Ok, an update. I spent most of saturday and a couple hours sunday afternoon working on the truck and i can report success! The truck now runs perfect from cold start with no preheating. The injector armature plates were running a thou or less clearance to the injector bodies. The oil valves slowly recess over time into the injector bodies and lowers the clearance. As it gets down to around a thou, the oil surface tension holds the armature plate down and the injector doesn't fire until the oil warms. The symptoms are terrible / no cold starts, with injectors suddenly coming online one by one as the truck warms. Nearly everybody i discussed with said to replace injectors to the tune of about $1600. $60 kit off ebay and back in business for a while at least.
I am struggling with the boiler. Put another 55 gallons of oil into the holding tank, still waiting for my buddy to finish my settling tank which sits between the main tanks and the preheat tank. I installed the dual level switch, and it works great. Working out the logic and relay to turn the solenoid on and off to allow oil to drain into the preheat tank.
The flame thrower, i'm in a quandry where to mount it that will both be lightable and not have problems with sooting up. I think i'm going to just revise it to all stainless 304 design, and abandon the gas pilot design, and move towards a high energy spark from a oil burner setup, with long electrodes somewhere down in the pit to light it. I would then use a fire eye to sense flame and run the whole mess from the plc. My issue with the gas pilot was the sense/spark needed to be about down in the pot to light the flame and keep the sense line in the flame. And i'm worried about getting the wire down that far and it not burning up and shorting. So far the only things in there that have survived are the copper line for oil, which is cooled, the steel air tube, and anything stainless.
The gas lighting is turning out to be a pita, but i can't figure out a good way to light the oil without being there to do so. i really like the simplicity of the drip burner, but maybe this is why everybody else is just dealing with super clean oil and converted beckett burners. Stay tuned, i'm hoping to lick this one.
The first photo shows where i had planned to put the gas flame thrower which after i put the hole in i realized i would need to put a hole in the refractory, which i am not sure i want to do. My thought was the flame thrower over in the corner, pointed at the pot, and the lighting electrodes hanging off the main burner tube and connected by silicone spark plug wires or similar to the high voltage transformer.
Im very torn. Need this thing going quickly but nothing seems to be quick on this thing.
