Ya' know this is the first time I'm going to agree with all the posters in this thread! On a serious note they are all correct. Is the car a bad idea? Not really if your gut feeling is accurate and the car runs well and I dont mean when its warm. Mooney is right when he states if the engine was warm walk away, a can of ether can do wonders starting a stubborn diesel... Sure it starts and drinks water after the head gasket was blown out and I doubt a repeat performance. Hows the oil? Diesel engines will blacken oil in a matter of minutes just from the residuial oil left on the surface of the head and the nooks of the oil pan. Color means nothing but is it super thick and chalky? Thats another good reason to take a walk away from the car, the tranny itself would make me leave but I dont care for automatics at all.

First question is how many miles are on the odometer?

Pop the coolant bottle cap and look inside, if it shows orange rust Im sure the head gasket blew or is already bad and straight water was run through the engine. Its not a bad thing however if the gasket was properly replaced but its an indicator of the past. Oily inside also means a blown gasket. If its filled with the orange Dex-Cool and everything else is fine plan on a new radiator and heater core. Alot of oil in the cooling bottle would indicate a blown oil to water cooler unit thats located under the oil filter. Water in the oil would also back this up.

Timing belt... Bad Bricksters! Baaaaaad! You guys forgot this one. Seriously if the belt is very tight I would suspect it was replaced recently by an inexperienced mechanic and will quickly ruin the belt itself along with the idler, front cam bearing and water pump... the other issue with this would be the crankshaft bolt itself as it MUST be torqued properly to 335-350 ft/lbs otherwise the crank pulley will spin out throwing the timing off and destroying the head and maybe a few pistons. We are talking under a milimeter of clearance between valve and piston here! If the belt is very old and the owner cant prove a receipt within say 80k miles and all else is good have it replaced. Find a run-down old Volkswagon or foreign repair shop with a gray whiskered owner to do the job. The belt must be slightly loose with around 5/8 inch play on the left side measured in the middle. Too loose the belt will jump time and crash goes the pistons.

Does the owner live near a motorway or freeway meaning a short drive to full power high speeds? That in itself will eat up a D24T in short order especially if the driver is trying to merge a short ramp. They must be driven easily while warming up and many recommend an idle warm-up before loading. The rear #5 and #6 cylinders suffer from the most wear thanks to the long length of the block and the oil pump being crank driven. The length of the pick-up tube also contributes to this but overfilling by a quart shortens the oil pressure build up alot. The turbocharged engines didn't suffer as bad as the non-turbo D24 used in the 200 cars as it uses piston cooling jets but its still an issue.

Now the car being "cheap" is subjective in itself at least in opinion. A cheap-ass cop like myself doesn't like to pay for doughnuts but a veggy-nut will pay $2000 for that car if it starts. A word of warning and I speak from experience, FORGET VEGGY OILS IN THE VOLVO D24T! First they have no fuel pump other than whats inside the injection pump and its vacuum only, try sucking oil the consistancy of 80W gear oil on a cool morning through a fuel filter with a 10 micron rating and you WILL be walking. It might start and idle but add some load and speed to the lift pump and all bets are off. Been there done that. The other issue pumps aside is you really get nothing in return after all the time you spend to convert a D24T into a veg-oil burner and your fuel economy is also going to suffer some, diesel has much more btu energy than veg-oil per unit of measure, be gallon or pounds. Right now diesel here is around $2.35/gal and with a 65 mile round trip for me I know the feeling however I cant arrest the station attendant or owner for theft as he doesnt set the wholesale prices. I dont have a take home squad so I have to pay.

Now the other side of the cheap factor and Im gonna get ugly here, can you handle the truth?

Say the car is selling for $500 and its super clean. Ok so whats wrong with it? Bad transmission? ZF tranny is going to be an expensive rebuild if its lost drive, it will reverse but even thats weak. Ok does it start? Those engines dont like to start cold with 2 glow-plugs burned out but they will if you're persistant with the starter and hold your foot no more than 1/2 way on the throttle. Does the engine spin fast while cranking and spewing out blue-white smoke? Maybe all the glow-plugs are burned out at this point or the engine has little compression. A word on this however if all the plugs are working and the engine is very low on compression it will attemt to fire with alot of racket and black sooty smelling smoke as the plugs themselves are providing the majority of combustion heat and it might even run at this point but walk away as its going to be a spendy overhaul, If you're in the Twin Cities Minneapolis area I will offer my services at a reduced rate for a fellow diesel brickster.
Ok so the car starts at this point is it clattering really loud at this point? Wait for the block to warm up and if all is well the noise will mellow out thanks to the timing advance unit on the injection pump relaxing at this point. It might take 15 minutes to build up enough heat to get the cold start device to relax but if its working this is a good thing and the idle should also drop slowly. Go back to the all plugs being bad for a moment. A good 1500 watt hair-drier blowing into the plastic inlet tube at the top of the air filter box may be enough to get the engine to fire, not always but sometimes. Got any teenagers handy? If so pull off the pressure relief valve on the front of the intake, its a black body with a rubber covered connector on the end and rubber hose leading down to the 'charger. Take it off and while exercising care insert a lit propane torch inside the hole while the teenager cranks the engine over. At least 2 or 3 cylinders will catch the heat of the torch and this might set the engine off running, WATCH OUT FOR THAT FAN as its one serious chopper in a hopper. The other thing to be careful of with the torch is you might set the oil on fire inside the intake. Its accumulated over the life of the engine and if it does start burning stuff the relief valve back into the hole if the manifold isnt very hot and that will snuff the flames, I dont recommend cranking the engine or a fire extinguisher shooting into the hole unless you plan to rebuild the engine. If you've gone through this I would test the glow-plugs and replace the bad ones, the number 5 and 6 will be the hardest and require the removal of the injection pump to replace #6 itself while #5 is a pain with the copper connection strap in the way.

Still no start or runs very poorly? Walk away and find another.

The D24 and turbo engines are big brothers to the VW 1.6L diesel found in the Jettas, Rabbits and so on, its also related to the AUDI D20 missing only one lung instead of two. Pistons are common with the turbo engines but they dont interchange with non-turbo blocks, also the turbo block in itself has machined pads and holes for the cooling jets located under the pistons themselves, they have notches cast to clear the jets at BDC. Bearings and rings will interchange along with valves but again turbo is specific to itself being different materials. Turbo injectors are 166 bar units and non turbo is 130 bar however the guts of the injectors are the same as the GMC 6.2 and 6.5 injectors meaning slight price break here. If the glow-plugs are bad and you choose to replace them they have 2 flavors, 6 volt fast glow and 11 volt slow, this one will be the fast glow and they have a habit of burning out. I converted to 11 volt slow-plugs and that was over 5 years ago now!


Now who is this Badge988 and what does he know about the 700 diesels? Hmmm hard to answer that one but so far both of my D24T engines have passed the 200K mile mark and one is currently taking on my teenage son with a learners permit. I wont be arrogant here but I know plenty yet have plenty to learn. If I have the answer its free, just excuse my rambling if you can.

988