Hi Adam ;

Nice car there, how cold was it when you lit it off ? .

Because it's an "old mans car" I wonder of mayhap it's just in need of some hard running .

I recently took my old 240D over the hill to fully warm it up and get the crud in the cooling system loose so I could flush it .

I was zooming up the hill on the freeway with the throttle close to pinned wondering how it wasn't slowing down when I suddenly heard a LOT if "nailing" and a LARGE CLOUD of light blue exhaust smoke came out ~ I was worried I'd damaged something and pulled over, the engine idled smoother than it has for some time now, it didn't over heat and when I took off again it ran smoother and stronger to boot .

This is a thing many have done to clean out accumulated carbon deposits ("Italian tuneup") .

I too believe in the soaking of the pistons to loosen up carbon and crud but I see your exhaust smoke clearly looks like excess fuel and by 3 minutes the engine isn't smoking and idles smoothly .


Go back and re check the valve gaps with the engine stone cold then run it hard for at least 30 minutes on the open road and see if it doesn't run better .

Looks to me like you got a deal there .

FWIW, I bought balanced injectors from Greezer and they made my old engines run noticeably smoother and with less smoke , I'd suggest taking the injectors to some place that will balance them so they all pop within 5# of each other .

I too ran an older (1978 N/A 300CD) with much lower compression than you have there and it started easily in the low 40's temperature wise and never smoked a bit , ran smooth as silk .

__________________
-Nate
1982 240D 408,XXX miles
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion and fear is the father

I did then what I knew how to do ~ now that I know better I do better