Greetings,

New owner of a 1981 300D and learning as I am going here. If I take off the "lid" to the air cleaner and look down the larger of the 2 holes there is a lot of "gunk" down there. Looks like there could be some liquid too. I've spooned some out and it's pretty nasty, gritty grease type stuff. I just changed the oil and oil filter. The oil seemed pretty old and smelled nothing like oil, more like burnt smell. This is the same smell of the "gunk that is down there.

Any ideas? Is it just part of the diesel process? Should I clean it out?

She's pretty clean with on 101k miles on her.

See pictures for more and thanks for your help!

Attached Thumbnails

   

It's greasy soot from the EGR (do a search on EGR). Soot from exhaust + blowby oil = this. You should clean it out periodically since eventually it will block the flow of air, or you can take steps to keep the soot from getting there again

i have the same car and found the same thing , their is a metal tube from the oil pan to the underside of the air filter and the pocket it goes to on mine was clogged as well the air filter pan vent

i took the intake manifold off and soaked it in marine stripper as well as the air filter to remove all the gook, the gook in mine went end to end and i did not want the engine to eat it if i started to spoon it out and made it loose

i also remover the egr hose and put a ball bearing in the hose end to keep it THE EGR from dumping exhaust into the intake, it runs better and has not done it again -- jz

Thanks for the info. It looks like there is some kind of leak towards to bottom, so I can;t wait to get it off and take a peak. Have a rough idle in this cold weather, perhaps it will help if I clean this out.

Doing a diesel purge tonight when I get home.

The car ain't fast, but she is a cruiser!

If you haven't done it already, it's a good idea to remove or disable your EGR. It's not good for the engine.

Note to self: Still need to disable EGR on my 300D. I've only been meaning to do it for about four years now.

__________________
Whoever said there's nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes never had a cheap Jaguar.

83 300D Turbo with manual conversion, early W126 vented front rotors and H4 headlights 400,xxx miles
08 Suzuki GSX-R600 M4 Slip-on 22,xxx miles
88 Jaguar XJS V12 94,xxx miles. Work in progress.

I need to go get an emissions test tomorrow. Will un-hooking the EGR casue any issues

How about johnjzjz's idea of putting a ball bearing in the hose?

a single BB is very pricy and it took forever to walk it in the hose end -- jz

Last time I had a diesel tested they only checked particulates, and disabling the EGR will actually improve that. If they don't pop the hood, just unplug the hose and plug it with something.

Passed Emissions with no problems what so ever! Thanks for the help on this.

Failed the safety part because no wind shield wiper fluid. ordered a new pump, hose, etc.. to rebuild. Hope it is a quick fix. Thanks for all your help!

Scott