What trick do you use to start the nuts without losing them? Some risk in just putting them in the end of an 8mm socket........???

I just hold the nut between two fingers and squeeze my hand between the hard lines, you can feel when the threads catch if you do it by hand.

Dab of grease to keep them from falling out.

So, they just sit on the face of the socket in a dab of grease.........and you don't drop them? Seems like one tap on the flange of the nut on the way in and they're gone?

You can shove some paper in the socket then cut a piece of flexible rubber magnet and shove it in there, or put some RTV on the nut.

__________________
85 300D turbo pristine w 157k when purchased 161K now
83 300 D turbo 297K runs great. SOLD!
83 240D 4 spd manual- parted out then junked

Another trick is wrap the side of the nut in paper or plastic and shove in the socket.

__________________
85 300D turbo pristine w 157k when purchased 161K now
83 300 D turbo 297K runs great. SOLD!
83 240D 4 spd manual- parted out then junked

I use a normal socket for the nuts (vs. deep for the plugs). The grease works well enough for me. I use that same trick to get on washers too.

I'm not saying that I never had to fish a nut out with magnet on a stick, just that for me its easier to work through the hard lines than removing them or using flat wrenches.

Yep, I can see how you can be successful on 1-4 with that technique. But, I don't see how anyone can get to #5 without removing both the hard lines and the throttle linkage rod on an SD. No socket is possible in that location.

The way the glow plug bulb works per the FSM goes something like this:
#1 glow plug is in series with a coil which surrounds a reed switch (which controls the bulb), the other 4 glow plugs (3 in 240D) are paralleled then in series with a another coil which surrounds the same reed switch. The coils are wound with different gauge wires such that the 2 magnetic fields cancel each other out in normal operation (i.e. when all glow plugs are good). When one or more glow plug burns out, the balance is upset and detected by the reed switch which result in the bulb not being lit. If the bulb does not light at the start of glow, one or more glow plug is bad. Pretty cool!

__________________
85 300D turbo pristine w 157k when purchased 161K now
83 300 D turbo 297K runs great. SOLD!
83 240D 4 spd manual- parted out then junked

see post #30.

Is the throttle linkage different on an SD, than a D? I just stuff my hands in there with a short open-end wrench. Maybe my GP threads are unusually loose, but I can unscrew the GPs with two fingers after I loosen them about 1/2 turn with a wrench.

It's a bit more complex than you mentioned simply because of the separate wiring for #1. When #1 goes out, you always lose the light. If any of the other four go out, you do not lose the light. AFAIK, you'll need to lose two plugs 2-5 for the light to extinguish. I can vouch for the fact that the light works perfectly when #5 has failed.

yup

And to get back to the original point of this thread the symptoms he dscribes (smooth start) suggest that its unlikely that 2 GPs are out. Therefore needs to remove and test GP #1.

Which he can do with a socket.

It must be different. I could not get my hands in there to start the nut........no matter how many contortions I attempted.

A good way to test glow plugs without removing them is to apply +12 power through an ampmeter to each wire in the the glow plug relay plug/ harness (after unplugging it). Make sure each one is drawing the same current (approx 20 amps). You can also use use a starter motor proximity amp meter by placing the wire in the low current "slot"

__________________
85 300D turbo pristine w 157k when purchased 161K now
83 300 D turbo 297K runs great. SOLD!
83 240D 4 spd manual- parted out then junked