Hi all, I'm new to this forum but I wanted to post a thread to hopefully help me and others. I have been digging for days to try to find a solution but have not been successful.

Long story short I just completed (almost) a OM617 swap into my 99 jeep cherokee. I ran into some issues that are really strange. I started with a motor with 145,xxx miles. great compression, etc. swapped it into my jeep, timed and installed my dieselmeken 7.5mm pump and it fired right up. About two minutes into idiling the motor came to an abrupt halt. Upon inspection the motor had locked up. I pulled the pan and pulled a few main bearing caps as the rods looked fine. The third main bearing from the back of the block had locked up. It marred the crank and ruined the bearing. No good.

I got another engine with about 200k on it. First thing I did was check the chain stretch. I came up with 3-4 degrees of stretch at the most. We fired this motor up with the stock pump, let it run, and it sounded awesome. I immediately swapped this motor into my cherokee with the dieselmeken pump instead of stock. We bled the lines and this new motor fired up and idled for about 10 minutes. Then it shut down. I have been unable to start this motor since. Doesn't matter what timing I set the pump at, it will not fire. I have a new starter, battery, wires, grounds. If I disconnect the fuel lines at injectors it cranks perfectly. If I bleed the lines, hit the glow plugs, and try to fire it cranks really slow like it's dumping liquid diesel into the cylinders and it can't overcome the compression.


I'm kind of at a loss at this point because this thing has me stumped. Here's my timing procedure I've been using: the dieselmeken pump instruction card tells me 22* BTDC. I rotate the crank clockwise until I see the correct degree. I pop the oil fill cap, make sure the cam lobes are pointing upwards. They are. I aligned the large slot on the dieselmeken pump with the punched mark on the housing, put the collar on the splines, slide into motor making sure to not bump the sprocket. I tightened the bolts and used my lift pump in my tank to prime the fuel system. I used my drip funnel attached to cylinder one injector fitting on pump (pulled out spring and delivery valve first) and adjusted the pump to drip one drop per second-ish. I feel like I followed the manual to a "T".

Does anyone have similar experiences like this? The whole situation is weird as I had both motors running with the dieselmeken pump but now have been unsuccessful to this point. Glow plugs all glow (I checked), injectors have been pop tested, etc. I don't know what else to check other than possibly install the stock pump just to try it. I'd love some input.

If you have ideas let me know. I know some of you on here are whizzes with these motors and your wisdom and guidance would be greatly appreciated.

-Jared