OP
handirifle
Veteran Member
At 70-80 deg. F. you should not need to use any glow plug heat. Above 40 Deg. F. there should be enough compression heat to start the engine. Going by my engine, a plug will draw about 5 amps cold and as it heats up the current will drop to 1.5 amps each. You should also see the tip glow?
This may come as a shock; the glow plugs are always ON. The heat from the last combustion cycle will keep the plugs glowing all the time and the plug tip should be hot enough to burn any soot off. Shock # 2, the engine is not a true Diesel but a Hot Bulb engine, the hot Bulb being the glow plug.
Hot bulb engine - Hot bulb pseudo diesel development
OK fine, but the fact remains, if I don't use glow plug, it doesn't start. The odd thing here, it it seemed to start (or not start) kinda sudden. It's like one day it decided to make my life difficult by being hard to start.
With the blowby I get, it's most likely compression the culprit, and since I don't own a diesel (true or not) compression tester, I can't find it out just yet. If it IS compression, I cannot fix that for some time, due to funds. Maybe this winter I'll dig up enough cash somewhere for a rebuild and redoing the lines like I hoped.