I recently bought an 81 Wagon 300TD with 377K on it. It is a great car and I love it. The interior is in great shape, and the car amazingly runs really well. I think it must have had the engine rebuilt at some point, but I don't know. I'm driving it to work everyday and haven't had any problems and knew when I bought it that I would have a few things to work on if I wanted everything to work like it should. I have a few questions that I hope someone could help me with.

1. It seems the transmission shifts into 3rd too early. It doesn't really affect the driveability that much, but I would just like it to wind out 2nd a little more. When I am just easing through a parking lot or side street, it shifts fine when easy on the throttle. Conversely, if I am really getting on the gas - say 3/4 or more, it shifts fine too (although a little harder than I like - I usually don't drive like that). In addition, it doesn't seem to want to kick down to 2nd from 3rd unless I just about floor it. Kickdowns from 4th to 3rd are about the same. Is there anything I can adjust to change this?

2. It seems that I have to push the gas pedal way down, like halfway, before the engine notices it. It almost feels like I could adjust a cable or something that would make the gas pedal move the linkage sooner or something. Maybe this could be related to the transmission shifting thing??

3. The door locks work, but the engine has to be running, and the doors all lock pretty slow - it probably takes 4 seconds for them all to lock - they sort of ease down. I guess I have a vacuum leak somewhere probably. The person I bought it from said something about the door locks being plugged so the engine would shut down, but that doesn't make sense since they do actually work. I don't mind manually dealing with the door locks, but the back ones don't seem to like being unlocked manually, like they are sticking or something or don't want to let the vacuum off for me to unlock them. There isn't any detent or anything when unlocking the back door manually - they just kind of 'ooze' up for lack of a better word. I hope that makes sense.

4. The heater works, but I can't get any air to come through the center vents. It has the deal where you have to hit defrost for the fan to come on so I'm gonna replace the brushes in the blower, but I want to see if someone can suggest where to start on the climate system. It is the automatic system. Should I start with removing the control unit and resoldering the connections? Should I look at the electronic box above the dash? Where is a good place to start?

5. The cruise control doesn't work - this is the least of my concerns, but hoping someone could suggest where to start on this one.

6. My temp guage reads around 40 all the time after heating up. It does more UP to 40 or so, but doesn't go any farther. Is that normal?

7. What kind of oil should I put in this car? This is my first diesel and I love it, but don't know if it requires any special oil or anything.

8. The glowplug light on the dash doesn't light up. How can I tell whether the glowplugs are working of if the light is just out? I read somewhere that this light not glowing means the glowplug system isn't working. All the other hazard lights work so I doubt it is blown. It was a little hard to start tonight - took 3 tries. It is around 100 degrees around here now so no real starting problems yet, but when it gets cold I want to make sure the glowplugs are working. Is there anyway to just run a manual switch inside the car to turn on/off the glowplugs myself?

Thanks so much and sorry for the lengthy post. I have looked for a few of these things on the forum, but was hoping an expert on these vehicles could throw me something to start on.

Thanks,
Tom