How many K's on the engine?
It could be a combination of faulty glow plugs AND low compression from an older tired engine because you say it did start but struggled to burn the fuel effectively.
As the glow plugs only assist on startup and are not on aftrer the engine has started i am thinking that this is more of a lack of compression issue.
With older diesels sometimes you need to use "start ya bastard" to get them up and running on cold morning.
This.Quote:
Originally Posted by trout1105
Once started glow plugs are no longer needed.
IDI engines need some assistance (think older Hilux) on startup in cold weather, but a Tdi once firing runs sweet at sub zero temps, if timing is right and compression is ok and the fuel is ok.
what if 1 glow plug failed. that cylinder would be cold and producing incomplete combustion.Quote:
Originally Posted by trout1105
just throwing ideas around
glow plug resistanace is easy to test.
No 1 cyl glow plug is a PITA to get out with the A/C in the way. The other 3 are easy.
I got some Denso plugs of ebay, did mine is fairly quick time. Maybe $50 or so.
I used to have some cold as in close to 0°C) start issues on mine too. Would need 2x preheat attempts.
new glow plugs didn't make as much of a difference as I thought they were going too.
I don't really have a start issue per se, just doesn't start as nicely as I was hoping for(on a frozen morning).
Nope, it's a DI engine, as soon as it goes bang it's producing enough cylinder pressure and therefore heat to keep burning fuel.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eevo
My 300TDI has 300k on it and I live at Stuart Town, so temperatures in the minus are normal (-5 to -7 range). Mine starts and runs fine after using the glow plugs once. It is a little down on power until it warms up, but that is usual for a diesel. Once it starts, it should run fine. I would be checking your diesel.
Tom.
It had mostly alpine diesel in it at the time.
It's got 188k kms on the clock.
I was actually pretty surprised that it was so much trouble to get started, It's never even hinted at a problem starting before. I've never had it in -6 overnight before this but it's been close (-2 maybe).
What could be a cause of bad compression? My engine isn't as old and tired as a lot of others out there.
I can't vouch for the timing, the guys who changed the timing belt recently could have potentially mucked something up and I wouldn't know, apart from the fact that it probably would have shown up from normal driving if something was wrong so that's probably not it.
YouTube
Amazingly I just found this vide of a very cold start...this is pretty much exactly what happened with mine. It tried to start once but stopped straight away...then I tried again and nothing, kept cranking it and eventually when it did start it did this exact same laboured chugging that this TD5 is doing. I reckon it just did it for a long time though and it took ages to warm up past that, and while it was sounding like that that's when it had no real power.
I know this is a TD5 but it sounded very very similar to this.
Is it possible I could have a little bit of water in my fuel filter that could have frozen overnight too, hence not letting enough fuel through before it warmed up properly?
Okay I just found some more videos, what happened with mine was pretty much exactly what happened with these:
YouTube
YouTube
Lucky I had a decent battery in it I guess. Is it possible that it was just bloody cold and I didn't let it warm up enough before driving off? I also did not know that you had to turn it off and on again to give the glow plugs another shot at warming up when really cold, so I didn't do that either.