another typical smoke, hard start, and fuel leak story...help

mnlly

New member
Jun 24, 2016
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Hello everyone, I'm a long time visitor, first time poster. Forgive me if this is in the wrong discussion. I'll try to keep it somewhat short. I'd really appreciate any feedback you guys can give me. I have an 05 GMC lly, roughly 215k miles. A few weeks ago, almost overnight, I started noticing white smoke pouring out the back on acceleration. It literally just started happening one day. If it sits at idle, it won't really smoke, accelerate and hold it around 1800-2000 rpm it will smoke and then quit once the truck gets near operating temp.

Now, I know the truck needs head gaskets, so my first instinct was a coolant issue, and I could smell coolant so I followed that rabbit trail. I had it checked at a diesel shop and they confirmed once again that the HG's were blown and the EGR cooler was leaking. I replaced the cooler myself this week and expected to quit seeing smoke. Of course it's never that easy and the smoke continues. I checked the egr valve today and found it to be dry, so I'm confident the new cooler is good. Considering a delete, but that's for another day.

Over the past couple weeks there have been intermittent times when the truck struggles to start, or skips while it's turning over, but eventually fires. I figured that to be a battery or alternator/starter issue, but now I'm not so confident. That brings me to today. The smoking has been intermittent, some days its smokes bad, some days it doesn't smoke at all. I was inspecting some stuff today while the truck was running and noticed something leaking on the passenger side somewhere underneath the filter area. I haven't had a chance to get down on the ground and look closer because I had my out-on-the-town clothes on. I suspect its diesel, but it's pretty sooty and I'm not picking up any strong smells when I stick my fingers in it. It may just be water from the AC mixing with some soot somewhere. I had my wife hold down the throttle while I smelled the smoke and now I'm getting more of a fuel smell and not so much of the coolant.

This is where I'm at, if it is indeed diesel leaking, that may explain the intermittent hard start if air is in the system. I'm not sure about the smoke. I'll assume it's injectors, either bad or just dirty. I put some diesel kleen in today and I'll try to run it hard tomorrow for a while to see if anything clears up. Overall, the truck seems to run fine, no codes and all the gauges operate within the right parameters. In all reality, the truck never really needs to work too hard, it's mostly a daily driver with the occasional skid steer or dump trailer. I don't have any kind of a tuner, so it's hard to get any answers that way. I'll eventually take it back in to the shop, just thought I'd try to get a head start.

I'm sorry if the post rambles, or if this has been covered ad nauseum somewhere else. I just can't seem to find any posts that describe similar symptoms. Look forward to your feedback. thanks!