300TDI Diesel Fuelpump

Hallo together
Just registrated and already a question.
I just can't bleed the fuelsystem with the small lever at the fuelpump when the pump is mounted.
The lever just feels loose when I try. no matter if I turn the excenter of the camshaft from topend to down end.
The same with a new fuel pump I bought. But if I unscrew the pump and try it again the pump sucks like I expect it should do.
In a first try I made now a flange with 10mm in order to give the lever of the pump which is in contact with the excenter more play.
Well, now I could bleed the fuelsystem with the manuel lever but when I turn the engine with a ratchet on the crankshaft it seems that the camshaft excenter doesn't touch the Fuelpump properly -> no vacuum
Does anyone of you knows if there are diffrent pumps or flanges which should be mounted on my car.
The parts distibutor sees a flange but no partnumber for it.
Engine code is 2301810A, VIN Nr. SALLDHA68MA968794
Registration says 95 model
So I hope this is the right place in this forum to ask for my tricky problem and my english is although it's funny understandable enough
so far thank you for reading this and hopefully there is someone out there who can help me with informations or shows me up that I'm to stupid to mount a fuel pump and bleed the system with it .
greetings from Germany

Some model of engines do not use the spacer [flange?] the spacer is built into the crank case. You can just be unlucky when fitting the pump in that the lever ends up on the cam at max movement and will not pump by hand, turn engine a bit by hand and it works.
It is important the operating lever of the pump is on the correct side of the cam shaft. Hope this helps.

Thank you for the fast response.
Like I wrote after turning the engine / camshaft from the lowest to the highest point and every position between, there was no way to bring the fuelpump to work by hand ( mounted without my spacer).

tottot said:

It is important the operating lever of the pump is on the correct side of the cam shaft

Click to expand...

Is there any way to mount the pump in a wrong position since the two 8mm bolts force it into the right position ? Not much play within those bolts and I mounted and dismounted it quite a few times.
I will check if I can see any way to place the operating lever not properly on the camshaft

It is possible to put the pump on with the lever wrong side of cam. I have not ever done this in 50 years but some have.
Are fuel pipes mounted on correct side of pump? it is possible to have the wrong way.

I had a new pump that did actually the same. Turned out the pressed steel arm was made completely wrong, took a while to figure out what the issue was until I compared the old and the new side by side.

Have you fitted a decent quality pump or a cheaper one? I replaced the pump on my 300Tdi and used a Delphi one. I’d suggest using the same or a genuine one. It is worth the extra cost.

tottot said:

It is possible to put the pump on with the lever wrong side of cam. I have not ever done this in 50 years but some have.
Are fuel pipes mounted on correct side of pump? it is possible to have the wrong way.

Click to expand...

I will check as soon as possible about the correct mounting of the pump but so far I doupt that I put it in the wrong way since I did it several times in diffrent positions of the camshaft to figure out what the problem is.
Fuel pipes are fefinately correct. I even checked the vacuum with a pressure gauge.

Flossie said:

I had a new pump that did actually the same. Turned out the pressed steel arm was made completely wrong, took a while to figure out what the issue was until I compared the old and the new side by side

Click to expand...

The old one and the new one I bought look pretty much the same but I will have a closer look on those levers. Unfortunately the old one shows the same symptom so I don't have one where I'm sure it worked on that car.
The story was after years of parking the car wouldn't run any more properly. After all the welding on the body was done I peplaced the tank had bring the injektion pump to a bosch specialist for a overhaul job ( was inside clogged up with old diesel)
On the way to find out why the car doesn't run anymore I found out that the manual bleeding at the fuelpump lever wasn't possible. Didn't wonder to much about it and ordered a new one.
The question for me is now if the old ever worked in the way it should. No idea if this old pump was replaced once and if there was a spacer mounted when the car was new ???
Does any one knows a part number or the thickness of that spacer including gaskets ?

Knappster said:

Have you fitted a decent quality pump or a cheaper one? I replaced the pump on my 300Tdi and used a Delphi one. I’d suggest using the same or a genuine one. It is worth the extra cost.

Click to expand...

I bought a delphi fuel pump because of the very same reason .
I'm mentally strong enough to tell you finally ......shame on me, I was to dumm mounting a bloody fuelpump and beeing to stupid to understand the system but I really have to find out where the stupidity was .
I could bleed the system with a vacuum hose at the diesel filter and the car would run like years ago even with a not properly working fuel pump but I'm stubborn. To much work on the car the last years to accept this not solved problem

Is there any way to erase a typo once i posted somthing ?

There is an "edit" button at the bottom.

It is usual if the lift pump is not working for the engine to run if bled by other means. However put a load on it like going up hill and power will be well down.

I am surprised no-one has refrenced this Brit living in leftie canada

fairly well known amongst us saffers

this link sort of covers your question but he has hundreds of videos covering the 300 tdi motor


he even makes sense most of the time - the Queen's english may get trampled on occasionally

Thanks, That helps a lot. I understood now that I was way off with my guess to create a spacer starting with 10 mm in order to grind it down on a millingmachine to probably between 5-7mm.
There is way less necessary to increase the ability to use the hand lever without loosing the fuel pump performance while the engine is running.
Will play with it at the weekend and see if I leave my garage more or less satisfied.
It's going to rain anyway