On my way home form vacation last week I was driving down I95 and my daughter mentioned the engine in the '95 E300 sounded loud.

Shortly afterwards I pulled off on exit and it sounded really loud and diesel-ly, link a cold semi truck.

The idle was very rough, black and Smokey and it was a pain to start.
We drove the next 300 miles home and after looking for all the usual things like clogged filters, air leaks, stuck egr valve, or a blocked exhaust.
I was at the end of my rope as to why it started doing this all of a sudden.

Just for kicks I pulled the valve cover (and noticed the previous owner had left me a few broken glow plugs, ouch) and checked the cam timing.
To my amazement it was at 20 degrees before top dead center.
I triple checked it to make sure and looked for reasons why this could have happened.
The chain is not slack and there are no loose or broken components that I can find. If there was I'm sure there would have been a catastrophic failure during the drive home.

So it is easy enough to unbolt the timing gear from the cam and re-set the timing but without understanding what happened I don't know if it will happen again.

Does anyone have a clue?
Maybe this has happened to someone else?

__________________
'82 300D - Light Ivory, 2nd Owner (Back in the wind April 2013!)

'95 E300D - White, grey interior. (Suffering from stuck/broken glow plugs)

Deuteronomy 22:4-
"Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again."

How long have you owned it? Maybe somebody installed a new chain with a link off.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

I've put a little over 30 thousand miles on the car sine I've owned it and this just started maybe 350 miles ago.

__________________
'82 300D - Light Ivory, 2nd Owner (Back in the wind April 2013!)

'95 E300D - White, grey interior. (Suffering from stuck/broken glow plugs)

Deuteronomy 22:4-
"Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again."

It jumped time by 20 degrees and you haven't damaged anything... jeeze!

That was my thought. Time for the OP to buy a lottery ticket.

OP. Don't simply reset the cam timing without checking and dealing with the tensioner. It should be a ratcheting tensioner and will have to be reset.

__________________
2001 SLK 320 six speed manual
2014 Porsche Cayenne six speed manual

Annoy a Liberal, Read the Constitution

Recap- I have no idea why it all of a sudden started running poorly. While checking various things I decided to check the timing chain and it looks just fine, has tension, no broken or flapping parts. The timing showed 20 degrees off which shocked me because it ran afterwards, albeit poorly. At the suggestion of another poster that the timing pointer may just be wrong I checked the IP timing and found it was also offset by the same 20 degrees. So now I'm supposing the timing didn't jump at all and there is some other explanation for the sudden change in operation. Next step is checking the lift pump pressure and compression.

__________________
'82 300D - Light Ivory, 2nd Owner (Back in the wind April 2013!)

'95 E300D - White, grey interior. (Suffering from stuck/broken glow plugs)

Deuteronomy 22:4-
"Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again."

Check the movement and operation of the dampers in the intake manifold.

__________________
Jim

That was one of the first things I checked. I pulled the crossover tube and started it up to eliminate the flaps and EGR valve as a potential problem. It ran exactly the same.

__________________
'82 300D - Light Ivory, 2nd Owner (Back in the wind April 2013!)

'95 E300D - White, grey interior. (Suffering from stuck/broken glow plugs)

Deuteronomy 22:4-
"Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again."

Bad fuel.

__________________
Greg
2012 S350 BlueTEC 4Matic
2007 ML 320 CDI
2007 Leisure Travel Serenity
2006 Sprinter 432k
2005 E320 CDI
1998 SLK230 (teal)
1998 SLK230 (silver)
1996 E300D 99k, 30k on WVO
Previous:
1983 240D, on WVO
1982 300D, on WVO
1983 300CD, on WVO
1986 300SDL 237k, 25k on WVO (Deerslayer)
1991 350SDL 249k, 56k on WVO - Retired to a car spa in Phoenix
1983 380 SEC w/603 diesel, 8k on WVO
1996 E300D 351k, 177k on WVO

^x2

Did you refuel shortly before it happened?

__________________
Jim

I don't know the details but I believe your Camshaft Gear is not attached in the conventional manner as the 617 Engines are.

__________________
84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

Looks a little different....

Remove tensioner, unbolt the cam sprocket, rotate engine forward to TDC, move cam sprocket however many teeth it takes to line up, replace cam sprocket, replace tensioner, check IP timing. If I counted correctly the sprocket has 36 teeth which means a one tooth jump is 10 cam degrees and 20 crank degrees. I'm guessing that maybe the tensioner is weak or one of the check balls got stuck and it depressuized temporarily which allowed the timing chain to jump.

__________________
'82 300D - Light Ivory, 2nd Owner (Back in the wind April 2013!)

'95 E300D - White, grey interior. (Suffering from stuck/broken glow plugs)

Deuteronomy 22:4-
"Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again."

It would be wise to pull the chain cover and completely overhaul the system. You just dodged a a really large bullet.

Really?