Bringing my friend's 1976 300D back from the dead

[compu_85]

Just over a year ago my friend's 300d was poisoned with some bad fuel... full of algae. Due to various reasons we haven't had a chance to work on the car until now, which is probably a good thing as we've learned a lot more about benz diesels in the last year.

The patient: A 1976 Colorado Beige W115 300D:



No salt shaker here! Add 400,000 to the odometer...


After some help tugging the car out of the garage as the brakes had rusted in place:



Don't worry, the grille is in the trunk.

Loaded onto the busted benz recovery vehicle, with the aide of a come along:


On the way to the shop:




More to come tomorrow! We did get the remaining fuel in the tank drained. We'll have to track down the rest of the fuel filter assembly before we can get things going.

Does anyone have a wiring diagram for the preglow system on one of these cars? I can't for the life of me figure it out... there's a temp sensor on the head, but not enough pins on the relay for an input from it, nor an output for the glow plug light in the cluster. And I can't see a 2nd relay...

-Jason

[compu_85]

Figured I'd post one more picture of the car, this time with it in more direct sunlight. This is an older picture before the car was knocked out of commission. It really is a nice color. My friend had it repainted 2 years ago. The Capri Green ECOdiesel mentioned in my signature is in the background:



-J

[leathermang]

If it stopped running due to algae I would sure take apart every fuel line and the injectors and clean them before trying to start it up...If you can pressure it ( diesel fuel or purge) up... back flush after forward cleaning....and then as last flush use something like Biobar...
This is the first time I have read of a car actually stopping due to algae...Would have been nice to siphon out that violated fuel at that time.... ( for the record it may not have been that load of fuel...but just the natural condition that algae forms in this fuel type due to natural conditions ... but result is just as bad ).

[diametricalbenz]

Looks good, keep us posted on the fuel system progress.

[Skippy]

When I was in the Philippines, we got our fuel from a local vendor, and it all had water in it. Not surprisingly, wet diesel in 80-90 degree temperatures gets fungus pretty fast. We ended up changing a whole lot of fuel filters before we figured out that the filtration system on our ancient duece and a half fuel truck was tough enough to filter out all the bad stuff. So the fuel arrived in 55 gallon drums, which were then emptied into the fuel truck, filtered, and dispensed from the truck.

When a piece of equipment quit from fungus, we just changed filters and kept going. It probably wasn't the best course of action, but it did work.

[compu_85]

Originally Posted by leathermang

back flush after forward cleaning....and then as last flush use something like Biobar...
This is the first time I have read of a car actually stopping due to algae

Both filters were totally, 100% plugged. It was bad fuel, another one of my friends got hit from the same pump. I think the algae was already dead as it was pumped in, he hasn't had any continuing problems and the fuel we got out of the 115's tank looked ok. We will backflush all the lines, etc.

See here for some pictures of the fuel filter: http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=200386&page=2

The first poster on that page had the main filter on his 1991 Jetta saved by a Mercedes pre-filter.

-J

[Oracle12345]

looks like it can be a good car with some time and attention to it.

[compu_85]

We got it going again tonight on a temp fuel tank. All the trans fluid and power steering fluid had leaked out as the car sat. Tomorrow we'll get the tank strainer out and see if it's plugged up.

-J