Yesterday:

Removed glow plugs, screwed them all together in series and laying them atop a board on the valve cover brought them to glow with gorilla knob. They each got bright red so I am going to say glow is good.

Bought fresh diesel, drained fuel filter housing and fuel lines. New fuel filters again, bled system again per FSM and then further until fuel flowed at each IP line injector connection. Running on small tank of fresh diesel now not main tank. Verified all lines are tight and connections sealed.

Took the battery to Batteries plus were they tested it under load. The max amps it would put out were about 575. Bought a new 800amp battery.

So now I tried to fire it up again. The starter was turning the motor over faster but it still wouldn’t fire.

Next I tried to tow start the car and it did start but would barley stay running, seemed like perhaps not all cylinders were burning. Ok let’s go a little faster still nothing until a bad noise starts. At first I thought something in the drive shaft was coming loose like the drive shaft was not spinning true and perhaps hitting some part of the car. Remember this is under tow about 25MPH so I put the clutch in shifted to neutral figuring I would have to check out the drive shaft before continuing. The noise continued as I tried to signal the tow vehicle to stop, our phone connection dropped thanks Sprint. Anyway the noise suddenly stopped, my passenger and I both said holy crap those bad noises were actually the motor running. Fearing something bad internally wrong I towed it home. You can crank motor with starter and still sounds like it did before, no bad sounds. I have no idea what to think.

Spent the rest of the afternoon drowning my sorrows in beer.

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1972 280SE 4.5