I bought a 89 Passat with this motor in as a bad starter, and have fitted this engine into my 89 Caddy pick up, the first problem I have is the battery light for ignition does not work at all any more, the oil pressure light flashes happily, but the Glow plug lamp only works intermitantly. Secondly the starting problem, it cranks over for ages before it fires and when It does it misses until it revved hard to clear it when It settles to a high idle, Ive replaced the glow plugs with those from my n/a motor which used to start fine and Ive also had the starter fully rebuilt, this is my first diesel and am out of ideas already. Can I bleed the pump, im using the na filter at the moment, I can't understand why this problem has been carried over from the previous car. Any help much appreciated.
most likely the cause is the cold start lever. the motor you bought probably has either low compression, bad timing, bad glow system, or possibly bad injection pump/injectors or a combination.
My guess would be that the timing is off a little, and/or you need to hook up the cold start. I've owned 2 diesels, and when it gets cold out, the cold start needs to be pulled otherwise the car runs terrible. revving the motor up while its cold isn't the greatest thing for your engine either, unless maybe you have synthetic.
Starting with the cold start lever pulled out vs non is a night and day difference
You mean the choke? makes no difference at all on or off.
You mean the choke? makes no difference at all on or off.
hmmm thats not good. you should hear more diesel 'clack' when the cold start lever is pulled out all the way. I wouldn't call it a choke, since all it does is increase the timing, and idle if your pump is setup that way.
i'd suggest making sure its properly connected etc. i don't know what could make it not increase the timing... i do know that you can increase the idle speed boost on the injection pump though (increases idle when the lever is pulled out, making for a nice smoother idle when cold... i love it)
From my understanding TDs have slow plug plugs and most NAs have fast glows. You can't mix the two, one required more amps then the other as well as the whole running longer/shorter issue. Get the glowplug relay from the car that the glowplugs came from and install that and see if that helps any.
I would try that but I've had to scrap the passat already! Surely that would make no difference as the fault was the same on the passat anyway?