Originally Posted By: sdowney717
I had 2 of these monstrosities.
A 1983 Deltas 88 and a 1985 Buick wagon.
Transmission on both cars failed and needed rebuilding.
Glow plugs burned out and would get stuck in the heads and the tips break off.
The really awful aluminum rocker arm retainers, they wore out fast.
The heavy oil leaks, these engines leaked lots of engine oil and diesel's engine oil is always nastier and blacker and harder to clean up.
Personally never seen such [censored] things that GM did as they did with those engines.
The first one starter had constant problems, wore out and underpowered. It was just a gas engine starter bolted on. Sucked down the twin batteries quickly.
Engine a major oil burner, eventually compression dropped so low it was too hard to start. And injection pump failures. Serious trouble is you change the filter or let it run out of fuel. I think both had issues with water in the fuel, small amounts will destroy the injection system. I can remember taking the cover off the pumps and seeing rusted parts.
The 1985 used an electric pump and gear reduction starter, so an improvement. The 1985 broke head bolts, constantly pumped combustion air into the water jackets. I pulled heads and had them flattened. It still broke head bolts. Finally snapped the crank in half on the highway. It was so funny to see the starter crank the motor and the front pulley did not turn.
Only reason I bought them was they got better MPG and I was interested in diesels.
GM hoodwinked everyone, the cars had a $1000 higher price than the gas ones, and the resale was like scrap value.
I think GM really used the 350 as a light-duty diesel "test", with the customer paying the price. The crank snapping problem was NEVER eliminated until recent history when Peninsular started making a forged crank for the 6.2/6.5-seen many a low mileage 6.5 TD with one (along with cracked blocks & heads, blown HG due to the weak bolts & poor coolant flow).
