Fuel gauge not working properly and hard start issue

ALLISON HAMERSKI

MEMBER
2003 FORD F-350
6.0L
V8
TURBO
2WD
AUTOMATIC
190 MILES

Okay. So, I recently purchased the truck, so I don’t know much about it. The mileage is currently approximately 190,000. Sometimes when the fuel gauge says I’m at a quarter my truck will act strange and turn off on my completely and it takes a lot of diesel to get it started again and even then, it takes like 30 or more attempts at turning over the ignition in order to get it to restart. Why could this happen? The trucks has done this three times now to me, all at different levels of fuel. Once above a quarter of a tank at random and the other times it was a little less but no low fuel light yet.

1 Reply

KASEKENNY

MECHANIC
18,907 POSTS

With this truck, I doubt that this is related to the fuel level. However, it is related to fuel.

More than likely this truck has fuel contamination, and it is causing different starting issues.

Once these diesel trucks have fuel contamination it damages the injectors and that will cause all sorts of running issues including hard starting.

So, the way we need to check this out is to check the fuel filters and replace them. Then we need most likely to check the flow of the injectors and see if there is a high return.

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/how-to-change-a-fuel-filter

Basically, what happens is the injectors get damaged and then instead of enough fuel going to the engine it gets sent back to the tank.

Also, this could be a pump issue. So, we need to run through all this info and go from there. Try using ether in the intake to see if the engine will start and that will confirm a fuel issue.

Images (Click to make bigger)