300D: Running off the diesel return line

[scraf]

Have to go rescue my 300D tomorrow, pretty sure that abandoning her on the side of the road was due to the screen filter in the tank being clogged.

While researching this, I found a very old comment somewhere, someone suggested swapping the diesel lines, therefore running the motor off the return like and bypassing the screen filter.

Seems worth a try, and has a nice sneakly element to it, or is there a fatal flaw in this plan ?

TIA

[Tony66_au]

I cant see an issue other than a lower and uncontrolled fuel pressure and as Oil burners are still fairly simple in these cars its worth a shot.

I rigged a diesel to run from a jerry can on the roof and fed the engine with a 3psi Facet pump on a 4.0 lt 6 cylinder Toyota and drove it 450 km to get out of trouble, id just be careful about possible rubbish in the fuel.

[shadetree77]

yes it will work, but your tank must be above the 1/2 mark

[scraf]

... if I may quickly say YES !

Swapped the return with the feed line, and I was up and running within a couple of minutes.

( probably had more than 1/2 a tank as it goes, will know for sure very soon )

And, Tony, was thinking more of a "siphon feed", if I'd have had to "jerry-can rig it", going into the inline filter.

Edit: For prosperity's sake, looks like the return line goes in pretty low in the tank. This might be a handy "get me home" with far less diesel in the tank than the previously mentioned half tank. Was what the original source of the idea said as well, for what it's worth.

Also, my mechanic friend mentioned that he once worked on a car and couldn't figure out after he had finished why it would only run when the tank was at least half full.