Well how does 300k miles sound for a D24T that is getting a rebuild only because a headbolt pulled out during a retorque? Success? VERY! Longevity? Good IF you take care of it. Power? Depends on how you drive it. Metro driving? Just change the oil AND filter at 3000 miles with GOOD non synthetic oil. Synthetic oil is good for shear resistance but poor for pressure displacement not to mention it doesnt burn well in the course of normal operation.



Seriously tho the D24T was and still is a good little diesel despite the bad rap they got in the past. Efficient and strong they can and have gone well over 1/2 million miles and the ones that are left over will continue to run as long as the timing belts, oil and head gaskets are maintained. The D24 is a "tweaky" little critter in that it wants a little more attention than say a B230 but only in a simple way. They like to warm up in the mornings and drive steady state but they will do metro traffic jams and take them in stride. As long as you let the motor warm up you wont have any oiling problems. #5 and #6 wear problems were only confined to the D24 non turbo and not the turbo blocks and the reason being is the turbo blocks have piston oil jets located below the pistons to cool them when the oil pressure exceeds 45 PSI. They spray oil at the bottoms of the pistons and the splashback force feeds the walls and rings. These little buggers have an oil pump suited for a Cat 3116B and is crank driven to produce a flow rate of 6 gals/min at 30 PSI head running 2400 RPM. It is capable of cleaning out the oil sump in under 8 seconds at 3000 RPM road speed. Other little goodies include an oil cooler and larger oil filter along with the AirResearch TO3 turbo that helps improve VE during light throttle cruise.

Bad points of the D24 all engines.
Broken timing belts spell the end of the engine without exception and the same goes for improperly torqued front crankshaft bolts. These are interference engines meaning the closed valve clearance to a TDC piston is under 1.0 milimeter, these are tight little motors. Head gaskets love to blow on these guys because most people never give it a thought to retorque the bolts, if it runs who cares? Its a thick wall aluminum head with 4 bolts per circle torqued using the stretch method. Changing over to studs and machining the block for O-rings seems greatly extend the gasket life. Blow-by is another issue that seems to haunt these motors. The rings are fitted rather tightly in these motors with the top ring being a keystone shape however after many years of light load driving they will carbon up and the rings will stick. This seems to be more of a problem for the D24 because they have little fuel control and produce more smoke than the turbo motors. Turbo motors sometimes suffer from top ring coking because of heat soak from hot shutdown. Lots of oil at the top and the engine is stopped right away the iron bands of the pistons hold the heat and with the additional oil they coke up rather quickly. The cure or prevention is to idle a few mins before killing the motor to allow the cooling system to remove latent heat that is still in the iron.

The D24 and D24T are the same internally as the VW 1.6 making parts easy to find, the only diffrences are with respect to timing belts and layout. The only diffrences as far as internal parts is with pistons again, the turbo pistons have a clearance notch to make room for the cooling jets, the 1.6T shares the same pistons as the D24T and everything else is equal.

To touch on tough metro driving.
I live in the TC area and we have this animal called I-494. You can almost count on someone Fu**ing up around noon with the effects lasting well past 9PM, almost forgot to mention its universally under construction. It can take an average of 2 hours to go from say Crosstown(62) to the river bridge with an average speed of 6 MPH and this comes in peaks. Everyone has to yap on the cellphone while going nowhere fast. As a police officer I get to spend time sitting on 494 for the same amount of time when Im on shift so its not confined to just the SUV wielding morons with their Nextel stuffed up their... er well you get the idea! Off duty I still have to drive this stretch and its done in my D24T powered 760GLE, only diffrence is I dont hand out inattentive driving citations in my 760.

Anyway if you have specific questions about the D24 NA or T I will be happy to answer them.


Hang up and drive
Badge 988 for now