Hi,
I have a '76 240D with an Elsbett conversion kit. Installed right before mercedessource came out with their own kit. Installed the auxillary fuel pump & works great. Also installed an injector line heater wrap. I wish I had gone with the heater Ken offers, didn't know he had it. Another regret, I had someone else install the Auxillary pump and injector wraps and although they work fine, they didn't do as good as a job as I would have, if I had the time to do the work myself. Now I have an Elsbett heat wrap around the the filter, injector line heat wrap and the auxillary pump all pulling juice, works fine but the wiring is getting messy. So three things I'd like to change/correct:
1- Redo the electrical so its clean. Does Ken offer a relay bus (is that the right term?) that all three electrical additions can hook up to?
2- My car smokes more than I want it to, and it seems to be slowing getting worse but it's not real bad, it just didn't smoke as much before. I did the purge, valves are adjusted, compression is good, all four glow plugs work well. I pulled them out, hooked up juice to them and they burned red hot. Sometimes it smokes badly sometimes not. It smokes the most after the car reaches operating temperature, so glow plugs are off at that point, right? I figure once glow plugs go off, the oil is being heated by the coolant, so it shouldn't smoke. I run it on the highway and come to a stop, smokes very little. Putt around town, stop & go, and it seems to smoke quite a bit when I come to a stoplight. Sometimes I can see smoke when I'm driving slowly, but not much. Sometimes it smoke, sometimes it doesn't. I'm at a loss. So I was thinking the pre-heat chamber Ken offers might be what I need. Install that and get rid of the injector line wrap heater? I have his book why does my diesel smoke. I have not gone through all that he recommends doing yet. I seem to be convinced the oil is not getting hot enough before the IP.
3- The injector nearest to the cab is leaking. As far as I can tell, the return line is not the problem. How difficult is it to repair an injector or do you just replace it? How do you know if the injector is bad?
Also, it's hard to find the time to work on the car myself. My job just gets in the way, but the pay is nice. Has anyone used the Half Moon Bay Auto Repair Shop in Half Moon Bay California? They work on veggie cars I hear. Good shop or not?
Thanks for any insight,
Keith