Tantalisingly close to the first major milestone for my old DB-880. First step has always been to get the engine running before I spend time and money on niceties like an exhaust, new clutch and cleaning/painting.
The first challenge was to get the air out of the injector pump, after about an hour of frustration I had the daft idea that maybe I hadn't put enough diesel in the tank (not helped by the fact that half of it was now on the barn floor). Sure enough, added anough 10Litres to the tank and had the pump bled in no time.
Next step, again with the help of the 2 batteries in the Land Rover was to get diesel to the injectors. Again this proved a challenge until we realised that logically you had to hold the stop knob out for the engine to run.... Bizarre, it maybe does have some kind of hold out mechanism but it seems very flimsy and liable to pop back in at the slightest hint of vibration, think I'll try a temporary solution of a few clothes pegs next time...... Finally we had everything we needed to start the engine, now looking amazingly complete....
It did try, but then some idiot who didn't know what he was doing took the injectors apart without knowing how they were adjusted. They were pretty mucky so I am glad I (cough) did it I just wished I'd counted how many turns I unscrewed spring retainer.
So, the same idiot will be delivering the injectors to a Diesel specialist so they can be set up for the correct pressures tommorrow. Hope they won't take too long, would be good to try starting it again at the weekend in the daylight so that, if needs be we can tow start it behind the other tractor....