ok, sounds like you should treat your engine to a valve adjustment, but i dont think that is your problem, id first check the glow plugs. the best way to do this is to trace the g.p. harness from the engine, back to the g.p. relay on the left front wheel well. all the wires that hook to the g.p.'s run into one harness at the front of the engine, trace it on back to the relay. next remove the cove on the relay, and unhook this harness. the g.p. all come to a common contact internally in the relay. you must unhook this or you wont get accurate test results.
next take your ohm meter and hook one lead to ground on the engine and take the other lead and put it on each g.p. terminal. the reading should be anywhere from 0.1 ohms to 0.9 ohms, any higher resistance than that means the glow plug is bad and should be replaced.
now, i know there are alot of cheaper glow plugs out there to be bought, (autolite, champion) etc. but i caution you against these. if you will look at the oem "bosch" plug you will see it operates at 11.5 volts, these others operate at 12volts, the lower voltage makes them glow up faster and also get hotter. result is a faster more dependable start. i have also noticed that the non bosch glow plugs are not near as durable, or long lasting. good luck my friend!!!!

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matt

also another thing i should have mentioned, while you have the lines off, crank the engine, fuel should shoot out of the fuel injection pump pumping elements about 2 foot in the air. i appologize, i totally goofed on that,

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matt

Matt is the man!

Thanks for this. I saved a copy of your GP testing procedure for future reference.

Haasman

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'03 E320 Wagon-Sold
'95 E320 Wagon-Went to Ex
'93 190E 2.6-Wrecked
'91 300E-Went to Ex
'65 911 Coupe (#302580)

thanks a lot to everybody!
will check the GPs & keep you posted!

t.

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1980 300D, 156K

took the car to the mechanic - they checked compression: 2 cylinders are gone,
the other 3 are pretty bad.
mechanic said the engine is broken forever, he couldn't start
the car and even broke my starter!!
should I take the car to the junkyard now?

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1980 300D, 156K

tschepplmasta

Before the junkyard consideration .... how is the rest of the car?

Since MBZ diesels are pretty tough, especially the bottom-ends of the engines .... my guess is the head is the problem (or at least was the beginning of the problem).

So if the head were pulled and that is all you needed .... how much. Maybe a used one or a used one that got a valve job before going back on.

Since the valves had never been adjusted in XX,XXX miles .... did the tech even attempt to? Possibly this is the first place. Maybe not and the head is toast. But it it were my car, I would definately try a valve adjust first and see if it made any difference.

What do you think?

Haasman

__________________
'03 E320 Wagon-Sold
'95 E320 Wagon-Went to Ex
'93 190E 2.6-Wrecked
'91 300E-Went to Ex
'65 911 Coupe (#302580)

if you like the car and it is in good shape, and the engine is bad??? i may have a solution!!!!
i have used 5 cyl turbo diesel engine i would sell. it was rebuilt and has about 80k miles on it, still in the car and runs great!!
is your car a turbo model??? if not it could be converted pretty easy only a few modifications to make.
good luck with it. if you want to explore this further, feel free to email me.

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matt

This is a great forum.

Haasman

__________________
'03 E320 Wagon-Sold
'95 E320 Wagon-Went to Ex
'93 190E 2.6-Wrecked
'91 300E-Went to Ex
'65 911 Coupe (#302580)