we've had some cold mornings here in NJ last few days as well. 15F one morning as I went to start. 2 glow cycles, no pedal and after about 2 seconds of cranking the cranking started getting faster, and holding another 3 seconds or so (5 sec. cranking total) got it running.

Used to have a VW passat TDI (1996) and that was much easier to start. Even down to -5F I recall just doing two glow cycles and it fired almost instantly.......no prechamber on those TDI's which I would think would make starting harder too. But, that was with 95K on the clock vs. 231K on the old MB.

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1985 300D 231K anthracite grey w/black int.