The long grey line...(of smoke).

[bipolardave]

With apologies to any West Point alum.

I took my W115 on a 300 mile Xmas road trip. It's spent two months in the body shop and, after getting new tires and Bilsteins last week, I thought she was ready for her formal debut.

Anyway, both steady state cruising and idling are good. It's when I'm accelerating or have the pedal to the floor up our long WV hills that I get a 100 yard stream of foggy, grey smoke. Occasionally, there's the normal, but much shorter puffs of black smoke mixed in. Fuel economy was a respectable 25 mpg each leg.

The PO replaced the fuel injectors with refurbed Indian Bosch units for the princely sum of $40 each. I had them sent off a few months ago to be pop checked and was told they were good.

However, when I read other diesel forums (Powerstroke, etc.) almost universally when you have this kind of grey smoke it boils down to an injector issue (typically a leaker). On these MB forums, it seems there's a half dozen possible causes. I don't have any nailing at idle or steady state driving, but full pedal on hills yields noticeable clatter under the hood.

Work done to date: new timing chain with, what I assume, to be correct timing. Valve adjustment is recent, new fuel filters, replaced clear fuel hoses, and took care of the last fuel leaks a few days ago. Diesel purge performed. No air filter to clog up as it's the old oil bath filter. Compression cold is ~300 across the board. Starts fine in the high 20s F (with a 60 second glow) and I'm not losing oil or coolant. Added diesel from several stations, so if there's a problem with fuel it's region wide.

I'm thinking of buying Monark nozzles and having the injectors rebuilt. It seems the cheapest option before having the IP looked at.

Thoughts?