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Old 07-08-2015, 10:40 AM
nickypno nickypno is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2015
Posts: 19
1982 240d wont turn over

Hi, I've got an 82 240d manual 4 speed with 223k miles on it. I got it about 8 months ago and it's been running well for the most part but quite a few problems have emerged as of late.

The vacuum door locks were always slow to work since the day I got it. When I would lock/unlock the master door lock, it would take the rest of the locks a few seconds to lock/unlock from the vacuum. The rear drivers side door does not respond to the vacuum system in any way, same story with the trunk. So I'm well aware that I have a lot of work to do regarding hunting down vacuum leaks and testing the vacuum pump itself.

Last month, the car stopped turning off when I turned the ignition switch to the off position. I tried locking the master door lock from the outside after having removed the key from the ignition and it successfully got the car to slowly shut down in about 10 seconds or so. Now that trick stopped working and I have to push the linkage to the off position to shut down the fuel flow to get it off.

Now I say all this regarding vacuum leaks because I'm not sure if it could have affected my engine no longer turning over. The engine would shake quite violently when turning it off using the linkage stop or the master door lock (when it did work), so that may have thrown some connection loose.

Starting about a week ago, my engine started turning over more slowly when I would crank it, and not start slowly and idle rougher than it has in the past. This is immediately following a valve adjustment that I did. I feared that I adjusted the clearances poorly so I opened her back up and readjusted the valves. It indeed was incorrectly adjusted, and I spent much more time the second go at it to make sure after tightening everything that the clearances were all still proper.

The problem still persisted with the rough idle, cranking more slowly during startup, as well as a significant loss of power. I used to be able to get her up to 75 mph on the freeway no problem, now she has a really hard time getting up to 60 mph.

Then about 2 days ago she started cranking over severely slow, slow enough that I was frightened she might not start the next time I tried. So yesterday I get in and try to start her again and she turned a few times and then gave out. No cranking anymore period.

When I turn open the door, overhead lights come on, but when I turn the key to glowplugs-on, the glowplug light comes on, but overhead lights dim and flicker, and when I turn the key to on, only silence follows. When I let go of the key, there is a single 'click' noise, and that's it.

I was on a camping trip when this happened, not too far from home, and luckily I got it bump started and took it home. Now I'm not sure what to do. I tested the battery at the terminals with a volt meter and it read 12.3-12.4 volts.

If there's any other important information I can give to help diagnose the issue, I'll do so. Thanks everybody
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