Slow to turn over when cold, but not the battery!?

Yoz said:

Hi

I have exactly the same issue

Fully charged battery and started yesterday, came to it this morning and failed to start.
Battery has been professionally tested and it OK

I found this info on another forum

I had exactly the same symptoms on my LR discovery 300 TDi...

When it was stone cold and in winter it struggled - even with a super heavy duty battery, extra earth lead and new starter motor - to turn over first thing. But once it caught, if you killed the engine immediately and started it again it started no problems at all!

Found the fault in the end - gummed up/oily piston rings and grooves in the piston.

The rings were being forced into the cylinder wall because the grooves were all gummed up/oily which was giving too much compression when the engine was cold for the starter motor to overcome. Once ignition had occured the accumulated gunk was blown out and the compression dropped.

The problem was traced to leaking valve stem seals - when the engine was standing oil was weeping down the valve stems and where the valves on some cylinders weren't fully shut the oil was dropping into the cylinder and gumming up the rings. A change of stem seals cured the problem...and then the boot flor rotted, the shocks went..repeatedly...the head gasket went....and I sold it!

We never saw the problem as a puff of smoke when the engine first started because it was a dirty great diesel which kicked out smoke on startup that the QEII would be ashamed of...
​

690SM Hard Starting Very Slow Cranking

I hope this is not the case, I've got many of the suggestions to check first

Did you ever solve the issue ?

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Draglink said:

No-ones looked at the obvious. Diesel freezes. Your "guess" was that it was minus one. Could've been a lot colder. Forget dipping your clutch on start. ****e. Whos idea was that? Gearbox in neutral. No load on engine. Duh. Yeah. Make sure you got good earths. Forget Vaseline & Copperslip. Daft ****ers spread it all over batt terminals and it dont make a blind bit of difference. ****e. If you reckon the starters okay. Fine. You don't need a high output alternator. In fact theres no such ****ing thing. Check your fuel line and filters. Check your fuel pump, injectors & glow plugs. If the engine is turning at the correct rate it'll fire. When it gets cold, put a cup full of petrol in your tank. Keeps the diesel as a liquid in cold weather and does no damage whatsoever. In fact it does it good as when it fires it blows some of the accumulated **** out.

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Draglink said:

No-ones looked at the obvious. Diesel freezes. Your "guess" was that it was minus one. Could've been a lot colder. Forget dipping your clutch on start. ****e. Whos idea was that? Gearbox in neutral. No load on engine. Duh. Yeah. Make sure you got good earths. Forget Vaseline & Copperslip. Daft ****ers spread it all over batt terminals and it dont make a blind bit of difference. ****e. If you reckon the starters okay. Fine. You don't need a high output alternator. In fact theres no such ****ing thing. Check your fuel line and filters. Check your fuel pump, injectors & glow plugs. If the engine is turning at the correct rate it'll fire. When it gets cold, put a cup full of petrol in your tank. Keeps the diesel as a liquid in cold weather and does no damage whatsoever. In fact it does it good as when it fires it blows some of the accumulated **** out.

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Draglink said:

No-ones looked at the obvious. Diesel freezes. Your "guess" was that it was minus one. Could've been a lot colder. Forget dipping your clutch on start. ****e. Whos idea was that? Gearbox in neutral. No load on engine. Duh. Yeah. Except for the input shaft to the gearbox sitting in all that thick cold gear oil. Dipping the clutch takes all load from the gearbox off the flywheel. Costs nothing and works.

Make sure you got good earths. Forget Vaseline & Copperslip. Daft ****ers spread it all over batt terminals and it dont make a blind bit of difference. ****e. Spread on battery terminals to keep the water out and prevent corrosion not to improve electrical connection.

If you reckon the starters okay. Fine. You don't need a high output alternator. In fact theres no such ****ing thing. So a 160amp alternator compared to a standard 80amp alternator is not a high output one?

Check your fuel line and filters. Check your fuel pump, injectors & glow plugs. If the engine is turning at the correct rate it'll fire. Not necessarily, if your compression is crap it will never fire no matter how fast it turns over.

When it gets cold, put a cup full of petrol in your tank. Keeps the diesel as a liquid in cold weather and does no damage whatsoever. In fact it does it good as when it fires it blows some of the accumulated **** out. Diesel dont freeze it just goes waxy at the lowest of temps in the UK. A cupful of petrol (I suppose it depends on how big your cup is) in a tankful of diesel is next to useless. You need at least a couple of litres in a full tank. I use a 10% mix same as most old school truckers and the Scottish trawler skippers do. Never had a problem with diesel waxing even during a -34c winter in Norway.

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SuperDaz said:

Thanks for the advice but did somebody get out of bed the wrong side this morning? : )

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