240D white smoke and no power
 

I have a 1977 mercedes 240D i just recently bought. i changed all the oil and all the filters. The car was running fine for the first several weeks. i started out to cincinnati Oh and topped off the tank at wal-mart. about 40 miles later i was getting a cloud of white smoke behind and had no power (out of the ordinary). I then changed the fuel filter think i had got water. A few hours later we had it towed home. Can somebody give me some advise i was told to check the timing on the injector pump and the cam but the owners manuel doesnt advise on this.

Did the engine overheat? How is the coolant level? Sometimes white smoke is an indication of a bad headgasket. Any indication of coolant in the oil?

White smoke can be burning coolant or lack of compression. Both could be head gasket related not sure if you drove it enough but u'd be losing coolant or mixing oil/coolant somewhere or should be. If u did get enough water in your fuel it could do the same thing too tho since there was water in your filter i'd start there first then check from there.

check your air filter as well.

it didnt overheat and i can find any coolant in the oil

Check coolant level & compression. Coolant loss could be into the cylinder through a blown head gasket. You would also see overheating, & evidence of combustion gas in the coolant (maybe you'd see soot and or bubbles in there. If the coolant were fizzy, nasty & black, that'd be my guess). If the gasket were just blown into the coolant jacket, you wouldn't see significant coolant in the oil- just contamination from blowby.

If you adjust your valves & do a compression test, 1 cylinder well below the others would indicate a problem w/ that cylinder- the ring, piston or head sealing that cylinder.

If the smoke condenses, that would tell you what it is- water, fuel or oil. If it's fuel, it could be poorly atomized fuel (bad injector), or well atomized fuel that isn't compressed enough to ignite (bad compression).

I would drain coolant & replace, adjust valves, warm it up & do a compression test, look at the injectors when you pull them.