Smoke & Rough Idle
 

Bought a 1984 300d about a month ago and since I've purchased it I've not gotten it to run smoothly at idle on cold starts. Runs very rough and smokes a tremendous amount.

I took it to my Merc mechanic and he adjusted valves, replaced three injectors (the other two were already brand new) amongst other general maintenance items but the car continues to run very rough when started and smokes too much. Last night, I ran 2 cans of lubro moly diesel purge through her and it ran fine during the purging process (also a cold start). After purge it was idling smoothly. Started it this morning and back to the rough idle and helacious smoke.

My only thoughts are as follows. Car came from California and I had it shipped to NJ. Car had been converted with single tank system to run on WVO/SVO. System consists of electrically operated injector line heaters and an electrically heated fuel filter thus the WVO goes into the fuel tank. Car was shipped from Cal. to NJ and it was very cold when it was delivered. Suppose that the car had a relatively high concentration of vegetable oil in the tank when it was being moved. It could have been started several times during the trip to move it around on the carrier. Even if the driver turned the injection heat on which I would bet he didn't -why would he- there is no way the oil could have reached 170 deg based on how cold it was when the car was shipped. This could have had a detrimental effect on the three injectors so that is why my mechanic said they were shot.

My question is what else could be causing the smoke and the rough idle now the injectors have been replaced. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Vince

RE: Smoke & Rough Idle
 

Thick fuel run that stuff out and put some regular diesel in it, and I bet your problem goes away once you get it out of your system. Wait until summer if you want to play with WVO or such.