DieselJunkie

Monitor your battery voltage while you're cranking/or attempting to crank it over. If your batteries are reading high then it's a bad connection between batteries and starter. If voltage drops way down then bad batteries. All my dodges with 2 batteries (and or diesels) have always seemed to get a lot of corrosion on the cables, sometimes to the point that I'd have to build some new cables.

Probably. Like I said...Junkers.

From what I can tell the bad diaphragm causes hard starts and erratic idle. We run a lot of wmo on the old diesel junkers. Works fine in older mechanical fuel delivery engines and heui but the vp44 doesn't like it and after a while exhibits the hard start and erratic idle symptoms. I think it may be due to the wmo being too thick. We usually try to dilute it but sometimes not enough I guess. Still learning how to make the wmo work. The money we've saved on fuel is a lot though. Totally justifies the problems that comes with it. I put a 375 gallon tank in the back of my 99 24v, filled it up from a waste oil source without even filtering it and made a 4k mile round trip to the east coast and back from here to NM about 3 years ago. Didn't take enough fuel filters with me so paying $30 at the auto parts stores along the way was a little more painful than the $9 price we pay here on our fleet account but otherwise the trip was very low budget. I have since added a couple more large spin on filters down on the frame before the factory filter and pump and another electric pump to help push through them. The spin ons are even cheaper at about $3 each. As far as the head gasket jobs go, it varies depending on how far the customer wants to go. Most of the guys around here want to chance just replacing the gasket without sending the head out to a machine shop unless they've overheated it or other problems become evident during the head gasket job. Mostly farm trucks or guys on low budgets. About $300 in parts and about $900 labor. The price can change a lot if the customer wants to do more but we aren't aware of any failures on the ones we've done so far.

Potato po tah toe. Mine has a crack in the plastic where it seals on the inner o ring causing the accumulator to lose pressure I actually have two pumps with this same issue. I haven't disassembled the second one yet but it is showing the same symptoms as the one I did take apart.

The first time I ran across that leak there I did a little research and found that 24 valves apparently have a tendency to leak there so I started inspecting that area every time a 24 valve came in and found a few more leaking there. Mopar1973Man, While I've got your attention I was looking at an older post of yours from 2013 or 14 when you took a VP apart. I can go try to find the thread and post there but I'm looking for a source for the diaphragm on the distributor housing without buying the whole thing.

That's a leaky head gasket. I've replaced 5 or 6 in the last 2 years due to that seepage at the passenger side front of the head. Certain 24v engines are prone to leaking there.