Give us an update once they correct it....

"Mark Holbrook" wrote in message
...

"Dr. Hardcrab" wrote in message
news:j6PNe.5748$xp.3259@trnddc02...

"Mark Holbrook" wrote in message
...
Hello all, I have an oil boiler (ca. mid 80s, according to previous
owner) that every now and then rumbles loudly (sounds like a truck going
by outside the house), and spews gray/black smoke from what normally is
the air inlet vent on the pipe that leads to the chimney. I have had a
couple furnace guys over and they shrug their shoulders and say that
unless it does it while they are there they don't know what it could be.

SNIP

Sounds like late ignition to me. Burner comes on, sprays quite a bit of
oil into the fire box and then lights. Could be a number of things:

Like Mr. Berlin says: Oil filter could be clogged.

pump strainer (if it has one) could be clogged (big culprit that a lot of
techs overlook)

Pump may not be delivering the requires PSI (did they check it with a
guage? Could show if the filter or the strainer is stopped up OR the pump
is bad)

Transformer could be weak (sometime when they start to go bad they are
sporadic)

Could be a hairline crack in one of the porcelains (this causes the spark
to arc on the nozzle assembly instead of at the ends of the electrodes)

The electrodes could be set wrong (spark will arc ON the nozzle)

Wrong size nozzle

True, you can run into one that will not do it 99 times in a row and then
on the hundreth time you got Choo Choo Charlie.

Unless you have a contraxt with the shoulder shruggers, you may want to
try another company. Explain to them what it is doing and let them go
from there....

Wow, that is a lot of possibilites, I will make sure to print this out and
ask each of these querstions of the person that I have come out to take a
look at this. I very much appreciate your thorough response.

Thanks!

Mark