Have No fear! A Newbie Diesel story

[Jeff]

I had some concerns in buying the pimp van last year (93 GMC 1 ton diesel) in that I'd never owned a diesel and had no clue on the mechanics to it.  However, this weekend showed me that I did okay.

The diesel as Jeff Foxworthy puts it is much like a woman.  They take a while to start, but once they heat up, they can go for a LONG time (as opposed to Men who are like bottle-rockets).  Anyhow, it had been running fine, but some weeks ago, the glow-plug light had been staying on an awfully long time (30+ seconds).  With winter coming, I decided it was time to replace them.

Hunting locally, I was looking at $10.95 = +$14 each (plus tax) for glow-plugs (x8 of course).  On a whim, I turned to eBay where I found several kinds of glow-plugs for the motor.  I opted for what was claimed to be the best, complete with 2 year warranty (forgot what brand, but it's irrelevant for this post).  $64 for all 8 of them (new in package) to my door.  Not bad.

Once I got the glow-plugs, I finally had an idea of what to look for on the motor since it's nothing like a gas vehicle.  I headed outside and pulled off the inside hood (old-style van that the motor access is from the inside) and found no less than 2 glow-plug wires to be disconnected!  I suppose this was causing the problem all along, but since I've got new parts and I'm this far, I went on to replace them.

The old ones were QUITE caked with carbon/soot/crap, so getting the new ones in helped her fire right up quite quickly.  The light now stays on the usual 3-5 seconds and things are back to normal.

I just turned 235,000 miles on her, and I look forward to another 100k (body willing).

The real moral of this story is that the diesel engine is dead-nuts easy to work on (except getting access if it's in a van).  Everything is pretty straight forward and common sense oriented.  Have no fear in your first diesel experience.  They're pretty simple to work on and diagnose (thus far)...

[OmniGLH]

Gasoline engine requres:

1) Fuel
2) Compression
3) Spark


Diesel engine requires:

1) Fuel
2) Compression

That's 33% less things to go wrong  ;)  That is... until you get into the newer diesels... then you get a 32-bit processor full of possibilities of things to fail!

[motomadness]

Yeah, what Jim said.  Here's my standard answer when dealing with cars - I write software.

[Super Dave]

Gasoline engine requres:

That's 33% less things to go wrong  ;)  That is... until you get into the newer diesels... then you get a 32-bit processor full of possibilities of things to fail!

Yeah, cars too, though.

[cornercamping]

Yeah, what Jim said. ÊHere's my standard answer when dealing with cars - I write software.

 ;D