Hello everyone,I'm new here to the forum.

I own a very straight little 68' 220D . It's a wonderful car,and I was excited to finally get it road worthy. And then ... frustration. The problem is very simple, and annoying. I've tried various resources and contacts to see if anyone has a solution,but have come up with nothing.

Here's the situation. The car was running great, and then after sitting for a few days, it refused to start. I was surprised to find out after a bit of checking that two of my brand new glow plugs were burnt out already. The culprit? Carbon build up in the glow plug ports. Solution? Get a reamer,clean the crud, and we're back in business.

Easier said than done.

I ordered a very nice (ahem,expensive ...the best or nothing,right?) reamer from Kent over at MercedesSource. It worked wonderfully in our 300D sedan...but when I tried it on the 220, the reamer seemed a bit too tight. Not wanting to force it, I did some measuring. Sure enough ,the reamer is considerably larger than the port ( 1/32 '' ,if i recall) , and thus is useless for the job. Leaving my car hungry to burn out more expensive plugs.

So, a few questions. First, do I have an odd problem here,or is it common for these older Benz 4 cylinder diesels to have glow plug ports that are smaller than on the later engines?

And more importantly, how do i approach this problem? I want to get my car on the road again... is there any reamer I can get that will fit??

Please help . Thanks !

 

Thank you so much. That is at least a start,although I'd love it if anyone else wants to chime in ,so to speak. Will upgrading to pencil plugs completely solve the problem (burning out because of carbon build up) ?? It would be great if that was the case. I'd still like to ream out the ports if at all possible. Is there any way to do this?