So I finally made it to Calgary!
The journey was rather harrowing, but I think I made the right decision to leave when I did and beat the snow on the Coquihalla. It was scary enough as it was! To get all my stuff to Calgary, I had to pack every square inch of the space whale, and it turns out my suspension is worn out enough that it couldn't really handle such a load, so I was all but riding on my rear axles. I got past the Coquihalla the day before the snow and I ended up stopping to sleep in Kamloops. Fortunately, I found a hotel with a heated & ventilated garage, so I was able to get started with minimal troubles the next day.
Needless to say, driving so loaded down with such sag and with ~100 HP was nerve racking.
The throttle knob should be attached to the other end end of this cable, on the bottom edge of the dash to the right of the steering wheel.
ahh I found it. The knob has been removed from mine. Anyways the problem has been solved (at least the idling aspect of the problem (
vide infra)).
@gannex From what I saw in person, and what I'm seeing now, I think your truck has a lot of previous owner incurred problems. It's going to take time/effort/money to work through everything and put the truck back to OEM, never minds start modifying and improving it.
One cardinal rule, is only work on one thing at a time, and then drive the truck for a while before moving onto the next problem. If you do too many things at once, and have a problem, you won't know what job caused the issue.
I'm wondering if your truck is basically running on three cylinders right now. Try loosening one injection line at a time (essentially disabling that cylinder) to hone in on what cylinder is the issue. Be sure to protect yourself from high pressure diesel spray. Wrap the joint in a rag and use a face shield. Maybe this is best left to a mechanic on second thought.
Taking your truck to EBI at this point is a good idea. Fill them in on the history of all the little issues that it has. Ask about the ATEB mechanics and see if they can work on it. They have tons of experience with these motors. John Voo was one of them I think? They were brothers.
I ended up taking the truck to EBI. Steve certainly knows what he's talking about when it comes to these vehicles. It turns out the problem was the diesel primer. He was also able to fix my steering play. It turns out it was the panhard bar bushings. All in all, they got the vehicle to the point where I could actually drive it to Calgary, but I've still got quite bad start up issues, probably in large part due to the glowplug.
Steve says he thinks it is starting on 3 cylinders, which I guess makes sense, and explains the diesel fumes coming out the back on startup.
On another note, I have finally got the truck to a garage. This was the only reasonably situated, non-basement studio apartment I could find with a private garage (aparently that's quite a tall order in Calgary). The garage is not heated, but the landlord improved the insulation for me, so in principle I could heat it with an area heater occasionally. As you'll see though, the only problem is that the ceiling is pretty small for such a tall vehicle. It has a good 6"+ of clearance from the ceiling, but less than 2" of clearance going through the door, so I won't be able to have a roof rack in the winter. Another consideration I am thinking about is re-doing the suspension. It's certainly not my priority, but I would like to re-do the suspension sometime this year, and I figure it's already sagged, so even without significant lift, I don't think it'll fit through the doorway of my garage. I wonder if there is any kind of adjustable lift I could do, so I could have it ride higher (and maybe on bigger tires) in the summer (when it sits outside), but lower it and put it on smaller snow tires in the winter (when it sits in the garage). I wonder if it would be worth installing air suspension on an LJ78...
So the truck is safe and sound now, but as of right now, I am unable to start it up. It starts pretty happily at 15-20C, and it will start at 5C (Vancouver temperatures, this time of year) with a lot of white smoke, but it's been well below frozen here, and even heating up the garage to 0C, and it won't start. I was going to install an oil pan heater, but it turns out the one I bought (250 W) was too large for the tiny 2LTE oil pan, so I've got to return it and get a smaller one (maybe 125 W). I'm thinking of adding an inline engine coolant heater. One thing I'm thinking about, though, is remote cold starting, where I don't have access to a plug. It might be nice to get a diesel fired coolant heater. I'm going to look into that...
I think another part of the problem is that the glowplugs are not coming on for long enough, so I'm also thinking of putting a manual switch on the glowplug relay, as some others here have done. I'm going to make an attempt at finally removing that glowplug sometime in the next couple of days.
