My Compression Test Results

[82vdub]

Just to put a close on this thread and issue, I got the motor all installed last night at 10pm. I decided to try to get it to fire last night, but was unsuccessful. This morning I tried it again, no go. I cranked over much faster (I lubed the starter bushing and cleaned the battery terminals) so I was thinking that I messed up my valve adjustment and was getting low compression, or the IP timing was off.

Pulled out an injector on the cylinder I had to go with really thin shims for the valves and had great compression. While the injector was out, I could see the glow chamber was wet with fuel and so was the glow plug. So, I turned the key on to find that the glow plug wasn't lighting. This shouldn't stop it from starting as the garage is heated and it should have started like summer. Anyways, one of the positive wire connections on the positive battery terminal wasn't making a connection to the glow plug wire line, so I fixed that and got the glow plugs to glow.

Pulled the timing cover back off, set crank to TDC, IP and cam were right on. Was thinking that this thing just has to run, it's set right. I put the injector lines back on and tried to start, but no go.

I know everyone says to not use starter fluid (which I agree), but I gave a shot into the air filter and went to crank. My idea was that the cylinders may have so much fuel in them that it's essentially flooded (if you can do that to a diesel). Anyways, after firing the starter fluid into the air filter, I cranked it and got a cylinder to fire. Of course, the cylinder knocked pretty loud when I did that. I think I cranked it over once more and got it to pop on a cylinder again. Then, I pulled out the air filter as I didn't want any more starter fluid to be injected into the engine. The thought was that if I could get it to run on a cylinder or two, the others would eventually fire like normal.

Cranked over the engine and got it to catch and run. Ran pretty good. Climbed out to see an injector line leaking pretty bad, so I had to fix that.

Now for the "bonehead of the year" nomination event, I found out why my injector line was leaking so bad. The guy doing all the work (that's me) can't figure out that the "out" banjo fuel fitting is for the return line, not the fuel supply line. Yep, of all the stupid things you could screw up, I did this (I have an electric fuel pump in my fuel supply line, so that's probably why it ran and probably why it didn't want to start).

Anyways, fixed that issue and the car runs like a top. Should be good for another 300K miles!

Just wanted to post this in case others find themselves in my situation and they may have a post to give them some thoughts and assistance.

Now, if I could only get the old 2N to start. It's snowing and I don't want to shovel by hand..............

[nicknack2]

How do you mesure compression strokes???

[82vdub]

Not sure if this is what you're asking, but to measure the compression on a cylinder, you install a compression gauge and crank the engine until the gauge does not go any higher. Is that what you were asking?

[nicknack2]

I'm not sure, on the first post it was said that the test was taken after 5 compresion strokes and Im not sure(actually I dont know how) how can you measure the compression strokes..

[82vdub]

Ok, I think I understand what you're asking. When I did the test and tested what compression reading the gauge had after 5 compression strokes, I cranked the engine until the gauge needle moved up 5 times then let go of the key. That was a total of 5 compression strokes to the engine, or 10 complete rotations of the engine.