Quote (159357 @ Oct 25 2014 06:49pm)
so i got a 2000 jetta tdi, I'm an aircraft mechanic and have little knowledge of cars, I have been narrowing it down with my troubleshooting skills as best I can
was starting fine all last winter and this summer, now that it's starting to get cold I've had two mornings where it failed to start and drained the battery in the process of trying and had to get jumped.
my thought process went as follows:
1) bad battery, not holding a charge. OR something grounding and sucking juice out of battery.. tested battery, it is in perfect shape (I did however notice it's a bit smaller than what would be ideal for the diesel, I'm thinking that's why it dies so fast when i repeatedly try to start it)... Alternator IS charging.
2) fuel issue, the slow starting may be a fuel issue i thought, I know the filter should be changed soon and I've ordered a new one already to do that, but in the mean time it's still firing up when it's warm enough so I don't think it's 100% that.
3) it's just too cold, get a block heater for it. I will probably do this anyway, but it started on much colder days all last year.. this is a new problem.
4) Glow plugs. I was thinking maybe they're not getting hot enough fast enough to warm up cylinder/ignite the fuel air mixture.. checked online for info. came up with several sites saying they should be resistance checked between ground and them and be between .5 and 1.2 ohms and no more than .2 ohms difference on any single one compared to the others.. so i got my meter out and measured #1 and #2 cylinder at 0.00-0.01 ohms, and cylinder #3 was at almost 3.5 ohms... (did not measure #4 because I will replace them all at once)
So at this point I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with this type of thing and if the new glow plugs will fix this or if there's other things I should check beyond getting a bigger battery/fuel filter or if glow plugs should do the trick
thanks for any tips/ideas!
im not familiar with glow plug setups but if its cold outside it can be hard to start a diesel. its very easy to run the battery down and it might/might not hit and try to start. change the glow plugs and see how it goes from there especially if they arent reading the same.