Excessive (?) Smoke on startup 1.6TD JX with leaking K14 Turbo

[StoneRoses]

Hi

1.6TD JX, 1989, 86,000 verified miles.

Does this cold-start look excessively smokey and/or noisey ? Ambient temp ~12 deg. Cold start lever fully open.



I've done plenty of reseach, but I'm still very much on the learning curve with this engine, and with diesels in general having never owned one till now. And I could be overthinking this....that smoke could be entrirely normal for an old diesel like mine. But nonetheless, I'm on a mission to reduce it if at all possible.

Some background:

- new cylinder head (old one cracked and head gasket leaking), timing belt, glowplugs
- injectors professionally refurbished
- measured injection pump timing as 0.93mm, which is within the tolerance of VAG documenation. Although some forums suggest setting it to 1.00mm ?
- new fuel line from filter to pump after draining filter.

I have small but frequent airbubbles visible in the fuel line, which arn't dimininshing, so I'll assess fuel supply from front to back.

- oil drips from K14 turbo casing and where it meets the downpipe. Also from braided secrtion of return pipe, since replaced, no more leaks there.

I shall try reducing oil volume. Although this makes me nervous on principle, several posts suggest that too much oil (tho not exceeding dipstick max) can contribute to leaking turbo on these engines. As an aside, the return pipe entry into sump looks a silly design to me....enters at below the pan level from what I can see ?

Another niggle....since putting in four new glowplugs, the glowplug dash light only illuminates for about 5 seconds; previously it was more like 30s plus. But my understanding is that glowplug duration is determined by the coolant temp sensor in the valve on the head ? So I'm puzzled, cos I've not changed that sensor.

I'm hoping that mild whirring noise in the video is my turbo spooling. Never had a turbo'd engine before.

Feels underpowered to me, but its a heavy Karmann Gipsy and it always has, and always will, feel sluggish with a 1.6TD. May go larger one day, but that's very low on my priorties, life in the slow lane is not a prob to me.

As ever, any input much appreciated.

Cheers,
Gareth.

[davidoft1]

That’s got a miss fire to begin with so that will cause some additional smoke, but otherwise that’s pretty normal, how long is the heater plug light staying on?

[mioba]

Never a need for the cold start lever.
Dont rev the nuts off them on start up - not good for the turbo.
If you have a cylinder down then the fuel needs to burn.
Smoke on initial start up is a fort of the jx.