Note about checking glow plugs

[the caveman]

In the past, a quick test for GP's was to take a test light, clamp one side to battery positive and touch the other side to the tip; if the test light lit you had continunity= good PG. If one was suspect, pull it out and bench test to directly on a battery. A couple of weeks ago with the deep cold  we had I cycled my key a couple of times to help the engine start. Soon after my MIL came on and so I checked each GP as usual and found all of them tested okay with the test light; so i figured it was the buss bar. I replaced the buss bar, but a couple of days later, MIL came on again. So yesterday I went and checked them with an ohm meter. 3 were less than 1 ohm, one was 166 ohms. Took it out and bench tested and it lit up. I replaced it and now no more MIL. I even used a test light with a neon bulb which supposed to not light up brightly with a higher resistance in the circuit. Lesson learned

[theman53]

wow, I had the same issue recently.

I also had the same deal you spoke about earlier with the vanishing coolant when it gets really cold. I don't know what is going on there and I am open to your ideas. Brightest thing I am thinking is the plastic connectors at the heater core shrink when it is that cold allowing a little to escape until the engine warms up. I never lose too much, but don't see it anywhere either???

[the caveman]

Coolant loss was my head gasket. I changed it last week and it was obvious where it failed- at the back edge of cylinder #1. Now fires up cold smoother than before also.

[the caveman]

Of course I figured that was the problem because the colder it got, the more pressure was building up in the tank, and staying pressurized for even a couple of days. So much was blowing out when coming to a stop off a highway ramp,I was worried that it would ruin my L/S strut bearing.

[theman53]

I never see any coolant and it takes a long while to lose any. I hope no HG in the near future.

[the caveman]

Hope for your sake it's not an even worse scenario than me. What is the possibility that you are consuming it? Or if it was the EGR cooler I would have thought you would have evidence of that in the bottle. I have had success using a Snap on combustion gas tester that reads from the bottle;worse case was finding a cracked block on a pal's AAZ Vanagon, but he had an overheating issue.

[theman53]

It only does it when it is around 0f