I have a very strange job here at the moment. Another garage has had the job in for 2 weeks trying to fix it!

When the ambient temperature drops below 6 degrees Celsius, it will not start. It cranks over healthily but doesn't fire. As soon as the air temperature increase, it'll fire straight up.

Checks carried out so far include -

1. Diagnostics test reports no fault codes.
2. Live data confirms correct air, fuel and coolant temperatures.
3. Fuel pressure under cranking rises quickly to 12000 KPA.
4. Injector leak off test carried out.
5. Glowplugs replaced and tested to check for correct operation. They stay on for approximately 20 seconds when the ignition is first switched. Cycling the ignition to preheat the engine 2 or 3 times makes no difference.
6. Starter motor current draw tested at 280 amps when cranking, battery voltage doesn't drop below 10.5 volts.
7. Crank signal good and live data reports cam and crank signals as synchronised.
8. Fuel filter replaced.

The van has done 110k miles and seems to have been pretty well looked after. We haven't yet carried out a compression test on it but the engine runs and performs as expected and will never fail to start in the air temperature is high enough.

Not sure where to go from here!

Fuel pressure needs to be higher, aprox 25000+, 12000kpa is only 120bar.
What were the leak off rates like, any air bubbles??

Hi
few thoughts

I would agree fuel pressure seems a bit low for CR.
what is eh crank speed ? any smoke from exhaust when crank / no start ?

Can you scope injectors to see if they are triggered ?

fuel quality OK ?

Have you tried hand priming it to see if that make any difference? any bubbles in the pipe work


Aidan

poor starting on these or lack of throttle response once started is very commonly injectors

Hi

Just an another thought on this, as i remember these where prone to the mechanical pressure relief valve on the rail leaking.
we always connected a '5th' bottle to this when doing injector leak test.
Available separately to rail from diesel specialist

aidan

would agree with aidan on this pressure relief valve