My truck is a stock N/A 7.3L IDI powered F350. I have read lots on the dangers of excess idle time with the IDI engine in my truck, but recent events cause me to question if the warnings are either overstated or valid but for a different engine. 2 months ago I was fighting with a now solved fuel supply problem. During the fight, I gave it a shot of ether... but didn't disable the glow plugs. Stupid, I know. It's either ether or glow plugs, never both! The engine bucked back hard. That caused a disturbing noise that I now know is a broken tooth on the flywheel. I have driven it daily for the last 7 weeks and it's running great, but now it sounds really bad when I hit the starter and is just a matter of time before the flexplate is so chewed up it won't start at all. To buy me more time, this last week I have started it in the morning and not shut it down until I get off work and back home, 9-12 hours later. I drive between 70 and 125 miles a day, at an average of 35mph, and get a very consistent 12-13 mpg. On a short day, that figures out to 2 hours of driving, burning just over 6 gallons of fuel, and idleing for 7 hours. That day, I only used 7.5 to 8 gallons of fuel. Based on my fuel use this last week, and the amount of time I'm actually idling, I'm not burning much more than a quart an hour at idle, and nowhere near 2 quarts. This number has also been very consistent. This is at 650 rpm. I haven't done the manual high idle mod yet. So my question now is, do I need to worry about washing down cylinders, binding rings in pistons, diluting my oil, plugging injectors or other nasty results at this rate of fuel consumption at an idle? Can someone shed some light on how a 444 C.I.D engine with as much rotating mass as the IDI has can even run on such low amounts? I would not have believed these numbers had I not been the one experiencing them. Thanks Keith HP Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2
I have a buddy that runs a bucket truck for a phone company down here. In his old truck he did have the 7.3L. Much like you have just stated he drives where he needs to go and then the truck idles all day while he is up in the bucket. So I don't think you need to worry about excessive idling as long as you maintain the truck in good running shape.
