quick start but tons of smoke after ~2minutes from OM606
 

It has been down to about 15F at night. When I start the car it fires on first revolution. This morning though it ran fine for about 2 minutes and then started idling rough. While it running rough it produces a lot of smoke.

What could be causing this?

Black or White smoke?
Does you Glow Plug System have a Temp Sensor that keeps the Glow Plugs on until the Engine Temp is up?

White smoke. There is a 180 second after glow - according to the bently book. So when the after glow shuts off the engine runs poorly until warmed up. Does this sound normal?

Unfortunatly I have an older vehicle and what I have learned about the newer ones is from what I have picked up on this Forum.

It could be helpful to hook up your Voltmeter to one of the plugs and see if the Afterglow is working like it is supposed to; after your initial start you should still be getting Voltage for aproximately the time you stated.

It could be the injectors. If one is not spraying correctly that cylinder will miss, then the fuel from that miss will pass through with out being burned and cause white smoke when heated by the exhaust of the other cylinders. Once it is warm, or when the GPs are on the poorly sprayed fuel will combust because of the heat.

Edit: I hope this makes sense, I am got up too early and am dead tired. :p

water in the fuel system?

I was thinking it may be fuel and outside temperature related but have been told I shouldn't have any geling problems with commercial diesel.

I'm thinking you might have a weak glow plug. Mine did that with every cold start when it was down one plug.

Either way, weak plug or stuck/bad injector, it's like bgkast says, raw fuel boiling in the exhaust...

I have replaced 3/6 glow plugs. #6 broke but is nothing like what you went through. I am planning on using the block heater. This may buy some time on weak gp's but they will need to be replaced.

You are running w/o the #6 GP right?

So that cyl never got preheated and is colder than the others when the afterglo truns off. Is prob resulting in poor combustion in that cyl.

Might need to manually raise rpm's to 1k during afterglo to get that one up to temp???

If you believe it may be an air leak it appears your Engine may have a Fuel Heater (is it working?) that can leak air.

See post #2
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showthread.php?t=238519

Even though the #6 plug snapped, it seems to have been working. The car fires just fine, it is when the after glow shuts off it runs poorly. It may be that one or the other old plugs have enough to get the engine running but fall short when on for an extended period?

I will not be able to get into the gp's until January.

Good call! It does have a fuel pre-heater but I don't think it is leaking air. I will have to check if it is functioning properly.

The other 5 cyl's are prob helping to even the idle out while the after glow is on. It sounds liek when it goes off that the problem develops.

Try holding the idle up during the cold start warm up/after glow period and see what happens.

Hey guys, Can you give me some more detail on your thoughts of this being a bad injector? Now that it is cold out, I am having the exact same issues unless I'm using my block heater. What BGKAST explained makes perfect sense and I'm 99% sure that is my issue, because I know I have 6 perfectly working Glows plugs. Question is: what do I do? What kind of maintenence do these inectors need? BTW '98 E300 Turbo Diesel.