MyE28.com

Hey everyone... Car is newish to me so I ripped into it over the past 2 weeks so with that being said I did some maintenance

Timing belt
Glowplugs
Filters
Intake manifold gasket
New relays
Accessory belts
Injector return hoses

Luckily I fixed alot of the leaks and electrical issues !!! BUT it runs like a smoky turd with no power... Any ideas on where to start? I did try to see if my in tank fuel pump is working.. with the key on and the bleed screw out I CANNOT see any fuel..is that where I should start? Should I try to preform ratio adjustments on the IP before replacing the fuel pump?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!!..I feel I can see the light at the end of the tunnel before I can start driving this bad boy lol

Did you time the injection pump correctly? I think the procedure somewhere at the top of this has some incorrect wording about exactly how its supposed to be done. The way you're supposed to do it is find the lowest point on the dial indicator, zero it, then bring it up TDC, then adjust the pump to whatever the number is. I think the writeup on here says to find the highest point, zero it, then go from there. That will get you pump timing thats nowhere near correct.

Don't touch any adjustments on the pump before knowing the timing is correct.

I have a feeling my timing is indeed off.... I did find that my intake pump is not working

intake pump? The vacuum pump under the cam cover? If thats not working the boost compensator doesn't act right. The lower hose on the boost compensator goes to vacuum, the upper goes to manifold pressure. With no vacuum it probably isn't going to move down and add fuel under boost. It shouldn't make it smoke but it makes for low power. Thats actually how the altitude compensator works. It bleeds off some of the vacuum so the diaphragm doesn't move as much and less fuel gets added under boost. Major vacuum leaks will cause similar problems.

Another thing that happened to me once that resulted in smoke and no power was the clip that holds the wastegate actuator arm on the waste gate itself fell off, the actuator popped off and the gate just hung open so it couldn't make any pressure.

timing procedure is here

http://e28-535i.com/524td/2.4L%20Diesel ... rtment.pdf

pg 31 in the PDF. If you have the non-electronic pump, the timing setting is a footnote on pg 32. Not sure if BMW specified something different but its probably not going to be grossly different. If its not at least somewhere in the neighborhood of spec, fix that and the vacuum system and see what that gets you.

Crap I meant *in tank* fuel pump lol... I fixed the pump btw... It seems they cut the wires for some reason but after rewiring it works like a charm... Still having hard starting and grey smoke.

I'm getting a vibe this car was owned by a older person and took it to a mechanic who wasnt the greatest....

ITS ALIVE !!!! FULL POWER AND NO SMOKE! injector pump was indeed out of time about 3 tooth clockwise... Starts up super quick and smooth with no smoke!

Cool. Yeah the timing is very important if you want it to work decently.

It literally starts up quicker than my 08 cummins now haha