Hey all,
Last week I wrote in about some strange stumbling and stuttering on cold start up with clouds of blue smoke. I believe my mystery is solved. I believe I have a flaky GP relay timer. With the help of this Board and the Mercedes Benz Club Board this is what I have learned. My car is a 1986 300sdl. No afterglow on this vehicle. My glow plugs Ohmed out correctly and leaving the block heater plugged in made it start like a champ. I counted the number of seconds my GP light stayed on at 36 degrees outside. It was 8 seconds one day, 5 seconds the next, 10 seconds the third day. I counted the number of seconds until the GP relay clicked off. It was a consistent 39 seconds. I believe the timer inside this realy is flaky, so now I just ignore my light in the morning and count to 20 from the moment I turn the key and it starts just like new, with barely no smoke or stuttering.
This relay was replaced last year and it is not a German made relay, it is made in Hungary. My previous experience with a Hungarian OVP relay in my 380se tends to make me believe that these parts do not have the same quality as the original German parts.

Second issue: When cold in the AM, I get a lot of flaring in the transmission when shifting. When the car is warm all is well. By the way I plugged the vacuum line to the EGR last summer. Now hear me out with my thoughts on transmission vacuum issues. When you have a vacuum leak, your transmission will shift very HARD. When you have too much vacuum, your transmission will shift very soft or even flare. There are a bunch of these little different colored orifices plugged into the vacuum lines coming off the vacuum pump and they provide a controlled amount of vacuum to different parts of the car. With the EGR vacuum line plugged perhaps too much vaccum was in my lines and caused the flaring when cold? When I plugged my EGR vacuum hose in to its normal position, cold or warm, my transmission shifts like a charm. Does this sound crazy? I experimented by leaving the vacuum line unplugged to the EGR without a golf tee in it and the tranny shifted extremely hard.
Comments please?
John