Vehicle & Technical > Discovery

300Tdi cold start problem - and I've tried everything

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Ralph Hardwick:
Hi all

As the title says I have a cold start problem.

The engine will turn and turn and turn until the battery is nearly flat and then it will eventually fire.  I need to have the throttle flat to the floor or it won't go at all.

Once running, it goes fine and starts straight away the 2nd, 3rd and subsequent times.  If I leave it overnight it's back to square one.

I have spent weeks googling and reading every forum under the sun to get an answer and this is my list so far:

It's not the lift pump as this is brand new.

It's not the sedimenter as I have a 2 tank vegoil kit fitted and the diesel is drawn from a tank in the boot thereby bypassing the sedimenter.

As a result of having the veg kit fitted I have some 'windows' in the fuel line upstream of the fuel fliter.  These show no air bibbles and are permanently 'primed'  o there are no air leaks in the delivery system allowing fuel to drain back.

I have replaced the entire 'spill pipe' setup with a new part and all new copper washers so I am convinced there is no leak here.

I have replaced the fuel stop solenoid with a new one.

Having spent and hour and a half ripping the dashboard out I can confirm that it isn't the 'spider' unit.  As there isn't one fitted :roll:

I have removed an injector pipe and when cranking I get fuel (although not a lot I must admit)

I have replaced and primed the fuel filter.

Tomorrow I shall try and run a new earth from the engine although I'm not holding my breath that this will make any difference.

I also intend to take the car for a run with REDEX advanced in the fuel just to clean out the insides.

I have a dual battery setup with an optima red top starter which gives 14+volts.  Unfortunatly my arms aren't long enough to see what this drops to when cranking.  But I have 'jumped' the solenoid directly from the second battery (when testing for the spider) with no great benefit.

So hopefully you can see I have tried most things.  my worry is that the injection pump is faulty although it runs fine once started.

Does anyone have any other ideas?  Are there any settings on the pump which may have gone 'off-tune'?

It's a non-EDC 95 auto model.

Any help would be gratefully recieved as I don't have a lot of hair left to pull out anymore. :'(

J B:
it wont start cold on veg oil, it needs to heated or started on diesel then switch to veg

you can get fuel heaters that have a couple of glow plugs in-line for cold start, then the engine coolant takes over

i'll try and find a link for it

J B:
looky here

http://www.vow2.co.uk/Vow2D.htm

Ralph Hardwick:
Thanks for the reply.  I obviously didn't explain very well.

The car has a 2 tank veg oil system which means it starts on diesel. I then manually chang-over when it's up to temperature.

I only ever start on pure diesel :D

trecfive:
Has this started since it was converted to run on veg oil/diesel.

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