FixedHi boys/girls.
In the last month my AAZ has developed a
rough start (more like no start) condition when it's cold. It started when it was really cold (-5°c/23°f or lower) but would start when it was about 7°c/45°f outside. Now it doesn't want to start even when its 10°c/50°f. I haven't put 300km/190miles on it since it started acting up, but has been getting worse and worse. Cycling the glow plugs a couple of times before cranking doesn't help. When it does start it slowly catches one cylinder, than another... with lot's of
first white than black smoke from un-burned diesel.
I have a auxiliary water heater (webasto thermo top C) installed and
when I preheat the coolant by at least a bit (let's say to 30°c/86°f) it starts up like nothing is wrong. When I'm driving there's maybe a bit more black smoke than usually (or I'm just more focused on it) but the power is all there.
The car cranks well (2.5 TDI Audi A6 starter on two 70Ah batteries).
Tested the glow plugs in the engine and they all take about 10A. Haven't taken them out and verified that they actually glow.
Don't have the cold start lever active, but
tried to bump the timing up (and down) a bit with no luck).
Running 5W-40 full synthetic oil.
Replaced the wobbling crank pulley last year.
AAZ running about 1bar/14 pounds boost on a Garrett T2. The pump has the boost pin aggressively grind down and I did the governor mod.
No bubbling/pressure build up in the coolant system and there is no pudding on the oil cap/oil looks as good as a diesels oil can.
I am getting some blow by thru the breather.
No bubbles in fuel line to the pump. The diesel looks normal.
I probably won't have time to touch it till the weekend so
I'd like to make a list of what I could check since time will be a bit tight. I currently have:
-Check cam timing
-Check pump timing with a dial again
-Remove glow plugs and see if they are indeed glowing.
-I'd love to do a compression and leak down test but I don't have the equipment to do it on a diesel. I'm guessing that's something I have to look into...
Any other ideas? Really hope it's not the rings (but that would be my first guess for now). The engine will get replaced with a TDI but I really hopped to get my Scirocco on the street before I tackled that so it would be great to keep this engine going for a year or so longer...
Pic of the car for attention