Try this... swap the fuel and return lines. You might have accidentally switched them when you were doing all that work. The return line sits about 1/2 way up the tank and will be fuel starved unless you fill the tank up.

You can also try blowing air down each hard line to make sure that they are clear. If you blow air down one line, you should get a decent flow of fuel out of the other one. I used about 20psi to blow out my lines.

Also try filling the screw on filter with diesel kleen or diesel purge and then pump the primer. this helps get rid of a lot of air. Then try to stat the car.

__________________
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okay I just purchased 4 new glow plugs and installed them just to assist in the troubleshooting. The car started for the first time in 4 days! It sounds like hell. Nailing, clacking, missing. I have to give it gas and stay on the throttle or the engine dies.
I tested the new plugs and they all measured .7 ohms. The wiring harness (female 4 plug) at the drivers fender still has 2 bad connections somewhere. I am going to inspect the connections and clean and retighten tomorrow.

Most likely the IP needs to be adjusted along with purging the system of any air that might be in the lines. I will fill the tank full of diesel and bleed the lines again tomorrow.

The IP is hard to adjust now that I shortened the lines inbetween the banjo fittings in order to correct some cracks and leaks I found in the fuel lines. I have the new lines at the shop waiting to be picked up tomorrow so I will aquire these and install them so that I can adjust the pump and see if I can quiet the chatter down a bit.

I am still curious as to why the wiring harness or contacts are causing problems??? TO BE CONTINUED............ Thanks all and good night.

I'm glad to see it started! To answer your question: yes it did. But the pre chamber was cleaned as well. So, in my case, I don't know which of the 2 was the culprit. Or both.

__________________
"BECAUSE KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE"
G. I. JOE.

Great news! Keep us informed and good luck with this car. Jim

__________________
Own:
1986 Euro 190E 2.3-16 (291,000 miles),
1998 E300D TurboDiesel, 231,000 miles -purchased with 45,000,
1988 300E 5-speed 252,000 miles,
1983 240D 4-speed, purchased w/136,000, now with 222,000 miles.
2009 ML320CDI Bluetec, 89,000 miles

Owned:
1971 220D (250,000 miles plus, sold to father-in-law),
1975 240D (245,000 miles - died of body rot),
1991 350SD (176,560 miles, weakest Benz I have owned),
1999 C230 Sport (45,400 miles),
1982 240D (321,000 miles, put to sleep)

Hello all,
I installed the new fuel lines that run from filter to ip and back (banjo fitted ones). The car starts now with about half throttle applied and I have to feather the throttle and keep it open in order to keep the motor running. The motor sounds like hell while running though. I believe my third injector is leaking a little from within (injector seal?)(heat shield?) I have 4 new seals/shields waiting to go in.

What causes the "rod knocking" sounds that I am hearing? It is coming from the top of the motor. I am guessing injector noise but I am new to diesel cars. Any input would be appreciated greatly.

If I set my crank pulley at 24 btdc and aligned my timing marks on the ip before reinstall I should be close to proper timing correct? I guess with 240,000 miles on the odometer I could have chain stretch possibly affecting my timing? If someone could tell me how to accurately check timing chain stretch it would be great. Thanks again. I am close to being road worthy again.

At some point either eliminate the high resistance of portions of your glow plug wiring harness. If that proves hard to do just get one from a wreck. You may have eliminated them already just by removing and installing new plugs. As you had to remove the nut and wire to do that. The new plug connection was clean to start with remember. Why not check your present resistance at the harness plug again and post it?

Now for your present issues. First you have to drip time the pump as per posts in the archives in my opinion. I only hope for your sake the pump is way off. If not I really expect you are going to have to get into this pretty deep. Some of the new engine noise can be the injection pump is too advanced. There are two nuts on each injector line mount flange on the injection pump. Tell us if you had them off or disturbed them in any way as well.

Remember posted information has to be very accurate. Othewise bad judgements will be made. To clarify the meter issue would you consider testing each old glow plug across the batery terminals? Be very careful as they can go white or red hot fast. Avoid being burnt. I would hold each plug with something like vice grips.

Post if all your old plugs light well or if some do not. They all should or you may as well put your meter aside for the present. So post your findings including the resistance your old plugs read out of the car.

I want to know the results of those simple things before mentioning what I would do as we go along. If those earlier meter readings where accurate you may now have an excellent set of used glow plugs as spares.

What I am driving at is cleaning up one areas problems totally and verification of that before moving to another area. Otherwise we have partially resolved issues stacked on top of each other. That senario can become a viscious circle.

The knocking sound is not normal, but it might just be an air leak in the fuel system somewhere.

__________________
1985 Euro 300TD Turbo

Upon starting from cold iron, a Diesel like the one you have will run erratically until the block is warmed up. Some of this is from the pretty crude injection method, a single spurt, all at once (vs. today's injectors that have a pintel shaped like an hourglass and can generate up to 3 separate injection spurts per power stroke, which will lower the noise, especially at start up, and reduce smoking), and some is from the actual condition of your engine. Not all cylinders will have the same compression and it is feasible, if not likely, that between wear, carbon deposits and valve adjustments the compression will vary more than the factory "normal" tolerances. Leading to significantly different compression heating of the air in each cylinder and different combustion characterization. Once things warm up and the idle speed increases a bit, the actual compression usually improves and so does the compression difference from cylinder to cylinder.

So, is the knocking a "cold iron" observation, a fully warmed up observation, or an under load at speed over the road observation?

Jim

__________________
Own:
1986 Euro 190E 2.3-16 (291,000 miles),
1998 E300D TurboDiesel, 231,000 miles -purchased with 45,000,
1988 300E 5-speed 252,000 miles,
1983 240D 4-speed, purchased w/136,000, now with 222,000 miles.
2009 ML320CDI Bluetec, 89,000 miles

Owned:
1971 220D (250,000 miles plus, sold to father-in-law),
1975 240D (245,000 miles - died of body rot),
1991 350SD (176,560 miles, weakest Benz I have owned),
1999 C230 Sport (45,400 miles),
1982 240D (321,000 miles, put to sleep)

Jim,
Thanks for the response. I recently went through most of the motor looking for the cause of the car not starting. I took off the ip and cleaned the lines and stub pipes also the injectors were removed disassembled and cleaned. I did not have new injector seals/ heat shields at the time so I used the old ones until I picked up the new ones. Possible causing the nailing?
I took the ip off because I checked the fuel flow on all the lines from tank to ip and then the flow became impeded or much less than before the ip. So I took the ip off and cleaned and inspected for any obvious signs of fuel starvation. The ip, injectors, and pipes looked ok with some carbon, soot whatever buildup being removed with cleaning.
I lined up the timing marks on the ip and set the crank at 24 btdc and stuck her in. Crossed fingers and after new glow plugs cranked her up.
It started but not like before the pump removal, vacuum pump overhaul, new waterpump, new v belts.
It runs very rough, smokes a lot of white smoke, heavy fuel smell.
How loud and scary can a bad injector sound? Nailing?
It sounds like when a gasser is falling apart internally.
Keep in mind I just drove this car 1200 miles in a one week period with a fairly smooth sounding engine with little smoke. The two days or so before the car would not start it started getting a nailing sound of a knocking sound near the injector area. Also acceleration suffered greatly before the no start scenario. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Oh yeah about the knocking sound it occurs after my heater has been plugged in about 30 minutes and outside temp of 45 degrees or so. The radiator is very warm to touch prior to starting. The car cannot be driven yet due to the really rough idle. I think the ip timing needs to be adjusted still? Also I will remove the valve cover and check cam timing and chain stretch. The valves will get checked and the injector seals will be replaced.

If someone has not already suggested it it is cheap to become a member of the AAA (Autoclub). Depending on what membership you get you get a free towing X amount of miles and X amount of tows per year. They will even tow someone elses car if you are in it with them.

__________________
84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

Where should I tow it?

So, the car ran fine, or much better than it does now, but suddenly stopped starting. If the cause for that problem was burned out glow plugs, it would seem something else you did caused the problem you now have.

Of the items you touched that could cause overfueling to the point of white smoke coming out that smells like unburned Diesel, I would say the fiddling with the injectors and the injection pump are the prime candidates.

The injectors are pretty simple to take apart and put back together. If the cleaning you did included scraping any of the black deposits off the pintel or the injector nozzle/pintel seat you may have made it impossible for that injector to seal, and it may be leaking excess fuel that doesn't enter the prechamber as a mist - more like a series of drops, which won't ignite. So, I would take the injectors out and have them "pop" tested, which uses a hand pump to raise the pressure to the point where the injector pops and squirts. You check the pressure (which you can adjust with the spacers inside the injector body) and spray pattern. If the spray pattern is not a fine spray that abruptly starts and stops as the intended pressure is achieved, the nozzles need to be replaced (they come with lapped pintels). These used to cost about $12 each, so I never cleaned an injector that looked dirty and always replaced them in sets. That is likely not the case any longer.

The next issue is the pump. Someone has already asked if you removed the stubs the lines bolt onto. These are potentially tricky so if you haven't, don't without being confident where the boundary between what just screws back on and what requires an injection pump shop to "recalibrate" the pump. If you undid anything that screws into the pump body, you may have a problem you can't fix at home anymore.

The injection pump timing is the next item on the list. I have never diddled with it, so I can't offer any practical advice. If there is chain stretch and you are going to change the chain, that step should bring the pump back into factory timing tolerances when it brings the valve timing back to specifications. If you feel confident timing the pump, there are entire threads on the subject. The drip method seems to work ok and requires relatively little in the way of special tools.

Good luck, and I hope Thanksgiving was great for you. It was here. Jim

__________________
Own:
1986 Euro 190E 2.3-16 (291,000 miles),
1998 E300D TurboDiesel, 231,000 miles -purchased with 45,000,
1988 300E 5-speed 252,000 miles,
1983 240D 4-speed, purchased w/136,000, now with 222,000 miles.
2009 ML320CDI Bluetec, 89,000 miles

Owned:
1971 220D (250,000 miles plus, sold to father-in-law),
1975 240D (245,000 miles - died of body rot),
1991 350SD (176,560 miles, weakest Benz I have owned),
1999 C230 Sport (45,400 miles),
1982 240D (321,000 miles, put to sleep)

"I can't afford a tow to a local shop and dish out loads of cash so I am calling out to all of you to kindly help a struggling guy out."

I mis-read the above; I thought you did not want to pay for the Tow.

Now that I read it again I see you did not want to pay for the Tow or to have the work done by at a Shop.

__________________
84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

If the injector pintle is damaged the nozzle is junk.
Heat shields are single compression = if you snug them down, and back it off for any reason, that heat shield is junk...
After all the fuel system work you have done, it can take up to half an hour idling the engine 900 - 1000 RPM before the air is purged out, a fifteen minute drive is quicker...

If you removed the delivery valves from the injection pump, it may require professional re-calibration = rebuild.
Drip timing is your next step.

A valve adjustment is needed ASAP...




Have a great day.

__________________
ASE Master Mechanic
asemastermechanic@juno.com

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Technical Quality Auditor.
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1985 300SD
1983 300D
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