Mercedes w210 e320 cdi glow plug replacement

This Mercedes e class w210 e320 cdi has been my best friend for many years. A powerful, spacious and comfortable car that requires very little driver input. Incredibly reliable until the recent cold weather, after failing to start on a cold morning I took it to my local garage for tests. The battery tested favourably (however I will be ordering a replacement as the battery is now three years old), diagnostics found fault with the glow plug relay and possibly the glow plugs. A new glow plug relay was £168 (I live in Birmingham UK and no, I have no strong affinity with this locale, I will ultimately move to the coast) I bought a glow plug relay on ebay for £35, diagnostics were £25, the glow plug relay was a nice easy replacement. I was reluctant to replace the glow plugs myself after reading posts on the Mercedes forums about glow plugs snapping upon removal, my local garage warned me about this also, but they could not fit me in for ten days or so. Euro car parts were quoting cheapest glow plugs @ £72 for six but, car spares ltd supplied me with “volt” brand for £38 (which seem to be flawless). Extremely cautiously I undertook the work myself. The biggest hurdle was the extent that the steel glow plugs were seized into the alloy engine block, I tackled this with copious amounts of “plus gas” (a dismantling lubricant) and good old WD40, this did drain into the chambers when the plugs were removed, and when the engine was started, blue smoke was visible for the first few minutes however the engine didn’t seem to mind. The next biggest hurdle was access to the glow plugs, most of them are fairly well obscured; I used needle nose mole grips to detach the electrical connectors when I couldn’t get my fingers to them, although I did break the plastic housing of one connector. (it still connected fine without this housing) I didn’t have a ratchet slender enough to remove the plugs so, ended up using a 10mm tubular spanner and turning this with a larger tubular spanner. Some of the plugs felt and sounded seized, and I was very wary of breaking them. No.3 glow plug is obstructed by an (unknown to me) device so, I couldn’t get access and No.4 glow plug just rotated forever without enabling me to extract it so, I elected to screw it back in. It looked for a moment that I would be able to change all six so, I was disappointed when I only managed to change four (I was also suffering from a flu that was making my body ache all over-it was a tough four hours, other posts talked of doing this in 15mins lol!) I used a star T30 drive to remove the engine covers and put 3in1 oil on the threads of the new glow plugs although I suspect this will be the car’s last set of glow plugs.
So, I only changed four out of the six glow plugs and have no way of knowing how well or not, the other two old plugs are functioning but, the engine now starts fantastically in the cold and, I’ll take this as a success. Hope this is useful to somebody else. This was my first youtube video, my daughter is a youtuber, she was home on half term break, I was off work with flu so, we thought we’d film it.
Thanks for watching, best wishes Charlie.

Видео Mercedes w210 e320 cdi glow plug replacement канала Charles Sutherland