It's been smooth as long as i follow the protocol with the throttle... But that leaves me with a question, as i've been wondering if there is something i need to look into specifically like fuel injectors possibly needing to be cleaned or something. Let me explain..

in november, i did a diesel purge on this vehicle. The next day, it was cooincidentally the first real cold day of the late fall. So, that throws off my variables which is why i'm confused. But basically, the day after the diesel purge, i noticed the engine sorta lumping a little bit after startup, sounding and feeling like a skipped heartbeat. I assumed immediately that the purge caused the fuel filters to get clogged up, which is exactly what i knew to expect to happen from a diesel purge. But i didn't put in new fuel filters and just drove around knowing that it would go away once i put in new filters. I knew that i was going to need to push a little fuel through the somewhat cloggy filters during startup, which is what i did every day and it always ended up fine. For example, i would start it up (not using the "method" yet since i didn't know about that) and if it lumped a little bit i'd give some throttle to get passed it and within maybe 5 seconds of gentle throttle it'd be totally fine.

So, a month or so later, i put in new filters, both of them. But to my surprise, the problem didn't go away.

But mind you, this is now all during like December and January. So, i don't have any way to know if i was simply dealing with a winter w123 or if i was dealing with some other issue.

And that's where i'm still at now, but now that i use the "method," there is already a bunch of juice. However, we've been deeper into the colder weeks of winter, which means i have more adversity in the engine, which means that i'm sorta still doing the same thing.. i do the method first, and then engine starts up immediately, but then if i completely let off the throttle it will SOMETIMES skip a little bit. And it seems directly related to temp. On super cold days, it will be worse. But always, if i keep just a smidge of throttle going for may 5 seconds after turnover, it smooths out and is great for the rest of the day.

So i've been not worrying about it, and assuming that when spring shows up, this will more or less go away. I would like to have a smoother start next winter, and i will be doing things all year long to make the engine better overall.

Any thoughts?

But as for the actual initial turnover on startup, it seems excellent to me. Quick and smooth, and more often than not i am actually holding on to the ignition a blip too long than what the startup even required. So it seems pretty good, actually. Sorta surprises me. But i don't know anything about how to evaluate the initial startup quality.

It's what happens just after that seems sluggish.

It seems obvious to me that it is fuel-to-engine related. So, is it possible i need to clean my fuel injectors? Is this a symptom of this?

I do plan to take like a whole week this spring (this is what i call a vacation) and give some love to the engine. From what i can tell, cleaning the fuel injectors is not difficult, but i haven't looked into it too deeply yet.