So much so I only take the highway at night or before dawn.

Two more odd issues.

#1 in gears 1-2 At full throttle the cat will not go past 4300-4500 rpm. It will hover at 4500 and not up shift.

#2 in gears 3-4-5, at full throttle the car goes into neutral. Which makes it not suitable for highway driving.

When I am normally putting around it acts fine.

Why is it doing this? Bad transmission, bad kickdown, faulty transmission electronics, or simply clogged fuel filters?

I'm scheduling a 6 can diesel purge sometime next week. Maybe that will help.

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1998 Ford Escort ZX2 5 speed - 279,000 miles My Daily

1992 Mercedes 300D 2.5 202,000 - Pure junk
2000 Mercedes E320 Black - 136,000 miles - Needs repair

Don't forget to grease the screw and threads on the spring compressor.

possibility you have fuel starvation, clogged fuel filters and fuel starvation from bacteria in the tank AKA algae.

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Only diesels in this driveway.
2005 E320 CDI 243k Black/Black
2008 Chevy 3500HD Duramax 340k
2004 Chevy 2500HD Duramax 220k

As Jake mentioned. Every interview you go to for a Diesel Mechanics job is going to include reasons for loss of power. #1 is Fuel Filters #2 Air filters and so on down the line.

You did not say if there was any abnormal smoke while this was happening.

I did not have the issues you were having with the Transmission but you should at least change the Transmission Filter and take a look at what is inside of the Pan. People will disagree with this but if the Fluid looks and smells OK I have occasionally reused it. (Note that if the drain pan has no drain plug I install one; there is generic kits to do that.)

Note that there is a maximum rpm setting at which the Governor starts cutting off the fuel to the fuel injection pump. I don't know what it is on yours but on mine it is 4500-5000rpms.
With out knowing the specific specs on your year and model I cannot say that yours is set too low but you could find out what it is supposed to be.

If something is keeping the crankcase pressure from venting out and your fuel injection pump has a vacuum shutoff the pressure can push that vacuum shutoff in the shutoff direction.

Your Fuel Supply/Lift Pump could be failing. There is a rebuild kit for that an instructions in the Repair Links section.

If you have a turbo check the boost pressure. Check to be sure that the boost pressure line is clear.

On my year and model there is something called an Over Pressure Relief Valve. That cuts off the Boost pressure to the Fuel Injection pump which intern turns your engine into a non-turboed engine but with a restriction in the air inlet.

Then there is that smog thing on called the Trap-oxidizer that like a Catalytic Converter deals with some of the emissions but in the case of Diesel they get plugged. On you year and model it might be called something else.

I don't know enough about the transmissions to give much advice on them.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

Have you cleaned out your intake lately?

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CENSORED due to not family friendly words

@ Diesel911 my car is a NA OM606, didn't know these came with cats, is it the big box shapped thing before the resonator? The only way I would know without spending money would be to run open headers and floor it!

About the crankcase situation, well my crank case gases are going straight into the atmosphere until I rig up a catch can. Don't crucify me.

About smoke during acceleration, my car has absolutely none, not even the SLIGHTEST haze. I'm quite proud of that really.

Wouldn't a failing lift pump cause hard starting? Or so I thought.

@tjts1 I cleaned the intake runners and the cylinder head ports when I resealed the fuel system

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1998 Ford Escort ZX2 5 speed - 279,000 miles My Daily

1992 Mercedes 300D 2.5 202,000 - Pure junk
2000 Mercedes E320 Black - 136,000 miles - Needs repair

Don't forget to grease the screw and threads on the spring compressor.

Resonator flaps in the intake manifold have to work properly!!!! The car will run fine at slow speed, by will bog down at higher speed and rpms!!!

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96 E300d

They are working as intended, when reving engine both begin to open.

Changed fuel filter and no change, I'm guessing it's transmission or transmission control related.

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1998 Ford Escort ZX2 5 speed - 279,000 miles My Daily

1992 Mercedes 300D 2.5 202,000 - Pure junk
2000 Mercedes E320 Black - 136,000 miles - Needs repair

Don't forget to grease the screw and threads on the spring compressor.

my God people algae needs sunlight.Fungus hates light

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1999 w140, quit voting to old, and to old to fight, a god damned veteran

Check your ATF level with the engine running at operating temp.

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CENSORED due to not family friendly words

I tend to agree with a fuel supply issue as in starvation (pickup screen in tank?) or maybe air in the under hood fuel lines (some bad o-rings) In these cases engine would run reasonably well at low power but would surge, buck and struggle under power. If you can, park the car on an upgrade with the nose higher than the tail overnight. If it won’t start the next day, you’ve got leaking o-rings allowing air into the system, and gravity allowing all the fuel to drain back to the tank.

As for the strange shifting- when the trans on my 99 E300 started to go, it would either not shift out of first at high rpm or suddenly change gears out of 5th or 4th and drop down into first unexpectedly and at speeds way higher than it should have.

How many miles on the car? My trans started the strange shifting around 130k mi...

J.G.

Most of your symptoms point to fuel issues ....but the fact the gearbox goes into neutral at full revs in my opinion points to gearbox issues.
I have had a 722.6 gearbox go bad on my 97 e300td and it did some weird stuff like holding gears until throttle backed off and selecting drive and having no forward gears and dropping into limp mode until restarted and all this with no eml

on my old 95, the tank pickup screen was 70% clogged. After I cleaned it out. Good lord that car could accelerate once it was in its sweet spot of midrange rpm (almost 2 stroke like pickup) - it suddenly wakes up and away it goes.

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2012 BMW X5 (Beef + Granite suspension model)

1995 E300D - The original humming machine (consumed by Flood 2017)
2000 E320 - The evolution (consumed by flood 2017)

Identical symptoms. If transmission is bad, I'll pull it out and have it rebuilt.

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1998 Ford Escort ZX2 5 speed - 279,000 miles My Daily

1992 Mercedes 300D 2.5 202,000 - Pure junk
2000 Mercedes E320 Black - 136,000 miles - Needs repair

Don't forget to grease the screw and threads on the spring compressor.

This might be the cause of the low power.

__________________
1998 Ford Escort ZX2 5 speed - 279,000 miles My Daily

1992 Mercedes 300D 2.5 202,000 - Pure junk
2000 Mercedes E320 Black - 136,000 miles - Needs repair

Don't forget to grease the screw and threads on the spring compressor.

Cue " I wear my sunglasses at night. . " and the movie Dawn Patrol.

#1 in gears 1-2 At full throttle the cat will not go past 4300-4500 rpm. It will hover at 4500 and not up shift.

Does it ever upshift if you lift the throttle? If it will not shift up as you say it does, how do you ever get out of 1 st gear?

What do you mean by " goes into neutral " ? How do you know it is in 3 - 4 - 5 if the trans goes into neutral? Does the engine rev freely past 4500 when this occurs?

If you actually put the shifter in neutral during issue # 2, what would happen? If after this supposed neutralizing event, do you have to shut the car off in order to regain automatic shifting ( get it out of limp ) ?

At what % throttle does this shifting issue occur? If you reduce throttle slightly will the trans shift?

The farther into the throttle you are the later the trans will shift, this is normal. If the engine is down on power the RPM will hang and trans not shift.


Why 6 cans? How much does the manufacturer call for?