Ford 2000 Diesel runs cold/smokes till warmed up

jbos333 · Dec 12, 2015

Hi,

My 4 cyl. 2000 smokes whitish and smells like unspent fuel until it warms up, then it mostly goes away.

I thought it took an awful long time to warm up- I had it running at 1500 rpm or so for about 1/2 hour before the coolant felt even lukewarm dipping my finger in the radiator.

Thinking it was a missing/bad thermostat, I pulled it apart and there is a thermostat, "tested" the tstat in a pot on the stove, it seems to be working OK. It's a gates 33008 180. I'm not sure if 180 is the right number.

Any ideas on either issue?

Thanks in advance.

Jay

RickB · Dec 12, 2015

Running with no load won't warm it. If you must do that, cover 75% of the radiator and monitor the temp carefully. Otherwise start it and work it.

jbos333 · Dec 12, 2015

RickB,

Thanks for the reply. I never considered that it should take that long, even without a load. Must have a generous sized cooling system. At least it shouldn't overheat. At this point, I'll put a new thermostat/gasket in, button it up, top it off and just use it.

I will be mainly using it stationary to spin the pto on my firewood processor. Usually 2 hours or so continuous per load. That should heat er up.