Block Heater: How Long To Leave It Plugged In? - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

strelnik · #1 01-04-2010, 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DieselClan

MBinNashville- I feel your pain. I'm in Smyrna and just check the weather on the internet and with the wind chill we're at 4 degrees. I had to go into work this morning- went to start my 300D up and no luck. Let the GP's cycle through one more time and it started up. Funny thing is, when I left work (in Brentwood) I had to cycle them four or five times until it started. Didn't even turn over. I was thinking the battery was dead but I've put two batteries in this car over the past two years or so. I know I've got some electrical gremlins but can they be causing the battery to die this quickly. It's an MB battery.

My brother has a 300CD and had trouble starting his this morning too. He just had a local guy do a valve adjustment on his a couple months ago and was running fine since. All our cars are FL cars so they're not used to this type of weather- also, being FL cars they don't have block heaters. It doesn't help either we live in an apartment complex so our cars are parked outside too. We're going to give our cars a little run tonight before going to bed so they warm up a little.

Good luck!

-DieselClan

Originally I started on Citroens and truck diesels, so my thinking is a bit different. One observation: Mercedes cars, especially diesels, depend a lot more than some cars on good electrical grounds, and being that the cars here are usually older, I am not surprised that some grounds have weakened or gone bad. Once I adjusted the valves and replaced and repositioned my ground cable, I have never had a problem with starting.

Shorts and electrical "gremlins" are a big problem on older Citroens, which are 6v. Usually these cars are 40-65 years old, so the best thing to do is replace all wiring, bit by bit, after checking the function of the various motors such as WSW or starter.

I was amazed at how much better the MB diesels I've had will start after redoing the grounds.

Wires can fool you. I bought a Citroen from a museum and couldn't get it to run to save my life. I went through wire by wire and found the wire ebtween the coil and the distributor had corroded through after 20 years, but the outside wire had been waxed and polished for display purposes and you never would have known.

50 cents worth of wire later, the car was running.

Moral: Check your grounds and all contact points in the GP system for maximum delivery to the cylinders, and maximum starter speed to get the vehicle rolling once the cylinders have been warmed.