I've talked about my experience of black death on other posts, but I just wanted to very briefly share my experience on this specific thread and urge everyone to inspect under the cover...
I bought a 413 CDI with 137,000, ex-Police twin rear wheeler. I knew nothing about black death at the time, if I had I would have taken one look and walked (disappointingly) away. Having bought the van, however, I could smell fumes in the cab for a long time but didn't know where they might be coming from. I asked 2 different garages to check for exhaust leaks but they couldn't find any, so I lived with it. Eventually I could see and feel lots of black slime emanating from under the injector cover. When the cover was removed the extent of the black death was appalling. It was rock hard on top and covered the entire injector area. Amazingly, the van had been running well and showed no other symptoms apart from the smell, which none of the mechanics I asked seemed to recognize as a potential problem (inexperience I guess).
2 injectors had been leaking for an awfully long time, and as a result the the head cylinder had corroded badly and had failed, so in this case I had to have a new head cylinder fitted, at over £1500. So the moral of my story is I should have read all the threads on this forum BEFORE setting off to buy a sprinter as I would have known about common problems, such as this, to look out for.
Since fitting the new head I am having start up problems which I think are related to the old injectors which were removed from the old head cylinder and fitted in the new one - the garage only replaced one of them. Having read Dr A's advice on this subject I suspect that I should have replaced all of the other old injectors, but I didn't know that that was advisable and the garage didn't suggest it (and of course I was happy not to be forking out even more money at the time - a false economy I think that's called!). So an injector leak off test is next on the list once we have overcome the air in the fuel lines issue which is preventing fuel from reaching the low pressure pump and beyond and therefore preventing the van from starting at all at the moment (this is a separate and equally frustrating issue but not to be discussed on this particular thread).
That is my experience with black death so far. I only hope that once I have solved the starting issues, my new head cylinder and injectors will live together in perfect harmony for years and miles to come
Also spotless at 416,000
