259b3 running problem

Have a 259b3. Fires right up, runs good for a few minutes, starts stuttering and losing power and briefly puffs blue smoke. About 1000 hrs. 8 years old

Local car dealer went through it.
New turbo, did not need.
Checked compression, fine
Injectors fine
Rebuilt injector pump, found nothing wrong with it.
Replaced filters, serviced machine, etc.
Found nothing wrong, sporadically does this.
I drained tank , flushed, even put a scope in it, nothing. Replaced primer pump, pulled lines blew out both ends nothing.

At one point cat tech changed timing based on a cat forum. He said it corrected it, quit running correctly after a few hours.


Any suggestions? I'm ready to drive it off a cliff

Yyz1542 is the number

Update. Fixed. Found a pile of debris embedded in the fuel filter housing after completing disassembling the filter mount. An inline filter would have been golden to stop this.

Ramcrete said:

Update. Fixed. Found a pile of debris embedded in the fuel filter housing after completing disassembling the filter mount. An inline filter would have been golden to stop this.

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Clean fuel would have been better.

Cmark said:

Clean fuel would have been better.

Click to expand...

What a novel idea. Treat the disease instead of applying a Band-Aid to treat the symptoms.

You must have missed all the threads regarding the propensity of contaminant particles to stick in the fuel filter head on these machines. HEF member heymccall has posted a modification to install an inline filter before the OEM one.

This all takes me back to what used to be cast into Cat screw-on fuel tank caps back in the day. "Buy Clean Fuel. Keep it clean". Just as relevant today as it was 50 years ago.