300D - won't start - the Answer.

[JoshMB]

Thanks to all who helped me with my problems. All the advice taught me much, but I had to resort to the mechanical geniuses - a professional mechanic. It took them a few hours to figure out what I couldn't in several weeks.

The main problem was low compression. Also, the chambers were flooded with diesel fuel, the result of cranking a lot with low compression. In addition, the injector nozzles were clogged with coke, the result of burning oil.

As I understand it, there is a little hole in a washer in the injector that allows fuel to be sprayed into the ignition chamber, it was partially clogged as well, making the fuel drip instead of spray.

In addition, the new battery that I have is smaller than it should be.

So all in all, I was making it very difficult for the car to start as it was.

Going into it, I knew that I probably had low compression. Well, I didn't know how low. A couple of cylinders were down to 100 psi. Mechanic said it would only run in the summer time. I am going to garage it, heat it and trickle charge it every night until we get through the winter and can save some money for another one.

So thanks for all the advice and support. I will probably be back in touch as I need to milk all the miles and time out of it as possible.

Josh

[123 300D driver]

Josh, first of all, I know very little about diesel fuel. But I know that increasing the cetane number will lower the ignition temp of the fuel. Maybe you could add cetane to lower the minimum temp to ignite the fuel and ease the cold starting problem. Or is this even practical? Hopefully someone with more knowledge about diesel fuel can help.

Gary

[JoshMB]

123 300D driver,

That is a good idea. I had an experience mercedes mechanic suggest that I put in a gallon of unleaded fuel per fillup for the same reason. I would be interested if there were any other comments on this.

BTW, this morning, I learned that my compression was not quite that bad. 200 on Cyl 1, 400 on Cyl 2, and the rest range from 280 to 340.

So it is not as bad as I thought, but still will take some taking care of.