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Diesel refuses to diesel

Cwazywazy said:
Bought tools on amazon, should find out exactly what happened tomorrow night.

But seriously, what was wrong with normal bolts VW? And a timing belt, on a diesel?

I'm pretty sure the headgasket is slightly blown, it's drank coolant very slowly ever since I got it. About an expansion tanks worth every month or so, depending on how much I drove it. (No oil/coolant mixing though.) It has ran hot a couple times but never into the red zone and never since I got a new radiator, several months ago.
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I drove my thirsty D24 for like 3 years and about 20,000 miles drinking water the whole time.

There was nothing i liked about that engine.
 
Cwazywazy said:
Well I set the cam timing in the day so I could actually see and it still won't fire on more than one cylinder..
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You got it to fire by retiming the cam but not the inj. pump? Pretty lucky!



Those triple-square headbolts are not that bad if you have the correct tool. Never had one strip.



Where are you going to get a headgasket? What do you have to measure piston protrusion to decide HG thickness?
 
tintintin said:
You got it to fire by retiming the cam but not the inj. pump? Pretty lucky!



Those triple-square headbolts are not that bad if you have the correct tool. Never had one strip.



Where are you going to get a headgasket? What do you have to measure piston protrusion to decide HG thickness?
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Old head gasket should have something that would indicate the thickness. 1, 2, or 3 holes (or notches). The number of holes on a tab on one edge of the gasket.

1 notch 1.4 mm
2 notch 1.55 mm
3 notch 1.6 mm
 
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Head was rebuilt in 06, I assume that means it was milled and given a thicker HG.

Not making any decisions until I decapitate it and see what happened. Engine swap is an appealing idea, but we'll see how bad the motor is first.

One thing I like about the engine is the noise it makes.
 
Well dang. Looks like it's the cylinder walls to me. I never let it run out of oil, although the idiot light doesn't work.

https://imgur.com/a/dzTHvhU

8D81NKeh.jpg

qqdqJ2Jh.jpg


EDIT: Wait, are those intake valve indents supposed to be there? They look old.
 
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Cwazywazy said:
I never let it run out of oil, although the idiot light doesn't work.
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Did you repeatedly push it hard before engine completely warmed up? These like full synthetic. Didn't later versions (VW) specify full synthetic?

Cwazywazy said:
EDIT: Wait, are those intake valve indents supposed to be there? They look old.
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Blurry photo, hard to tell. Looks like there *could* be a valve indentation extreme bottom center of your photo. More like a mark tho than a real indentation. Clean up the piston and better photo to tell for sure. Maybe what you are referring to are the two roundish "combustion chamber" indent that receive the hot atomized fuel from the precombustion chamber in the head? Remember, the valves are in the center, not offset to the edge.

Need to see a better photo before condemning the cylinder walls. Usually the lower end on these are nearly always problem free. Mine at 170xxx mi. looked fresh, crosshatching, just getting broken in. What kills these is 1) Catastrophic overheating-- lots of coolant hoses, many directly under the fuel system waiting to deteriorate from leaking fuel-- which tends to warp the long L-6 aluminum head or; 2) Jumped timing from either deferred TB maint. or lack of getting the crank pulley tight enough (350+ ft-lb) so slips and then bent valves, broken camshaft, broken pistons, bent rods. YOURS doesn't look so bad so far. You might have been able to save yourself quite a bit of work if you could have verified the presence of air in the fuel or not.
 
tintintin said:
Did you repeatedly push it hard before engine completely warmed up? These like full synthetic. Didn't later versions (VW) specify full synthetic?


Blurry photo, hard to tell. Looks like there *could* be a valve indentation extreme bottom center of your photo. More like a mark tho than a real indentation. Clean up the piston and better photo to tell for sure. Maybe what you are referring to are the two roundish "combustion chamber" indent that receive the hot atomized fuel from the precombustion chamber in the head? Remember, the valves are in the center, not offset to the edge.

Need to see a better photo before condemning the cylinder walls. Usually the lower end on these are nearly always problem free. Mine at 170xxx mi. looked fresh, crosshatching, just getting broken in. What kills these is 1) Catastrophic overheating-- lots of coolant hoses, many directly under the fuel system waiting to deteriorate from leaking fuel-- which tends to warp the long L-6 aluminum head or; 2) Jumped timing from either deferred TB maint. or lack of getting the crank pulley tight enough (350+ ft-lb) so slips and then bent valves, broken camshaft, broken pistons, bent rods. YOURS doesn't look so bad so far. You might have been able to save yourself quite a bit of work if you could have verified the presence of air in the fuel or not.
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Never beat on it cold, ran synthetic. Check the album for more pics. Hasn't overheated in my ownership of it. As for air in the fuel, I think you're forgetting that I compression tested it.
 
Looks like the valves and the pistons had a meeting. You can see the outline of the piston bowl on the intake valves as well.
 
Yup, pistons hit the valves pretty good. At least a few of the pistons show erosion, possibly from bad injector spray pattern/leaking or dripping between pops, maybe injection pump timing too far advanced.

Also apparent cylinder wall scuffing.

I did remember your compression test numbers but (incorrectly) chose not believe them because you had stated the engine would start in 50deg. w/o glow plugs. Bent valves, camshaft timing way off (both immediate) and poor cylinder wall condition (not so immediate) obviously contribute to poor compression.

Either the crankshaft pulley slipped (probably most common), or the camshaft pulley (less common) slipped, or the TB failed (any broken teeth?).

While possible to repair, would definitely be a labor of love, usually only the Pinzgauer folks go through that because rare.
 
I poured some acetone in a few intake ports with the head on its side, nothing leaked out. Besides, I set the timing correctly and it still refused to fire.

Looking for Mercs now.
 
There was a stick shift mercedes wagon on ebay or was it craigslist? Won't even have to do a swap. It's the only manual wagon i've seen. The seller said it was a special order car.
 
dl242gt said:
There was a stick shift mercedes wagon on ebay or was it craigslist? Won't even have to do a swap. It's the only manual wagon i've seen. The seller said it was a special order car.
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I dropped an entire drivetrain from a w123240D into my w123 wagon. I think the entire swap from start to finish was like 15 hours. Hydraulic clutch, you only need to drill a hole in the firewall for the hose. It was the easiest thing ive ever done.
 
I don't mind automatic. I'm concerned about engine/tranny mounts and driveshaft. Also if it fits at all. I haven't found any real merc/volvo build threads.
 
Cwazywazy said:
I don't mind automatic. I'm concerned about engine/tranny mounts and driveshaft. Also if it fits at all. I haven't found any real merc/volvo build threads.
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OM617 isn't very long, and is a decently compact package. It's a common swap for 22re powered pickups.

The automatics behind the merc diesels are worse than an aw70 with a broken kick-down cable. I wouldn't wish that upon my worst enemy.
 
Nice swap 242240! My first and only experience with a manual mercedes diesel was in 1990. A photographer I was working with had a white 200d. I think it was an 82 or something like that. Four speed manual with a four cylinder diesel but that thang would rev and we did 150kph on the autosrada with it. It was slow but he seemed to hang with traffic ok with it.

OP Hope you get that thing sorted or find a good swap for your car.
 
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