Spent some time over the weekend troubleshooting. Practically everything related to starting the engine is new on this car, so I figured it had to be a defective new part somewhere. Key to position 2 I was not hearing the click and tok sounds. Likelihood of two unrelated components failing at once is pretty slim, so next thing to check was the battery...

Turns out the battery had a bad cell. Its a new battery Feb 2017, so the store replaced it under warranty thankfully. Running the glow plugs in key position 2 must have been pulling the voltage down low enough that it couldn't operate the SOV and fuel rack.

New battery installed... turn key, click, tok, vrooom!

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1998 E300 turbodiesel

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