Originally Posted by barry123400

I thought annealing the copper washers sometimes restores them enough for reuse when diifficult to source. Any opinions? This applies to hard to find ones that these are not. Even volkswagon dealers probably stock these.

Since you observed manipulating the relief valve spring and ball loosened it up it may have just been gunked up. Anyways there are many available from the salvage yards still that are the adjustable type. Flush and soak that valve with laquer thinner to remove any gunk.

Reading the thread on the relief valve is time consuming but worthwhile. It is an important part of the fuel supply system.

Also your injection pump could benifit perhaps by a good flushing if that much gunk was present in the relief valve. Of course at a later date after you get the engine running.

If my suspicions are correct a manual cleaning of the delivery valve seats might be in order as well as an injector check at some point if the car is worth it. There is no reason not to suspect the delivery valves especially might have experienced the gunking up as well to some extent if the relief valve was affected.

Depends on how the car runs or does not when the pressure is restored in the base of the injection pump. Thats again if it is certain the pressure was missing. You could have had some remaining pressure with a seriously gunked up delivery valves for example. The relief line could provide some restriction especially with a good quantity of fuel on board to enable this.

I was going to direct you towards the delivery valves in the injection pump if the test for the relief valve failed. No choice if only the number three element was producing output in my opinion. With low to non existant fuel supply pressure it should have been the number one element producing a little more likely than the number three.

That was bothering me and still is. The only hope by me was that your powers of observation or some variable might explain it. The delivery valves cleaning is managable by the individual at least if it comes to it.

I am about ready to start a thread on the importance of having clean proper sealing delivery valves. Plus many other posters inputs into what to expect in general if they are not clean and sealing well. There will be non sealing to various degrees to expect I think. We are fortunate that flow errosion does not seem to be a factor with the actual valves and seats. Or it has never been reported to my knowledge that is very limited of course.

We will have to develop a test where we input some air pressure into each injector line. Or a spare injector line installed in each individual injection pump element port one at a time so it is easily accessed to apply air pressure. With the crank rotation set at established points for each line.

That opens up the input port for the individual element under test. If the valve passes too much air or in fact any the delivery valve is not sealing properly. I suspect we wil have to work out some method like a fluid held in a loop between the air supply and the element as an indicator of any air flow. This should be cheap and accurate.

Kind of a leakdown test for delivery valves I think. Unless someone else has a better ideal. These cars are old and some people especially that burn other than diesel fuel should be aware of what is required.

There were just too many injection pumps being changed out that I suspected just had gunked up delivery valves. Most people assumed it was just totalled element bore problems instead. Again this applies primarily to wvo users.

It of course was possible but few if any ever checked the state of the delivery valves by test before changing the injection pump. Thats if anyone did to my knowledge.

My motavation is simple. As time goes on there will be fewer and fewer good used injection pumps around. We want to see them available for cases where the need is real as they are expensive otherwise.

Has anyone not wondered why a non producing injection pump sent to a pump shop does not come back with new elements usually? Or it is my belief right or wrong they do not. It takes so little time and equipment to do a delivery valve test if the need is indicated. Or it may be an intelligent to do this type of check when trying to get an old 123 running the best it can.

I am slowly trying over time to format a good tune up sequece or if you wish a methology to cheaply check out the few systems on these engines competently ourselves as time moves along. This is in my opinion the least I can contribute to a good site.

During the evalution process other members contribute ideals that lead to refinements and new areas to critically examine with time. Plus my original posted thrust long ago to remove the black box feelings of certain components in the system decreases by most of us part time self repairing types.