formal 706 glow plugs?

Hey all, I have finally bought my 7.3 power stoke glow plugs, I dyed/rethreaded the glow plugs so they fit, and i got all 6 glow plugs in the tractor. All I did for wiring was I bent the old slab connectors into a round hole, and they fit right onto the new 7.3 glow plugs. My electrical setup is all brand new straight 8 gage wire coming from the 12 volt batteries right up to a heavy duty push button switch, then 8 gage wire all the way to the glow plug junction. I have each wire to the glow plug wired separately up to the junction, so they each all have even distribution of power. My main question here is how long should i have my finger on the glow plug button switch before I would chance burning them up?


I bought the glow plugs at auto zone. not online.

anyways, my question is how long do all the sensors and relays activate the plugs for in a normal ford truck? since i don't have all those relays and stuff, I AM the relay, if you know what i mean. if the plugs are only activated for 15 seconds, or even less, thats perfectly okay, I will just let the block heater run for 4 hours instead of 2 hours, if you know where I'm coming from. thanks guys for any help.
Note: i am working in 18 to 34 degree Fahrenheit weather.
Here is the link to the exact glow plugs
Exact glow plugs i bought.

Well there should still be a relay unless you got a wicked heavy duty push button. As for time our td9 says 30 seconds above 30 degrees and 60 below that, always seemed to work ok.

first thing is to know if you have 6 volt plugs or 12 volt? if they are 6 volt u will be in trouble. because they cycle for about 5 seconds. and too long and they will burn out right now.

Well with out knowing more about that glow plug and the cycle timer they used on a Ford I have no idea . what to tell you . SOOOOoooooooo maybe you shoulkd give the MFG of said glow plug a call and ask them . One thing here are you sure 8 ga wire will be enough ?? when 10 gage would have been plenty . I might GUESSTAMATE no more then ten seconds and before i even went this route i would have done a lot more research .

On my '06 6.0 I would say that they run about 4 seconds at around 60 degrees and around six seconds at around 30 degrees.

INTERESTING, a few days I posted a link for him to dual-element glowplugs designed for this application with no rethreading required, and a lot less fussy as to "glow time" without burning out/blowing up but he passed on that without comment and bought these, and now he's wondering how to control them?

My 93 Ford, it cycled for about 15 seconds, on-off cycles. To just hold them on no cycles, maybe 2-5 seconds. They get hot quick.

Glow plugs aren't going to burn out that quickly or easily. In fact they are essentially no different than the elements in your water heater, so they can stay on as long as needed with no real problem, as long as they are in the block where they don't overheat.

As another poster suggested insure the plugs are 12v vs 6v, but if they go in a 7.3 I would assume they are 12v since I've had to check a few of them and they have always had 12v going to them.

That said, the time needed to start your engine us going to vary with the temperature. If it's really cold you may need a minute or more. If it's not cold a few seconds ought to be enough.
In any case your not going to burn them up just starting your engine.


Believe it or not, some of the more modern setups keep the plugs activated for a certain amount of time, even after the engine starts to insure a good burn, and to reduce or eliminate smoke on startup, and first few minutes afterwards.

Too, as another member said I hope you have an extremely heavy push button, otherwise the contacts will burn out rather quickly. Knowing that pushbuttons with that kind of rating are few and far between, I'd suggest going ahead and rewiring a little and putting in a solenoid to handle the required amp draw, just to be safe.

I have those plugs in my 560, in summer I hold the button 12-15 seconds and while cranking. Colder weather 25-30 seconds, starts so much better than the original plugs did..

Okay. thank you very much for the information. So if I have 8 gage wire coming from the 12 volt battery to a lawnmower solenoid, then to the glow plugs, that should provide the necessary amperage? When i wire the solenoid, and its all set up, should i do cycles of heating? like 5 seconds on, then 2 seconds off, then another 5 on, and so on? or would i be better off just laying on the solenoid button for a straight 15 seconds for example? thanks for any help. the glow plugs say 11v on the side of them by the way.

That is interesting. Probably availability or price.

Probably the difference was the same reason myself and Dieseltech use the 7.3 glow plugs. I put a set in my 460 D, 656, TD340, and D301. They really do seem to start better, are readily available at any local parts store at about $9 a plug, instead of $20 or more. I think the Case IH ones are around $30-35 bucks. I had a set of those I bought for our TD340 at around $30 each, and they didn't last real long, they looked like the cheapy ones you get from Steiner that really don't last too long. The glow plugs in my 7.3 are finally getting to where I have one or 2 that need to be replaced, but that's to be expected since this set has around 175,000 miles on them.

Ross

Just curious, have you ever tried the Wellman GP's I mentioned, they've worked well for me, and I'd be interested in hearing about the experience of others, both pro and con.

I haven't tried them myself Bob. I had just seen about using the 7.3 glow plugs on another forum, and how the people using them were having real good luck with them, so I tried it. The ability to just grab a set from the local auto store if I needed one kinda helped me make the decision to try them.

Ross

When you hit the button to energize the plugs, keep then energized. If you've ever energized one outside of it's hole, it takes a few seconds to actually get it up to temperature and start glowing. The whole purpose of it being in the block is to warm both the metal, as well as the air inside/around the combustion chamber as much as possible to promote combustion. That being the case, it needs to be energized long enough to do get hot, and do it's job. If you cycled it like your talking about, I imagine the heat created in each 'burst' would dissipate rather than build, thus doing little to no good.

Good luck, and if you have any questions, feel free to post again, or PM me if needed.

Thank you very much guys!