I'm having trouble recently with my 225,000 mile 1985 300D and am stumped on how to fix it. If I start my car for any length of time (10 sec or more) and shut it off, it won't restart. It cranks but won't turn over. I've tried manually priming the injector but that doesn't help. I usually have to wait a minimum of 30 min for it to restart. And if I do manage to get it started sooner, it runs like it's starved for fuel. Absolutely no power and must really rev the engine to get it to shift. It honestly feels like I'm pulling a 15,000 lb boat anchor! If for sits for an hour or more, it starts like normal and has normal power. I'm guessing this has something to do with the injection pump. I've replaced the fuel filters and the rubber fuel lines under the hood.

Here is a little background. Over the winter, I was having issues with the engine running after I shut it off. I was letting it run for up to 20 min until it died on it's own. I bought the shutoff valve but waited until late March to install it due to not having access to a warm garage to work in. I followed the directions from the Diesel Giant site that shows removing the top of the ALDA cover plate to see the internal workings and make sure things line up. The installation went perfectly well and I reconnected everything. The restart problem started a month later. Could I have damaged my pump by letting it slowly shut off for 4 months over the winter? I've never turned the ALDA screw; it still has the factory housing around it but I did rotate the cover when I installed the shutoff valve.

The car's been running rough so I adjusted the valves (they were tight after 14,000 miles), had the injectors pressure tested and ran a compression test. Although the injectors are newer (within the last 10,000 miles), they're all below spec pressure. The compression test showed almost zero compression in cylinder 5, the rest were in the 200's. The car starts fine when the engine is cold (see above) and has normal power under load, just smokes like crazy at idle and shakes. Although I don't think this is related to the restart problem, I wanted to share possible connected issues.

I've learned so much from these forums and have managed to do a lot more than I realized I was capable of but don't know how to fix this one. Any advice would be appreciated.

The next time you try to do a warm restart, try pulling the brown vacuum line off the shutoff solenoid and see what happens.

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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.