Fuel system has been purged. I regularly use fuel treatement. Fresh diesel fuel. Filters are new.

I start cold in the morning and have a very rough coughing like condition at idle. The car will sometimes cut off. When I give extra fuel for a few minutes it clears up and idles correctly.

I have 259,000miles on the 82 SD. I assume injectors have never been rebuilt. Is this a sign of injector failure or an IP issue. I have never had injectors pulled and tested for pop pressure.

I am leaning towards and injector issue, but wanted your feedback. I have thought of pulling all five and sending to TomJ to test and rebuild.

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1982 300SD Light Blue
2002 Honda Accord SE
1974 Toro Wheel Horse Tractor
2000 Toyota Tundra Pickup

cold startup rough.............but idles smooth warmed up.....

Thats a glow plug issue...............one or two have failed.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
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Section 609 MVAC Certified
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"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

I will test the plugs again, but I just replaced all five. I used BERU though. Maybe one has failed.

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1982 300SD Light Blue
2002 Honda Accord SE
1974 Toro Wheel Horse Tractor
2000 Toyota Tundra Pickup

My thought is if it was an injector issue it would idle rough warm too.

Check wiring connections too.......

As a second thought........when was last time valves were adjsuted?


If it continues adn nothing else was wrong you might want to run a compression test with that milage......a warm motor will run well with low compression while a cold motor won't. Look for a large variance on compresion between cylinders.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
---------------------
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Had the exact symptoms on another diesel. Turns out it had the same "banjo" fittings, and a copper washer was missing on one of the fittings upstream of the injection pump. Didn't leak enough to completely lose prime when it was shut off, but enough to drop the pressure so that the injection pump had to "catch up" when it was started. You may want to check those copper washers.

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daBenz - 1970 220D

I have had a similiar experience to dabenz. Check for air in the system and if fuel is slowly leaving the fuel filter overnight especially parked on an incline.

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-disav

99 E300 TURBODIESEL Astral Silver 282K - AMG brakes, suspension, monoblocks, speedo & interior - Full Load Maxed on IP by custom Speed Tuning USA Chip - T3/T4 Garrett - EGR/MAF delete
98 E300 TURBODIESEL Alexandrite Green on black leather 289K
95 E300 DIESEL Green Queen 267K SOLD
84 300D 216k SOLD
87 300D 299K #22 head - intercooler - full load adj. - 8sec 0-60mph - SOLD
76 300D 214K SOLD

I currently have exactly the same problem.

if your glow plug light is behaving normally I would wager its not a glow plug problem, its definitely not in my case.

my next stop would be air in fuel line - check all connections esp around fuel pump for leaks (i had this once).

my next stop would be electrical in particular the OVP relay which could result in intermittent power interruption to other relays/controllers eg EGR, ELR in turn resulting in rough idle and limp home behaviour according to many other posts on this forum - I am checking mine out at present.

please post your progress/resolution in case its none of the above

Keith

I would agree with all of the above comments and add that I just installed new new glow plugs and Bosch upgraded relay on my 300SD. New relay supposedly cycles plugs for up to 3 minutes after startup; really seems to smooth the rough idle when cold (morning temps in teens).

Jim