[Vwdiesel] Bringing out the paddles

[James Hansen]

> handy.  Oh, and it won't light off of WD-40 sprayed in the intake.

Sounds like rings- low compression. I have a 240 mod 123 that starts the
same.  Compression isn't that low, just 20ish psi below wear limit, plugs
good, injectors fresh, but let it be cool, and it won't start worth beans.
It's ether time to get it going if you really want to, it will give these
lame little "pupp pupp pupp" almost wanting to start while making white
smoke noises until the battery runs out. A volks makes these kind of noises,
it's going to start right away, like my Jetta during it's runup at -40 when
I forget to plug it in at night. When an old Benz makes these noises, better
have a really big battery, 'cause you will be at it for veeerrrry long time.
The benz is built tough, but not a lot of finesse like a volks. Man, my 89
Jetta is at 540000kms, and still starts to -20 with no trouble, not plugged
in. The 240 is essentially dead at 150000 miles from low compression.
Another project in the wings.

You're sure the glow plugs are good?  Some of this vintage of benz had real
stupid plug wiring arrangement IIRC.  Does yours have the zig-zaggy solid
wire that goes from plug to plug? If so, these are not very good glow plugs,
the neighbor has these in his car, similar vintage benz, and if you change
one, IIRC he had to change them all. If you didn't, and had a mismatched
set, one of the others would blow.  They were wired in parallel I think, but
if one had a smidge higher resistance, the others got too much current and
went poof. When one was down, it wouldn't start well at all.  I remember
being head down under the hood of his for the best part of a winter day
trying to get it running, just after he changed a couple plugs.  Change one,
another one went etc, until I metered out a matched set from his box of used
ones.

Other thing to check is crack an injector line, be sure fuel is there for
sure.
-James


>
> All I can think of is that maybe the injectors got gummed up, or someone
> mentioned that maybe the rings stuck, a possibility that I'm hoping is
> not the case.
>
> For some VW content, if you idle a 1.6TD with the BIG alternator for a
> long time charging another car's battery over and over again, does that
> really use up some fuel?  Cause my economy has really been down since I
> brought the other car down.
>

Heh. yeah.