While I was looking for some guidance to trouble shoot the post shutdown I am facing I found a video on engine "blow by". What does it mean when you do have a lot of blow by. When you can actually see fog like ftuff coming out of the oil filler cap.

Your engine probably only has 200 to 300 thousand miles left of life in it .

As long as it starts enjoy it.

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Experience : what you receive 3 seconds after you really needed it !!



86 300SDL 387,000? Motor committed suicide
81 300SD 214,000 "new" 132,000 motor
83 300SD 212,000 parts car
83 300SD 147,000

91 F700 5.9 cummins 5spd eaton 298,000
66 AMC rambler American 2dr auto 108,000
95 Chevy 3/4 ton auto 160,000
03 Toyota 4runner 180,000 wifes

Blow by is short for combustion gases that leak past or 'blow by' the piston rings. It means you're not getting the full benefit of combustion with the effect of reduced compression. If the rings can't keep gases within the combustion chamber, they're probably don't doing a good job keeping engine oil out. As the situation gets worse, you'll have less power and it'll get more difficult to start the engine when cold.

As advised, enjoy it until you don't enjoy it anymore

Sixto
87 300D

2 things might help reduce Blow-by depending on the cause.
Putting Marvel Mystery Oil in the Cylinders throgugh the Glow Plug or Injector holes and letting it soak for a week or so in hopes of freeing up sticking Piston Rings.
There are some threads on that and other Chemicals Members have used.
After any of them you should change you Engine Oil.
Related to the above; some claim using synthetic Oil does the same but it takes several 100 miles.
The Marvel M Oil is cheap and safe.

Another source of Blow-by is too much clearance around the Exhast Valve Stems and/or worn out Valve Stem Seals. Even the nice German ones are in the $20-$25 range. However, the is some work to change them.

No one has mentioned this but if you have a Turbo I believe Exhaust Gas getting past a worn Exhaust Turbine Seal can also cause Blow-by.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

Thank you for all the great inputs. I knew when I got this car, judging from the owner the car has not been taken care of and it will need lots of TLC for it to survive and last a little longer. I am hoping the the theory of HHO being induce will eliminate the carbor build up will do this engine good.

I've not rebuilt an engine of this magnitude so I will do my home work and keep it alive in the mean time. As far, as power loss. Well here's that HHO benefit everyone does not believe, this car has plenty of power.

Put it into perspective for you,

My car has 350,015 miles on it (rolled last night ). When I take the oil cap off and leave it on top of the valve cover, the cap doesn't dance around or fly off. It just sits there.

I have very little blowby in my engine. All engines are different, but if your engine looks like a steam train when you take the cap off I wouldn't worry too much about it if the car starts and runs happily.

__________________
-Typos courtesy of my mobile phone.

As long as you keep a gallon of motor oil in the trunk and check the dip stick FREQENTLY!!!

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1984 Mercedes Euro 300D NA
1997 Ford F-350 Powerstroke Turbo Diesel

No kidding. My 240D has got worn out (probably) rings, or something equally difficult to manage. If I drive small local 45mph trips, I don't have as much of an oil consumption problems. But any time I'm running interstate at 70 (which is probably literally what that car has done 95% of the last 3 months) I literally have to add a quart every 200-300 miles, sometimes. It seems to vary; some trips it goes through two quarts at once, some trips it doesn't even use half of one and I don't refill until the next one... but either way, one mistake, one trip too many without checking and I'd toast the thing.

Oil cap dances and would eventually go flying off into the fan or something equally unfortunate if I didn't keep a finger on it while doing the impromptu blow by test. Oil vapor comes out when you open it while it's running.

But the silly thing starts better in the winter than my 603 which has perfectly functioning glow plugs and no appreciable blow by whatsoever. So... who knows. Besides the oil consumption, I can't tell that there's *ANY* reason to be worried about it on this specific engine. I will say as a side note that metal oil caps are for the birds. Those things are HOT when you're adding a quart mid-trip. Never thought much of the plastic one on my SDL until I had to start opening the metal one frequently. They may be stronger, better design, all the rest, when they're metal... but as far as usability they're nothing.

This 240 I'm speaking of is actually so worn out that when you've got some throttle to the thing, air seems to come OUT the air cleaner box instead of being sucked in through it. Makes it pretty loud to listen to at road speed. But thereagain... I'm running it until I can afford a rebuild which won't be for a LONG time and so far, it still seems to get the job done. The car was free, and correspondingly worn out.

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~Michael S.~
Past cars:

1986 300SDL
1987 300SDL
1982 240D
1982 300SD


Current:

1987 300SDL

I see that you keep bringing up HHO, not sure if you're trolling or just believe it but, ... you need to look into the physics of it all to understand that it takes a significant amount of HHO when your engine is sucking 350CFM of air, to make any difference, everything else is hype.

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Gone to the dark side

- Jeff

low compression will also have the car shake a bit more than usual.

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1983 300 Turbo-"Nora"
1983 240D Auto "Lucia"-slowest on earth-1st love
1985 300 Turbo-Blue Goose-slowly plucking parts

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o...ly15/mbsig.jpg

I am not going to entertain or try to explain why this process works so well on diesel engine. Yes, I've had my share of people throwing at me the theory that this should not work considering the volume of air an engine sucks in versus the amount of HHO being produce. As I said until one attempts to conduct their own experiment on the proces (building your cell) and inducing it your precious car and enjoy the advantage of it. I will keep referring to it because the is the reason why I got this car (experiment with it).

Since I am new to the diesel word specially MB and from all the info everyone is giving me this car is behaving unusual (good mileage and power) and HHO might be the contributer. My apologies but, THROLLING is not in my nature. I am passionate about this process, so passionate I am using it on a 500K Motor coach increasing mileage to 2.5 mpg.

Just entertain my question about this 1985 300SD when I am faced with problem I am not familiar with. I am not here to change your mind about it (the general public) has their blinders on this process I am not the one to widen their vision to the future of their daily commute.

A littl more on Blow_by. I pulled my Blow- Tube to the Air Filter Housing out of the rubber Elbow and put my thumb over the hole in the Elbow while the Engine was idling and up to temp.
What I found is that in about 7 seconds my Engine started to sumble and shut down. I removed my thumb and it ran fine. I tested this again with the same results.
(Note: ForcedInduction said this puts pressure on the Seals and can even blow out the seals if over done.)

One of our Members suggested that that when I plugged off the Blow-by hole that the Crankcase Pressure was pushing the Vacuum Shutoff Valve into the shutoff position; and that seems a resonable explination of why my Enagine stalled when I pluged that hole.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

Mine has had a fair amount of blowby since I bought it, but it has not increased in 100,000 miles, likely due to my anal oil change schedule. Still starts at -10F with no heater, even with 301k on it. Drive it 90+ miles a day at 75-80Mph.

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-diesel is not just a fuel, its a way of life-
'15 GLK250 Bluetec 118k - mine - (OC-123,800)
'17 Metris(VITO!) - 37k - wifes (OC-41k)
'09 Sprinter 3500 Winnebago View - 62k (OC - 67k)
'13 ML350 Bluetec - 95k - dad's (OC-98k)
'01 SL500 - 103k(km) - dad's (OC-110,000km)
'16 E400 4matic Sedan - 148k - Brothers (OC-155k)