1988 BB Detroit Deisel 8V92 Wont Start

[mbulriss]

Bummer. We all feel your pain. I haven’t seen a Bird towed that way before, but I guess “why not?” if it works.

I only had start problems about three times in almost 20 years of 6V and 8V ownership. Most notably the AT switch got hit. I would cycle it and try it on both sides. I know you checked it but I’d still try it. The second time was a bad spin on fuel filter. I opened it after trying to start and it was only half full. Put another fresh one on pre-filled with fuel and started. The final issue was ground straps from engine to frame. My son says on his OTR trucks when they don’t want to fire up “it’s the ground, it’s the ground, it’s always the ground”. That may be a little overstatement but those 6V/8V DD do like a good ground. You need to crawl under and should find several ground straps from block to frame. Pull them off and wire brush the cable ends, block/frame mounting points and the retaining bolts. Lot of folks have added additional ground straps for this kind of reason. I assume you may have already done the battery cables and all their connections to the starter and frame. I will also assume the DDEC box and connectors are clean.

Also, just out of curiosity, did you try starting it from the engine compartment control box? Hopefully, it won’t be something obscure, like a bad oil pressure sending unit.

Good luck and let us know what the end result was.