Hi, I have a 300D 82. It has been working fine during the summer, but now it has had this dramatic loss of power, and it is not even that cold yet in October.

This is the first diesel that I own, and I would very much appreciate some troubleshooting guidelines from you guys.

Thanks.

 

A good starting place is to change your fuel filters, the little prefilter and your main filter. They are cheap and fix a lot of performance issues. All it takes is one dirty tank of fuel or a chunk of crud in your tank to break loose to plug a filter. Also check you airfilter, the car has to have air.

If you've never done a purge since you've had the car you need to. You will be suprised at how well it will run.

Good luck,
Tony T

 

Thanks! I will go and get those filters right now.

Please help in the second part of your answer: how do I perform those purges? A link to instructions on how to do would be great; I don't want to abuse your kindness by forcing you to write instructions for this as well :P

 

Here is a link for you. http://dieselgiant.com/injectorcleaning.htm

I do a purge on every car I buy and once a year for good measure. It not very expensive and works wonders.

One more thing. Do the purge before you change the filters. Once you have run the Lubro Molly through the system the filters will be funky.

Good luck,
Tony T

 

Thanks again! I will write an update after going through these steps.

 

Okay, here is what happened. Small version: changed fuel filters and air filter, and acceleration is normal again.


Long version:

First, I wasn't able to get anything done until the weekend because, thanks to the wonderful commute that I have in the D.C. metro area, I wasn't able to get home early enough so that there would be light outside. My carport is dark during the day; at night, Batman would want to use it as a local batcave.

I spend most of my weekend trying to get the filters and the purge. Second discovery: no one around here has heard of diesel purge. By now, my car is running at a maximum speed of 10 MPH in gentle slopes.

So, I finally decide that I will get the purge online and change the fuel filters and the air filter now. Just in case things don't work out correctly, I make sure that my wife's car is fine.

I changed the air filter first. It was a filty mess. I drove around the block to see the change. It actually mattered a lot. Now I was able to quickly get to about 25MPH, and then it loss acceleration to gently go speed up up to about 50MPH. In gentle slopes, it would quickly get to 20MPH, and very slowly go up to 30.

Then I changed the fuel filters. It now accelerates normally.

I will still purge it once I get the purge. I am also going to check the whole car now; I got mighty paranoid about the previous owner maintenance :P

I have a couple of questions, but I will ask you guys in new threads.

Thanks again, tonkyman.