My 300SD blew it's engine this evening
 

The engine sprung an oil leak somewhere and the engine died on the freeway. I popped the hood and found oil all over the injection pump and the driver's side of the engine. Oil cooler lines and oil cooler were fine. The hood mat right above the oil filter housing is soaked. I take care of this car meticulously and check for leaks all the time. The turbo drain tube and intake gasket were the only parts that had minor leaks. I changed that oil filter housing gasket a couple of years ago and it's always been clean. I can't believe this just happened. Does anyone in the Bay Area have a 617 engine that they need to sell?

Dang that bites! My condolences my friend.

Sorry to hear that. Pretty scary, frankly.

I feel your pain. The chain snapped on my first SD one day without warning as I went to pull away from the stop sign at the end of my street. The chain had been checked less than a year prior for stretch and pronounced good.

Bummer. If the hood mat is soaked it had to be spraying, which likely means cooler lines or fittings or turbo line by the oil filter or maybe a cracked housing or the oil pressure gauge line. Let us know what you find so we can check ours.

That stinks! Yes please let us know what, so we can keep an eye out.....did your pressure gauge reading change at all before the full blow out?

From your description, it sounds like the oil filter lid studs let go.
I think at this age, perhaps we all should replace our filter studs? new ones in there may prevent this type of failure.

That's scary.....how many miles on the car?

All mechanical devices are subject to failure. If Nico Rosberg's F1 car can catch fire mid-race despite being looked after more carefully than most commercial aircraft, we who drive old cars can expect a bad result sooner or later. I've had that problem too, and it sucks. Best of luck with getting it fixed.

I just went to turn the engine over by hand and it turns, but not as easily as before. Dropping 6 quarts of oil in the engine and trying to turn it over can't hurt, can it?

I turned the engine off before the oil gauge hit zero, but I did feel the car lose most of it's power as I swerved 3 lanes right to get off of the road.

The oil filter studs are fine. I'll dig around some more when the sun comes up.

The car has 214K on it and with the exception of a small, soft dent in the driver's door is in immaculate condition. The engine has performed wonderfully for the 45K that I've owned it. This is, or should I say was my daily driver.

Doesn't the SD have a low oil level warning? Did you get a warning?

How much oil was lost?

Oh that is the worst feeling. I had a daily driver 115 that blew and oil cooler line so I can appreciate how much that can hurt.

Sorry to hear that. My guess is the turbo oil line feed. Isn't there a clamp holding it to the back of the engine? I'd say in that vicinity.

The clamp is on the R/R corner of the head, hangs on a bracket that uses the 13mm bolt for the engine lift Bracket. I know it can wear through the oil line if the rubber insulator deteriorates. If the clamp is not there it can vibrate the pipe and crack where the 19mm banjo bolt is where it connects to the Oil Filter Housing.


Sorry to hear of your loss, that is a sick feeling when she is loosing her life blood before your eyes.

I have an engine out of a 300SD that was hit in the R/F, pealing the fender back and taking out the door. I pulled it at PNP only because it was a driver at the time of the accident. has 217K as I remember (Indicated) the guy had little pieces of masking Tape on various pieces on the engine as he was replacing things with the date/mileage. so figured it was probably a good one for a spare. I got cought one time w/o an engine when I broke a Timing Chain, and wanted a back up eng just incase. This is an option for you.


Charlie

nope. no low oil level warning... only the 60x motors have that.:mad:

X2 on the Turbo Oil Line.

If it still turns it can't hurt anything to try to start it again, the worst that can happen is you will have to replace the engine, which sounds likely anyway.

The car starts and oil pressure is pegged at max. It won't hold idle and is pretty rough at 1100 rpm. I didn't push it any farther than that. It took 1 gallon of oil to bring the dipstick to 1/2 quart low. I'm guessing that one or more cylinders have lost compression. I have a compression gauge that reads up to 300 psi, but I need an adapter, does anyone know where I can get one?

I also snagged a spare engine "just in case". Driving these old machines one just never knows. Having a spare, if the primary one tosses a chain or whatever, I can be running again in two days (or one very long day) if needed. Already used the spare tranny when the first one decided to go, so I'll be looking for another good one of those to keep around. (anyone need a 722.4 core? :) )

Harbor Freight's diesel compression tester is pretty cheap.

My neighbor just offered to sell me the 617 out of his W116 300SD. The engine was originally in a W123 and he had to shave away some of the oil pan to get it to fit. His car is currently running well, so I can test drive it. As long as the oil filter housing on my car is still good, I'll probably do the swap.

Did you figure out where the oil went? I wouldn't be in a big hurry to condemn your engine without further analysis. Is oil still squirting out of it when it is running?

We didn't see any oil squirting out while it was running, but I didn't rev the engine either. The fact that it was running like sh!@# makes me think that it's toast. I'll give it another look.

You've got a mystery on your hands. You're not the only one to have a bunch of oil blow out at speed. I seem to remember at least one case of it coming out the dipstick tube as a result of the PCV hose getting crimped.

I just started it up again and now it holds idle and is running much better than before. I was able to rev the engine at the linkage and still can't see any oil squirting.

If the leak was coming from one of the oil cooler lines, it wouldn't show any squirting until it got up to temperature and the thermostatic valve opened.

If its running ok, I might be tempted to take the hood off and drive it around the block until it got up to temp. You would know immediately when the oil started squirting and have time to shut it down, cool off and still get home without a tow.

I drove it around the block a couple of times and it runs okay, but it's not what it used to be. I cleaned around the oil pressure sender, filter housing gasket oil cooler fittings and the turbo tube, and it all looks fine. I'll drive it around longer next time to get the temp to open up the filter housing thermostat.

Good Luck. Hoping for the best.

Just a possibilities.
 

If you do not find any leak then I suspect it is blow by that blew oil everywhere. It could be from dip stick hole. It happened to my 300SDL. It popped the dip stick and blew oil everywhere. Do a compression test.

I think that you're on to something because I did notice the dipstick was protruding from the tube when I first popped the hood and I was stunned to see that the injector pump was doused with more oil than any other part of the engine. I hadn't checked blow by in a long time, but when I changed the air filter a few weeks ago it wasn't that oily, but then again my intake manifold leak was really starting to pick up.

We need a low oil level warning system real bad. It would have saved his engine.

This is the second such incident recently. The other one was Rollguy's neighbor. Are there more that you know of?

Aren't there a couple of tire kicking test in which the prospective buyer observes how a loose oil filler cap dances on the fill hole, and capping the PCV line to see how long before the engine quits.

ah-kay, that might be a new way to change the oil - plumb a hose from the oil dipstick tube to a collection bottle and send pressurized air into the valve cover vent :)

Sixto
87 300D

That may be an alternate way to 'push' the last drop of oil from the engine as requested in another thread. I personally would not do it as it is not going to work. However, I do use a pump to suck oil thru the dip stick hole. It is fast and convenience. I may not be able to empty it 100% but it does not matter in the grand scheme of thing. There are other things to worry about in life.

It looks like I might have found an engine. I took my neighbor's 300SD for a spin and I wasn't overwhelmed, but it seems like it'll be good enough. He has a turbo boost gauge that read as high as 9 psi, should it be more like 11 or 12? I didn't check the banjo bolt for carbon, but that's a possibility. Also, this car doesn't get a lot of highway miles and it's running 100% biodiesel. He also has the older transmission with the modulator on the passenger side, and it didn't feel like it was timed correctly with the rpm's of the engine. The engine had a fair amount of blowby, but at least the cap didn't fall off of the engine.

You pinched the pcv hose when you changed the air filter.

I checked the PCV hose when I got the car running the other day and blowby was passing through it. The air filter replacement took place at least two weeks ago.

If the IP is covered with oil it could be a split in the oil feed tube/hose going into the injection pump on the side. Check the condition of those clear small lines.

I had a 1976 240D years ago. Went to a quick oil change place, who used a flat paper gasket instead of the "O" ring on the oil filter housing. Drove home (25 miles) then the next morning on the way to work, thoil pressure gauge started dropping to 0. I stopped and added 2 gallons of oil, drove the rest of the way to work and returned to the quick change oil place.
No apparant damage to the engine,,, so hopefully (I haven't read more than the first page) you're OK.

I had a coupe that would pump the oil out of the dipstick tube if the stick wasn't fully inserted. It had massive blowby but pretty good power.

Do yourself a favor and get some good degreaser and go down to your local coin-op car wash and clean the engine bay real good. It will be much easier to pinpoint the leak, and easier (less messy) to work on it once you have found the problem (or go to change the engine).

I was able to get the engine up to 90*c today and still no leak to be seen. I figured that the higher temp would open up the oil filter housing thermostat and give me some answers. This is a mystery that probably won't get solved until I get the engine out. I did a second check on the PCV and air filtration system and checked the oil feed to the injector pump.

The good news is that I bought a 1983 300SD beater with a good engine and decent transmission in it today for $750. The engine had good pep and minimal blowby. I'll get started on pulling that engine tomorrow and start a new thread on the swap.

Have you done a compression check yet? I still think an engine swap is premature. I also still think the PCV hose got pinched somehow causing the increased crankcase pressure.

If I can't drive the car for more than 5 minutes with out the engine shaking and threatening to stall when at 2000 rpm, what's the point of the compression test? When the car has warmed up, my oil pressure is now roughly 15% less than it used to be and the car is gutless. This is my daily driver and I drive hundreds of miles to get to gigs. Doing this swap is the quickest way for me to have a work car again. I drove my donor car 50 miles home today and it performed wonderfully. I need to get this done.

I agree with ROLLGUY, go to a 25¢ car wash with a pocket full of quarters and blast as much as you can off the old engine and the engine bay. sure wouldn`t want to get my new White Overall`s dirty.:D

Charlie

Here's a pic of the damage that Charmalu found in the oil pan after we removed the engine. We never found the leak!

reply to your 20 mercedes out of your yard
 

I'm fairly near you and I have a list of parts that I need .Please call or send
me your e-mail and address. Gray c. 919-923-4321 ///graycjones@hotmail.com.