runs a little more, etc.)

Both times I've tried it since working on it, it seems like it runs great until 10-20 minutes in, then dies, and you can't get it going again.

I've once had a algae issue, it would plug up on a one way flow valve gradually, then kill the motor for lack of fuel. Leave it sit, then it would fire right up again, run 15 minutes then starve. That's why I tried the bucket, but it didn't really take off and run until we poured the cool water on the ecm. Then it only made it another 1/2 mile or so before dying again, so I'm not convinced that its not fuel.

So in order of issues:
1: Jakes popping on and off- would fiddle with throttle pedal, then they worked, replaced throttle position sensor- seemed to fix that.
2: Leave shop loaded- 20 minutes into drive, truck falls off, then takes off, several times, manage to make it to site, unload and limp home with it occasionally dying.
3: remove fuel lines, one shows breaking down, change them all. Both fuel filters dark, and a little algae in one. New filters, all new fuel lines, test runs at shop fine
4:Bobtail runs fine, hook on lowboy, 20 minutes total run time, falls off totally. You can crank it over and it will kind of miss and die, sputter along, totally die, etc.

ECM? Still fuel issues? something totally different. It runs like a freight train when I first took off tonight, seems like heat is getting to the ecm, or I'm sucking up crud/ algae and have plugged up somewhere.

Where's the old little symbol with the guy banging his head against the brick wall?

 

[Junkyard]

Pull the valve cover and have a look at the injector harness, they're bad about breaking down. I had one with similar issues. ECM isn't out of the question though. I have one you can test with. It's in a running truck, not one I use. It's cheap enough you could buy for a spare motor ;-)

 

[crane operator]

I've heard that its really rare for the detroit ecm's to be bad, that's why I guess I'm not leaning that way, but anything is possible. Man- I hate electronic motors when you've got issues like this.

Mine's a 98 so I think that's ddec iv, ecm is mounted on the motor.

 

[Junkyard]

Mine is a 2000. The truck that gave me fits was a 99. If I remember correctly harness isn't that expensive and when I popped the cover off mine some jacka$$ has used butt splices on some of the wires in there.....

 

[RZucker]

It's really hard to say... You may want to check the stand pipes going down into the tanks, some of these were just plastic tubes pressed onto the fitting and they can crack and suck air.

 

[Truck Shop]

Splice in a clear hose after the primary fuel filter and check for air in system. Normally with the 60 Series on ECM problems two or more cylinders suddenly start to misfire
and just as quick clear up. The harness for injectors and jakes can fill with oil and cause similar issues but normally it only causes one injector to misfire and continue.
Check the grounds and power to ECM, on Freightliners there located in the battery box. The grounds can and will cause all types of intermittent problems.

Truck Shop

 

[Queenslander]

I have a mate with a 60 series in a cab over KW that started displaying similar fuel like symptoms.
They replaced filters etc., but eventually traced the problem to a dodgy battery cable.

 

[funwithfuel]

Since you had Jake's acting up, as a rule , I will remove them for testing. You have to block the oil passages . I have had solenoids fail where they will will activate without voltage. It can be very difficult to find. Ask yourself when were they last overhauled? I don't disagree with the other possibilities, this is just an "also check" that I always rule out before component replacement.
Good luck

 

[crane operator]

Went out there this morning. Truck wouldn't start, chuggs like no fuel. Pulled fuel line and put into bucket. Crank and crank, finally fires off and runs. Idle's fine. Great- maybe its a fuel issue.

Fabricobble a hose to go from filter base direct to fuel tank (love that new word I learned). Drive back to shop. Get into shop driveway, truck dies again.

Crank a couple times, truck fires up again, unhook trailer and parked it in the shop.

Just to add to the confusion. As I was cranking it with the fuel line into the bucket, Jim pulled the sensor connection on the air flow sensor in the intake pipe right above the fuel pump. When he was pulling on it, is when the truck fired off.

When it fired off, I was sure we had narrowed it to fuel, but when it died again at the yard, and talking about when he pulled on the wires, I'm more and more thinking electrical. Tomorrow or Saturday, I guess were going to start pulling on wires and checking connections, see if we can narrow it down.

funwithfuel- I replaced 2 of the three solenoids because they weren't working/activating. I had the thought when I did the other two, that I should maybe just do the third, but that's been a couple months back. It is actually a pacbrake- not a jacobs.

Thanks for all the help guys.

 

[Truck Shop]

These type of problems can send a person in all directions. Had a thread on on here some months back about a friends International with a N14 and similar issues.
He was sure it was a fuel issue and chased it for a month. I finally had time to look at it, two dealer shops gave up on it. It had many new parts installed and it was
thought that those parts were all good and not the problem. I did a pin check for power to ECM -all good. Turned out it was a cam/position crank sensor that was
bad. It was only a few months old. But it did act like it was starving for fuel when it acted up.

Truck Shop

 

[DMiller]

Modern electronics, aint they grand! I prefer the old hard mechanical engines as to simplicity to diagnose and repair. The modern age may deliver somewhat better fuel economy but I do not see these engines making a million miles as the old ones had.

 

[Truck Shop]

Modern electronics, aint they grand! I prefer the old hard mechanical engines as to simplicity to diagnose and repair. The modern age may deliver somewhat better fuel economy but I do not see these engines making a million miles as the old ones had.

The old engines were good but reality is there are way more electronic operated diesel engines with well over a million miles without an inframe.
The Series 60 12.7 liter DDEC 3 and the 14 liter DDEC 4 are great engines for longevity. I know of several N14 Cummins and C-15 Cats that are
over a million. And one C15 in a 2002 T800 with 900,000 miles and 36,000 Hrs on it, a grain hauler and used on two ten hr shifts an day cleaning
grain piles. It will run 20 hrs a day five to six days a week all winter. It's never had the head off and still on original injectors, burns a gallon and
a half of oil between changes, every 15,000 miles. And this truck pulls 105,000, Truck #6 Northwest Grain Growers.

Truck Shop

 

[RZucker]

The old engines were good but reality is there are way more electronic operated diesel engines with well over a million miles without an inframe.
The Series 60 12.7 liter DDEC 3 and the 14 liter DDEC 4 are great engines for longevity. I know of several N14 Cummins and C-15 Cats that are
over a million. And one C15 in a 2002 T800 with 900,000 miles and 36,000 Hrs on it, a grain hauler and used on two ten hr shifts an day cleaning
grain piles. It will run 20 hrs a day five to six days a week all winter. It's never had the head off and still on original injectors, burns a gallon and
a half of oil between changes, every 15,000 miles. And this truck pulls 105,000, Truck #6 Northwest Grain Growers.

Truck Shop

Yep. Just like pickup engines... In the 70's and early 80's you were lucky to get 100K on a carbureted Chevy 350. I owned a 98 Chevy with the Vortec 350 that ran 425K without any issues until a bonehead ran it out of coolant and broke it.
That engine would have NEVER gone that long without Electronics.

 

[Birken Vogt]

Having some background in electronics and computer systems let me put out an idea here.

Industrial controls such as engine computers lag behind personal computers quite a few years. When DDEC and the others were being designed people were still running their Apple IIe and such computers. Now these computers were so simple they did not really have bugs. You could expect code to be almost perfect and never crash or do unintended things. Of course they did not do very much either.

Engine computers seemed to be in the same boat. Not real high featured but simple and reliable code and they also seemed to be physically quite robust. Maybe also because they were simpler. And keep in mind a lot of the designers or at least the designers bosses would have been Korea, Vietnam, cold war missile command era vets who had a good idea what it was like to keep things working under battle conditions. Or people with experience in the giant industrial automation corporations, Xerox, IBM, Bell System and the like.

Now fast forward to today, the war vets have all retired, the upcoming coders and supervisors have probably never operated in such arduous conditions or worked for anyone who demanded such perfection as the old behemoths. They might have experience in your upstart phone app designing companies cranking out code as fast as possible and we'll fix the bugs with patches later.

Well trucking companies have been trained to accept the need for patches also so where is the motivation to get it right the first time. Plus there are zillions of extra lines of code for extra features, processors have more parts and less reliability, then throw on EGR, DPF, SCR where the hardware is just as buggy as the software and this is what you get. Argh.

 

[Delmer]

Put a fuel pressure gauge in it, temporary or permanent. Easier than switching back and forth from a bucket and then wondering if that was the issue or not. If you have pressure, or no vacuum, then you know it's downstream and you have to dig into the electronics.

 

[Ruger_556]

Went out there this morning. Truck wouldn't start, chuggs like no fuel. Pulled fuel line and put into bucket. Crank and crank, finally fires off and runs. Idle's fine. Great- maybe its a fuel issue.

Fabricobble a hose to go from filter base direct to fuel tank (love that new word I learned). Drive back to shop. Get into shop driveway, truck dies again.

Crank a couple times, truck fires up again, unhook trailer and parked it in the shop.

Just to add to the confusion. As I was cranking it with the fuel line into the bucket, Jim pulled the sensor connection on the air flow sensor in the intake pipe right above the fuel pump. When he was pulling on it, is when the truck fired off.

When it fired off, I was sure we had narrowed it to fuel, but when it died again at the yard, and talking about when he pulled on the wires, I'm more and more thinking electrical. Tomorrow or Saturday, I guess were going to start pulling on wires and checking connections, see if we can narrow it down.

funwithfuel- I replaced 2 of the three solenoids because they weren't working/activating. I had the thought when I did the other two, that I should maybe just do the third, but that's been a couple months back. It is actually a pacbrake- not a jacobs.

Thanks for all the help guys.

No faults at all? No inactive codes stored?

I would do two things, 1st put a fuel pressure gauge on it and just eliminate that as a possible cause of your grief. No reason to bang your head on the wall when it's easy enough to test. 2nd, connect a scan tool if you have access to one and see if any sensors are giving strange readings when it acts up, there aren't very many things that can keep a Series 60 from running.

The old engines were good but reality is there are way more electronic operated diesel engines with well over a million miles without an inframe.
The Series 60 12.7 liter DDEC 3 and the 14 liter DDEC 4 are great engines for longevity. I know of several N14 Cummins and C-15 Cats that are
over a million. And one C15 in a 2002 T800 with 900,000 miles and 36,000 Hrs on it, a grain hauler and used on two ten hr shifts an day cleaning
grain piles. It will run 20 hrs a day five to six days a week all winter. It's never had the head off and still on original injectors, burns a gallon and
a half of oil between changes, every 15,000 miles. And this truck pulls 105,000, Truck #6 Northwest Grain Growers.

Truck Shop

What you said ^^^ My uncle runs a fleet of Freightliner FLD's with Series 60's and most of them are over a million miles, the M11 trucks aren't that long lived but that's not the fault of the electronics...

 

[crane operator]

No computer or scan tool in my inventory, I can't see buying a $4,000 diagnostic computer for a $15,000 truck, closest computer would be dealer or independent over a hour away. If I trusted it to run right, I'd drive it in. Unfortunately, the road between here and there has quite a few spots where there is no place to get off the road if you're down, not the most fun to be trying out a truck that's got issues.

The dash has a fuel pressure gauge, but it has never worked correctly- only a couple times have I seen it show pressure. I know- why have a gauge that doesn't work (pyro doesn't work either, everything else does). My old cranes have a oil pressure, voltage, and temp gauge, and I've lived with them quite a while, I suppose the fuel pressure gauge didn't seem like a priority.

I did have the thought, when the issues appeared, that it would be great if the gauge worked.

I've been busy out running cranes, truck has been on the back burner, but I did fire it up this afternoon when I got back to the shop, just to see if it would start. Fired right up and runs great in the shop. I'm going out tomorrow morning, with one of the other cranes. Probably get to looking at it monday.

I will say this- when that 60 series runs, it pulls good and has a great set of jakes. The electronics, and possibly better tolerances on the motors, makes the pre emissions, electronic motors, some of the best life motors out there. N14, 60 series, I hear really good things about. But they are moving equipment, and nothing lasts forever.

I don't use the truck every day, probably average once or twice a week, all within a hour of the shop. With my hilly country, with no shoulders on the roads, and grossing over 105,000lbs, 10' wide, when that engine sputters, your heart skips a little right with it.

My opinion has always been-- a mechanical motor- if its got fuel and air- it will run. May not run right, but it will get you home, off the road, whatever. Electronic motors, it seems like when they quit, they really quit. And not only do you have the same fuel and air to check out, the electric all has to be working correctly, or it won't run. If it is showing a code, its a roll of the dice if it actually relates to why its not running.

Electronic is probably not a big deal if your a big outfit/fleet and have the stuff yourself to diagnose, or in a large metropolitan area with well equipped shops.

I just find it simpler on the side of the road or in my shop to diagnose mechanical diesel issues, vs electronic engine issues. Different skill set I guess.

 

[Ruger_556]

No computer or scan tool in my inventory, I can't see buying a $4,000 diagnostic computer for a $15,000 truck, closest computer would be dealer or independent over a hour away. If I trusted it to run right, I'd drive it in. Unfortunately, the road between here and there has quite a few spots where there is no place to get off the road if you're down, not the most fun to be trying out a truck that's got issues.

You only need to spend about $1K for a scanner with good Series 60 coverage but I'll agree it doesn't make much sense when you only have the one truck. If you were in my neighborhood I'd come out but you're a little ways away from me...

 

[crane operator]

You only need to spend about $1K for a scanner with good Series 60 coverage but I'll agree it doesn't make much sense when you only have the one truck. If you were in my neighborhood I'd come out but you're a little ways away from me...

Thanks for the offer- I'll get this figured out too.

$1k for a scan tool wouldn't be a bad investment. How many times does the scan tool point out the problem? My M11 has a self diagnostic, the worst I dealt with it, it showed #5 injector issues. cummins told me do injectors, ecm, and harnesses for $6,000. I sent the ecm out for $800 to get repotted, swapped injectors hole to hole to eliminate that, and found the issue in one of the harnesses. I hate the idea of throwing parts at something until it works right.

I've got the whole rainbow of motors, 60 series, M11, 6v92, 6-71, 8.3 cummins, big cam cummins, 5.9's, 7.3, perkins, chrysler industrial (gas), flathead propane, I'm a equal opportunity bad mechanic.

The M11 and the 60 series are the only larger computer controlled motors I have, (dodge with a vp44 count?, or my 7.3 ford- 2001 age?).

I debated quite a bit when I bought the western star with the 60 series, because I've had a few issues with my M11 and past frustrations with other electronic motors. I guess I'm dragging myself into the new age.

I do have my eye on a 1995 western star with a 3406b, to replace my M11 cummins international 8100 (that I pull my roll back trailer). I figure then I could swap trucks back and forth if I have troubles, I know my 8100 isn't enough truck for my lowboy.

My pirate line the other day, and the 1995 western star. I like my 1998, (except for my current issues) if I can sell my international and buy this, it would give me some other options.

https://joplin.craigslist.org/cto/6171219357.html

 

[DMiller]

I know these engines are the wave of the future, I left the active mechanic trade 22 years ago for power station employment. Left the original 3406E's and DDEC 92 series as the 3116 cat and 60 series Detroits came out, the N14 Cummins was just coming out. Tools were and still are expensive, I was mainly working for Independent garages and lease companies that required we had our own tooling supplying little to make the day better. Had been overloaded with expenses trying to keep up with HE, HDT, cars, pickups and then the foreign stuff arrived where I said enough. My tools sit in my own little shop, I manage to keep a dinosaur 1999 7.3 PS Ford hammering along with my old Allis tractors and a few odds and ends of tired Iron with them. Retired now so can spend a little more time and a lot less money on my projects but keep on hammering, in no way would I spend $1000 on diagnostics tools for one series of engine today.

When I started in the business the 3406 and 3408 were new designs, the Small Cam Cummins a mainstay and the 92 series Detroit coming to its own. I have seen the conversion from carb and unit injectors from points and the old Prestolite electronics mess to multiple driver electronic modules feeding new engines. Been a lot of good and some really bad crap in the process. BTW My Grandmother's 55 chevy Belair made 104,000 miles on the original engine and clutch, she gave it up to a older brother in 73 where he ran it out sold to a kid that bought it to make a Rat Rod of. Rusted hulk but ran forever on points, carb, 235 straight six three on the column, no p/s no p/b and the only air from the rust holes or open windows, the car I learned to drive in.