Possible cure for smoking?

[jsgraham]

Hello fellow Merc fans! 2000 240EFI Islandia smokes like a chimney, with rough idle. But I think I found the culprit! Looks like the oil rod is hanging up on the VST.. if my thinking is correct, it would then be running oil in at 50:1 ALL THE TIME. Wanted to ask a couple of you if my assessment makes sense be for I break out the victory cigar. See attached picture. Looks like I need to put a couple washers behind the VST mount to clear interference. No matter where throttle was set, rod end was in this position. A small bang on the VST, and she snapped back down..

 

[Dr Honda]

Well..... something a'nt right there. Before shimming up the tank... you need to figure out why they are touching. They are close, but on my engine, there's plenty of clearance.

 

[jsgraham]

Thanks for the advice Doc. Better to FIX it than work around something. If I didn't know better, I think the rod ball mount part was installed 180 off. I noticed that I can't make the alignment marks line up, and I did a stare and compare with some of your pictures, along with the alignment procedure in the manual.

Now to figure out how to make it right if this seems wonky to you.

Maybe I was lucky that the pump was sticking open, as I can see NO WAY that the adjustment could be correct!
Thoughts??

 

[jsgraham]

Has another thought as I am looking at it, if it were taken apart previously, could they have rotated the mount 180 clockwise before reattach the rod? Not sure if it preloaded on the spring?

 

[Dr Honda]

The pump arm can spin around. It's a cam design. And... yes... if it's 180 out... it will PUKE smoke.

Pop the link, roll the arm over... and align the marks at idle.

 

[jsgraham]

not to be a pain, but would you rotate CW or CCW. Don't want to take chances . Maybe i'll get lucky and the marks will be aligned perfectly when i flip it! Thanks again Doc.

 

[Dr Honda]

Doesn't mater really. But I would go the direction, where you are loading the spring. (make sure it's hooked correctly)

 

[jsgraham]

Popped it off, rotated the arm against the spring, it wanted to rotate back CCW, I assume as a fail safe if the linkage were to disconnect. LOOK what I can see!!

I'm sure that I can tweak it in the morning!

If you ever get over to SW Wisconsin, I owe ya a couple cold ones...[emoji482]

 

[Dr Honda]

Glad I could help.


But I guess the real question is... what was being worked on when that got flipped? You may want to dig around a little an make sure other things are hooked up, and screws are tight.