My 1989 190e 2.6 lost power and stalled on the freeway the other day. Had it towed home and tried to start it.

It cranks and sometimes stutters a few revs, but never quite turns over. I did notice puffs of white smoke occasionally when I stop cranking. I pushed down the throttle plate and found more white smoke accumulating inside the throttle housing.

The first thing I did was come over here and start searching for information.

So far, I found that the last indy shop had installed platinum resistor plugs as part of a tune-up. I quickly replaced those with the copper H9DC's. I verified that fuel pump 'buzz' at the right rear wheel well. I also found fuel in the line from the fuel distributor to the cold start valve.

In the process of nosing around, I broke off one nozzle of the thermo vacuum valve, but if I understand correctly, this is part of the emission control system and shouldn't affect starting.

Does the white smoke offer any clue as to what's going on inside the engine?

Sounds to me like you may have a blown head gasket. Check your water and you oil for cross contaminants.

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89 190E
2.6L
Arctic white
Grey leather
Sunroof
Pirelli P400 rubber
Smoked corners

There is an old saying in the biz. It's gotta be fuel or fire unless it's an MB V/8. Then it could be bent valves, but that's another story. Pull the air cleaner and spray a couple of shots of carb cleaner on the air intake plate. If it fires for a short time, you've got a fuel problem. If it doesn't fire check for spark. You may even have a problem in the idle air management circuit. It is also a good idea to follow the advice of 190E dude unless you are sure your gauges were normal.

Good luck,
Peter

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Auto Zentral Ltd.

First thing you do is pull the plugs and check the chamber's one at a time for coolant! Also check the oil and coolant bottle for oil in the coolant or coolant in the oil. My head gasket gave out slightly a few weeks back. I fixed it immediately and did not even start the car after I first noticed oil in the coolant bottle. But in the blowing of the head gasket it shot crap into the Pre-Cats and clogged them. So when I was done with the head gasket and had clogged pre-cats and did not know it I threw money into injectors and a new fuel filter, to find out that was not the issue. Then I finally disconnected the exhaust at the header and downpipe and the car ran great. Pulled the exhaust and gutted the pre-cats and cleaned the down pipes out of debri. Now the car runs better than it ever did. So my point here is before you kill it more, do some checking, then if all is well with the oil, coolant, chambers and timing chain proceed to the exhaust, first get a rubber mallet and tap the Cat's and Pre-Cats and listen for loose crap rattling around. If you hear something pull the Exhaust at the manifole to downpipe connection and see if it starts! Check fuel flow and all as well. As for you cold start injector having fuel in the line, I would assume it should, by design it shoudl be pre-charged with fuel and have no air in the line to work properly. That is how mine is!

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~Jamie
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2003 Pewter C230K SC C1, C4, C5, C7, heated seats, CD Changer, and 6 Speed. ContiExtremes on the C7's.

1986 190E 2.3 Black, Auto, Mods to come soon.....

Jamie has some good info, but I think he's getting the cart before the horse. I still suggest starting with the basics. Check if you are missing fuel or fire. If you have both you could do a compression test. Once you get it going and the power is low, you can easilly check for a restricted exhaust by hooking up a simple vacuum gauge. If vacuum is low at high rpms, you either have a restricted exhaust or retarded cam timing. If you report back with results, I'll help you if you want. I'm intimately familiar with th 89 180E 2.6. That is the exact car I bought for my 82 year old mother last year. Although I personnaly don't care for 190s, she loves the car. I bought the car for cheap, because the shop said it had no comp in 5 and 6. The head would have to come off. No biggie for me, but I did my own basic comp test and found #3 no comp. Cyls $5 and #6 were fine. Before jumping to conclusions, I pulled the valve cover to do a BASIC visual. The visual uncovered a broken valve spring on #3 cyl. I applied an air hold, took a spring from a scrap 3 liter I had in the corner, and had the car running in an hour. Remember the basics.

Peter

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Auto Zentral Ltd.

That is why I said to pull the plugs first, that can tell you an awefull lot just by looking at the plugs themselves. Look to see if there is coolant or fuel on the tip! Also check the wires, from one connector to the other not plugged into anything they should be around 1KOhm! Of course checking for spark is pretty simple if you have two people and like the occassional shock from touching the plug wire stupidly while touching the body of the car. Then once you verify all this you can move to the other things. What made me think of all this is that he stated he was getting white smoke! That is not good! And if it is coming from the intake then something is blocked or broken. On the M102 you can tell if the timing chain is still intact by just popping the oil cap, I would assume you can see it with the M103 oil cap removed as well. All in all start with the basics, like plugs, wire, cap, rotor!

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~Jamie
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2003 Pewter C230K SC C1, C4, C5, C7, heated seats, CD Changer, and 6 Speed. ContiExtremes on the C7's.

1986 190E 2.3 Black, Auto, Mods to come soon.....