Club 80-90 Forums

Some of you may remember that we had been getting issues with rough starting and blue smoke issues that disappeared once the engine was warm, so I figured that it was likely to be a issue with the glow plugs. I changed the glow plug relay and as many of the glow plugs as I could get to and all seemed fine - I had a little thread about that here. While I was at it I also renewed the leak off pipes as these were looking a bit tired.

All seemed okay once I'd buttoned it all back up again - it started without issue first time, the exhaust went clear and it revved and ran okay. So, small pat on the back and off to bed.

I haven't had a chance to run the van in a couple of weeks so I was just out checking it over for Mendipidy this weekend and the damn thing has decided to choke up and die on us. It won't start up with out coughing, and if I can get it started it quickly stutters and stalls. Any pointers as to what this might be? I'm hoping it'll be something simple and that we can still make this weekend, but I'm guessing that's wishful thinking and that we won't.

How long did you run it for after the work? Its possible that you induced some air to the fuel system during the work and not gave it a chance to self bleed properly and now it has an air lock stuck in the pump.

Maybe five minutes, both at idle and revving the engine. I only renewed the leak off pipes between the actual injectors not the last return section. The injector pipes from the pump I didn't actually touch, and the fuel feed was left connected to the pump throughout.

Cold start ?
Air leak ?
Fuel filter ?
Timing (engine or pump) ?

syncroandy wrote:Cold start ?

Not sure what you mean with this. It's difficult to pull out so generally I don't think it has much effect. Do you mean try I should try this or that it being pulled out might be an issue?

Air leak ?

Only place i can think this might have been introduced is while changing the leak off pipes. I can try seeing how these are seated.

Fuel filter ?

Sorry I seem to have forgotten to say that when it starts and stutters, it's still some smoke. I don't have a replacement to try - is fuel starvation likely to be the issue?

Timing (engine or pump) ?

No idea how to check this, but I've not changed anything in this respect.

If I decide to try turning it over some more to get any air out of the system am I going to do any harm to the engine?

Best thing to start with is crack off all the injector pipes at the top of the injectors and spin it over until you get a good spurt of diesel from each on, do them back up and go from there.

Forgive me for being a little dim, but how do you do that on your own? I'm guessing crank it for five seconds or so then go back and check for diesel? If none appears then go forward and crank it for five seconds more, then go back and check, etc. I don't want to start an engine fire if I can help it.

I use a remote starter switch its just a push to make switch on fly leads.

I just crack open the injector pipe unions with the engine ticking over, you can hear a change in noise as you bleed out the air and seal it up.

I'm going to need to crank it a few times I think to get it started first.

As the engine is turning over pull the cold start lever out [my jx wont run evenly with the lever in and stalls ]

Crank/cam and pump timing should be checked if not known to be correct.

I tried cranking it this morning about a dozen times for roughly 10 seconds each time but no joy - I'm nervous about cranking any longer than that because I don't want to trash the starter. The glow plug light comes on as and goes off as expected and then starter is turning everything okay. However there's no combustion at all until towards the end of each attempt and then we get a fair bit of blue-white smoke, and it stalls pretty much as soon as you release the starter.

I'm guessing this is starting to look like fuel starvation, so things for this evening are cracking off all the injector lines and seeing whether that helps. I'm also going to put some extra diesel in the tank on the basis that the tank sender might be knackered and the van actually has an empty tank. After that it will be a case of swapping over the fuel filter.

Beyond that I'll be stuck again so any other suggestions gratefully received. With regard to crank/pump timing, this was okay up until we started getting starting issues, and neither has been touched so no reason to suspect that anything might have changed in this respect.

Interesting times!

Have you checked the Glow Plug fuse?
Is there fuel present in lines? On mine the leak offs were porous and the fuel used to drain back to the tank over night.