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Diesel refuses to diesel

Cwazywazy

Cwazywazy

Single jingle
Joined
Aug 20, 2016
Location
Granby CT
Not gonna bother trying D24t.com cause that place is dead.

Ran perfectly fine. Felt like it still had all 80 angry ponies. Then the next morning it wouldn't start. (Thursday.) I absolutely cannot figure it out. Even starting fluid (I know...) didn't make it run. Has about a half tank, the front 3 injectors will spurt diesel if I crank with the lines cracked, the back 3 just kinda ooze diesel a little. Did a seal blow out in the pump, maybe?
 
Have you had the valve cover off to check valves are working? Or a compression test?

These things are pretty basic fuel, air, and timing. So one of those is bad/missing. You have fuel. How is the air supply? Then after that is the engine timing with the timing belt but also you have to check that mechanical injection pump is timed correctly. It will pump fuel as long as it turns but if it jumped time it won't run.
 
I think the non-turbo engines were rated at 83 hp. I'm not sure that mine ever got there.

Extremely well well maintained engine. Three thousand mile Diesel spec oil changes as a religion. Injectors and injector pump professionally rebuilt at 110k miles. Head rebuilt at 140k miles.

At 180,082 miles mine, one day, just refused to start. Cam and injector timing good. Fuel to injectors. All Glow plugs worked. Only thing I couldn't check, for lack of tools, was compression.

Just worn out. Not enough compression to go pop.

Al Gore had not invented the WWW by that time but later I discovered that my 180k was just about the expected life of these engines.

Reused body for engine upgrade.
 
Do that^^^.

VW made a lot of money from Volvo with those engines but Volvo didn't get the good end of the deal imo. Never cared for these when you could buy an old mercedes for the same price or not much more. For the Volvo it is Gimme dat redblock please or put something else there.
 
This car only has about 152k on the clock, I'm really hoping it's not the compression..

Is this little nub on the pump belt a timing mark?

LtGWEk4h.jpg
 
Crank it all you want. I did. Hooked up a big battery charger/starter and probably wore out the starter.

Put it in storage for the later engine replacement.
 
My experience with a VW diesel was on a 1980 VW Dasher Diesel Wagon. 115k miles and if it was colder than 45 degrees F it would have to be pushed a few feet to get it started. After 6 weeks of push starts I ventilated the block.
 
That's waaaay low. Strange that it would go from running to that low so quickly, though.

Did it suddenly get cold there?
 
JohnMc said:
That's waaaay low. Strange that it would go from running to that low so quickly, though.

Did it suddenly get cold there?
Click to expand...

Yeah, but it was still 90 degrees when it stopped starting. I tested cyl 2, about 175psi and close to 300 after squirting a bit of oil in there.
 
JohnMc said:
That's waaaay low. Strange that it would go from running to that low so quickly, though.

Did it suddenly get cold there?
Click to expand...

It did get much cooler recently, i'm in NE Massachusetts, not too far away

edit, whoops, should have refreshed before posting
 
Last edited:
I'm gonna try squirting oil in all the cylinders to see if I can't get it to fire one last time and go beat the piss out of it.
 
Any way to get the glow plugs extra hot as well? I.e. turn the key on. wait, off, then on again so they cycle one more time?

My Dad's old diesel Land Rover had manual glow plugs - turn the key one way to warm the plugs, the other way to crank it. So you could get them extra toasty on cold days. And on our diesel Jetta, sometimes I'll do a couple of key cycles on really cold days (like below 10 degrees) - seems to make it start a little better. Otherwise it seems like it cranks longer, sometimes starts on only a couple of cylinders for a couple of seconds until the others join in. But get the plugs extra toasty and it starts on all 4.
 
I never noticed any loss of power. I was cruising at 85mph like a day or two before it stopped starting. The last time I drove it was to the grocery store and back, about a half mile. Started and ran just fine.
 
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