*sigh*
I love my diesel. It's totally straight and clean and I don't care about all the time that I have and will continue to put into it. It's about to get a rebuild so I'm not really excited about spending lots of time working on this stupid starter problem that will probably go away when I have the engine out, but I would like to get the darn thing out of my friend's driveway!

So, here's what I have now:

About two weeks ago, it wouldn't start. Checked fuel guage and was pretty low down, so I went to diesel station and got more fuel. Cranked for a minute and then nothing. No clicks from solenoid so I replaced starter and had engine steam cleaned, partly to remove sludge for overhaul and partly because I was afraid the sludge was causing bad battery cable connection. This time, I still had accessory power, just no crank.

New starter works (well, worked...) great and is a revised, smaller version so car no longer sounds like a Mac Truck. Been driving it for several days and even after the steam clean (what a difference that made!) it still ran the same. No weird bugs came up. Nothing unusual or noticable even. Car started right up after being cleaned, etc.

Last night at 12:30, I got in it to come home and it started for about a half-second and then everything went completely dead. No dash lights, no interior lights, no door chime, and certainly no crank or start. Fortunately, I don't have an expensive ECU or other junk to worry about, so this should be fairly simple. Right? But, I looked all around for troubleshooting on this kind of issue and apparently it's a scarce problem. FAQ mentions a starter replacement bug where the wiring harness under the fuel distributor turns to mush and starts engaging the starter while driving, but would this also cause the whole electrical system to go "zap!"?

Oh, also another key piece of info is that the Negative cable got REALLY HOT after the car got zapped. Sounds like a short? Thanks again, you guys!

1985 745TD D24T 198,500
1995 964 B6304S 202,250