Originally Posted by bsmuwk

Absolutely, none of them have ever had any problems at or near 0*. There was a time where an 87 W124 wagon I had gelled up its fuel system and wouldn't start - though I believe ambient was -15* that night. Cold up in the Northwoods!!!

Low mileage isn't a saving grace for anything - the way I see it, that's a lot of time for that car to either A) not have been driven, gumming everything up or B) being driven quite a bit at short distance, which is worse than A as it never gets a chance to clear itself out.

My recommendation is to service the injectors every 70-80k miles. Not necessarily replacing nozzles, but giving them a thorough cleaning. Mercedes/Bosch dealers had a brass service set that cleared out any carbon in the nozzles. Definitely worthwhile to do, or rather, have done by those equipped.

You don't need an RIV light to check timing. I have one, and sure, it's nice, but with a little more time a lock tool (available for around $30 on ebay) will do the same job in letting you know where the pump is in time.

I've never heard of the lift pump causing idle smoke, it just supplies the system with fuel. The engine WILL stall when changing the filters, Mercedes never implemented a way for the system to purge air when changing the filters - which can only done by continuous cranking. If your engine is running, chances are your lift pump is perfectly fine.

How often does the car see full throttle? Believe it or not, it helps the engine rid itself of excessive carbon build up that otherwise wouldn't be blown out with normal putting around. If it's smoking dark black at full throttle and won't do it again after, you need to full throttle more often.


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