Originally Posted by mobetta

she'd been sitting since sunday while I waited for another pair of calipers.

It was this morning- I looked at the thermometer and it was at -22, then I helped the neighbors get their car started, then tried mine- so maybe it warmed up a degree or 2 in the meantime.

and by single digits, you mean single digits BELOW zero. we haven't seen the friendly side of zero since monday. but sunday is supposed to be 30*F, almost record breaking.

A friends 300 didnt go this AM either, even plugged in 4 hours. his compression is all over the place, though. 170-380 psi, seems to have stuck rings??????

I have no records of the car previous to 266K when I got it, so the engine may have been gone over. I have no reason to think that it has, but the Timing chain shows almost zero stretch w/ dial gauge, but I did not pull the cam pulley to see if/how far offset the key is. and the phenomenal compression.

My car did have a webasto at one time, so maybe it never had a cold start for the first 250K.

Ryan- the webasto wont help w/out fuel!! glad you got it running again.

I will say that oil makes a HUGE difference. I had no start at +7*F with 15-40 rotella. of course, that was my first winter driving a diesel benz, so some of it could be operator error. but I drained it later that day and had (almost) no more issues with synthetic oil- 0-40 M1 that year, now 5-40 Rotella.

also - one of them cheesy jump boxes has saved my bacon more than once- worth every penny of the $20 on spring clearance.