1983 300D won't start-- glow plug? Battery?

Kate,

How old is the battery? Even though it tested "good" five months ago it may not be holding a charge over night anymore.

Josh

Kate,

The glow plug system has an 80 amp fuse, a/k/a fusible link, that's under a plastic cover on the glow plug relay - located on the left fender. The cover slides UP. Pull the cover UP and check the link - it's probably broken or melted. If so, that's THE PROBLEM!

These links are sold by the dealer and on-line for about $2 each, one is needed, also buy a spare.

This should solve it, if not, come back.

Tom

I had a similar event happen about eighteen months ago. I have a 1983 240D. A new battery took care of everything eventhough the testing of the old battery showed it not to be "down".

Helen

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

Had the same problem on my '81 300D. Although I burn biodiesel it had always started up great. When the problem began I changed the glow plugs since the fuse link was fine and I was getting current to the then installed glow plugs. I made the mistake of putting in Autolite glow plugs instead of Bosch. It started fine in the early morning if I gave it a slight shot of starter fluid in the air filter intake tube at the front near the radiator core support, not enough to cause any diesel knocking. Later in the day it started okay but without near the gusto it had in the past. I finally solved the problem by installing one of those new glow plug relays which keep the current flowing for about three minutes. The kit I bought also included new Bosch glow plugs. It now starts up on cold mornings in less than 5 seconds of cranking. I'll never use anything but Bosch plugs now. Incidentally, my

240D (also on biodiesel) starts without a bit of hesitation, regardless of the weather.

By the way, I've been using well-filtered WVO blended with small amounts of kerosene, gasoline, and a couple of other additives which I purchase locally. Works perfect despite rumblings from all the naysayers. I've heard some who complained about the "gunk" left in the bottom of containers when using the "recommended" method of purifying WVO and claim they would never put that through their engine. However, they fail to realize that Dr. Diesel designed his engine to run on vegetable oil and you get exactly the same "gunk" when processing virgin peanut, canola and other types of oil. Just thought I'd throw that into the mix. Incidentally, at about 80 cents a gallon I laugh at the price of diesel as I drive past service stations these days.

Kate; You have no glow plugs left. Put in new ones and all will be well.

I had this problenm this winter when it was very very cold. I would start the car and let it run till the water came up to temperatire every 6 hours because it was SUCH an ordeal to start when very cold and no glow plugs. I had to use two batteries and a 50 AMP battery charger/boost.

You can change the glow plugs yourself VERY easily. Get a 19mm wrench and take off the injector rails. Those are the snakey steel lines going from the injector pump to the injectors. Looks scary and OMG you're taking your engine apart but it's really really easy. Undo the bolts at the injector pump. Undo the bols at the injectors, it now comes off as an assembly all at once, place it upside down on the air cleaner, cover with a cloth.

Now you can yank the glow plugs. It's a 13mm socket IIRC and is as easy as changing spark plugs. Take them out, put in new news, tighten them up to about as tigh as they were by feel.

Some poeple try to do this without removing the injector rails and it's a right bitch. You'll save an hour and much swearing by removing the rails.

I can't reiterate enough how easy it is to remove those injector rails or how scary it looks if you haeven't done it before. Once you have you can do it in between 5 and 10 minutes.

Any battery that can start a car in 15, then 25 then 50 tries is good!

It won't be for much longer if you keep doing this. It takes a lot off a batteries life to discharge completley. A LOT.

Might be, BUT, th eway it failed - getting long and longer to start sounds like it had two working glow plugs, then one then none. A fusable link busing would behave the same way each time, it wouldn't get progressibly worse.

At any rate, check that first, who knows? Buy two spares and put them in the glove box anyway. It'll fail one day.

Sadly there's no way of testing the glow plugs while they're in the car.

Thank you so much to everyone who has replied. I looked at the fusible link and it is neither melted nor broken, so it sounds like the problem lies with the glowplugs. I'll try replacing them and will post with the results.

Thanks again! Kate

SOLVED! I changed the glowplugs and the car is working great!

wrench and take off the injector rails. Those are the snakey steel lines going from the injector pump to the injectors.