There is a fairly good leak somewhere along the fuel system/common rail on this machine. When machine is running or even just sitting off, the entire side of the engine where the fuel system/common rail are located is just soaked/dripping in diesel. The issue with tracing it, is that all of the fuel system is blocked behind the EGR, exhaust and fuel dosing system. I feel like the only way to get a good look at the fuel injection system is to remove all of this which is blocking access/view. However, once that is removed, I'd imagine the machine should not be ran as it would cause computer issues. Is there a way to pressurize the fuel system/rail without starting the machine, in hopes of being able to trace where the leak is coming from? PIN - 1T0850KXVEE257378 Thanks in advance for the input/suggestions.
Nope. Get yourself a extendable mirror and a good flashlight. Try to clean the area as best as possible. Then have a real good look around with the mirror. You most likely will have to start it, and the extendible mirror should keep you at a safe distance.
Watch your fingers, bud. High pressure injection injuries are no joke.
Maybe wash the machine down really well, add few drops, maybe half a teaspoon, of diesel fluorescent dye to the fuel filter, run it for 10 secs and look for a leak with a black light. If no leak, run it another 10 secs. Repeat until you see the leak. I used fluorescent dye to find a leak on my pickup truck's steering system that drove me crazy. Similar to you in that it leaked a lot but I could not locate the leak. Put a capful of dye in the power steering reservoir, waited until it got dark at night, and within a few seconds of running the truck, it was easily seen. Turns out the top cover on the steering box had a hairline crack that was leaking and it only leaked when turning the wheel. Once off and no pressure in the system, the crack closed up and could not be seen with the naked eye. Craziest leak I've ever seen.
Last time I tried, off road diesel fluoresced under my blacklist. You may not need the dye.
Yeah, those pocket sized UV black light flashlights work amazingly well for finding fuel leaks. Glad you mentioned it.
What about baby powder? Clean suspected area , not using diesel, After dry, sprinkle it and the crank and see what you can see.
I didn't know that- I'll have to check it out. As a side note, there are multiple types of UV flashlights available. The better ones have shorter wavelength that go deeper in the UV. The cheap ones are more or less a purple light. I bought a 365nm light off Amazon a year ago to find the source of the cat pee smell from the wife's cat. The 365nm light lit them up very bright compared so a couple cheap UV lights my wife had used to unsuccessfully look for the spots. These lights are pretty much the "you get what you pay for".
Now that I think about it, isn't that how law enforcement determines if you're burning dyed off road fuel in your pickup or such? They use a UV light to look up your proverbial tailpipe?
Appreciate the input everyone.
So, did you find the leak ??? No one mentioned using a borescope camera. But I will ! I have one and it is awesome for hard to access places.
Not Yet. Been busy weaning calves hadn't had much time to devote to it yet. I'll circle back when investigations begin.