Further to my previous post on my 2.5 nas diesel I rebuilt the head hoping to nurse it through the winter,while I save to recon it. Just managed to start the engine and it is running on 2 maybe 3 cylinders. Is there anything obvious I should check first?

It would be a lot easier for you to recap your previous issues rather than all of us trawl through your past posts. I'm not even sure how to do that.

Col

do a compression test - the kit is about £28 on e-bay. Without that its hard to say.

I think I might just try the compression test. The problem was the valves. When I adjusted them 2 push rods could not have been sitting properly. When I checked they were miles out. Running better now will see how starting progresses, but it is smokier than ever so hoping that clears. As an aside the Payen gasket set was missing the dished washers for the injectors, luckily I had some spare. If doing it again I think I would buy a decent head gasket and the cheap head head gasket set.

Billy

You will see from my "stuck rings" thread that I learned the hard way that the compression test was the decider. in my expereince with old petrol engines you can usually get them going with very little compression and once the revs get up you can get some decent power out of a very worn engine, but if a diesel is down on compression you can't get the weak cylinder (s) to fire and it won't pick up revs. The figures i was given for older diesels were at least 250psi and no more than 50 psi difference. I had a couple over 250 but one at 100. That one had 3 out of 5 broken rings.