Cold Temperature Starting

jd,

Haven't been in the snow, but have had dramas starting diesels in cold weather.

How much "normal" diesel was in the tanks when you filled with Alpine dsl? My thoughts are that there is enough of the normal stuff in the mix to thicken, if not slightly wax, the fuel.

Re glow plugs, we used to turn ign on & off repeatedly to get the lugs as hot as possible. They also stay on for some seconds after starting too....."after-glow" I think it's called. Ha ha.

What you could try, jd, is too boil a jug, or saucepan of hot water, and pour this over the injector lines and injectors immediately before starting. Should help as it's the only way I've ever got a Cat grader going, in icy conditions.

Hey, you haven't seen any yellow snow up there, eh?

Bob.

There are two things you can do.
1.
If near 240 volts ac, you can use a hairdryer to flow hot air into either the air cleaner intake OR take out the aircleaner and squirt the hot air straight into the intake leading to the turbo and start it. This does two things, It heats the air to help diesel ignition and also heats the walls of the intake which robs some heat from the intake air.
2.
Not sure if you have flat panel airfilter or round unit, can't remember.
In either type of airbox, place a small metal lid with a few cc's of metho in the lid, light it and start engine with the engine drawing in the heated air from the small flame.
After the engine has warmed up a little, 30 sec- 1 min, stop, refit air cleaner, start and continue.

The heated air would always start Cat graders, Perkins and other engines and prevented stuffing up the starter and battery charge.

Don't let anything solid get sucked into the turbo will you.

Glow plugs have a habit of failing. You could have one or a couple fail and you would not notice this hapening in the warm weather. It would not hurt to have them checked.

This is why the old Landy Series 3 diesel used to have an 'Arctic Start'.But if left on too long the battery soon became weak.