Ford diesel van engine timing.

Did you check that none of the valves was sticking? Possible they could have touched a piston when the belt broke.

replaced two valves, ground in and gap set right

Andy

Fair enough.

garage mechanic brother installed wrong one). And I have

an effort to start and the idle is a bit erratic. I haven

TDC or to a few degrees off TDC, as I used a dial gauge

What vehicle / engine?

If it's a 1.8d, I'm pretty sure that the timing is held at tdc. What do you mean by it takes quite an effort to start and erratic idle?

Moray

garage mechanic brother installed wrong one). And I have

an effort to start and the idle is a bit erratic. I haven

TDC or to a few degrees off TDC, as I used a dial gauge

It might help if you said which engine!

If its a transit, they are a piece of cake to set, 6mm drill in the hole in the pump pulley, 8 mm drill in the hole on the camshaft pulley, and 12 mm drill in the hole in the flywheel (just below the starter)

The message from "SimonJ" contains these words:

Depends which Transit diesel!

seconds until it catches with a little pressure on the

to cut out (whole engine shuddering) then it increases

Sounds like the timing is out. The timing pins IIRC set it to the firing point, which will be a few degrees BTDC.

After spending another day working on this I have a question will an engine work if the injection pump is 180 degrees out?

The reason being is that I have set this up with the pump timing hole at 6 o'clock (I seem to remember this from a previous ford engine) but the leaflet that came with the timing set I bought today says 12 o'clock.

Andy

engine work if the injection pump is 180 degrees out?

o'clock (I seem to remember this from a previous ford

diesels won't run 180 degrees out. do it as the kit says and you have half a chance. however , since you have already run it with the timing out there may be some damage done already.

the crank is rotated till it hits the stop pin, the pump timing hole is at 11 oclock, the cam at 9 oclock

The pump timing should be accurately set after all the rest is done. However, usually, unless the pump has been disturbed it will be quite accurate enough just using the pins.

mrcheerful

just got in from test drive after moving pump sprocket 180 degrees and engine running sweet as a nut. I still cannot figure how it was working when

Andy

Ok, it will have injected the fuel after the exhaust stroke, and before the inlet stroke. The fuel will be in the cylinder during the inlet stroke, and will get pretty well atomised by the turbulence of the air coming in. During the compression stroke, the fuel will ignite as soon as the mixture reaches ignition temperature, probably a little before the injection point, but not early enough to cause the engine to stop dead, or to go backwards, then the combustion stroke will take place as normal.

good theory, obviously works in practice too!!

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Andrew Carr" saying something like:

The proper way of things....

Suck/squeeze/injection/bang/blow

The way yours was...

injection/Suck/squeeze/bang/blow

Since the injection pump was pushing fuel in at the end of the exhaust stroke/beginning of the intake stroke, the fuel was hanging around in the cylinder just waiting to compression ignite (as all good diesels do).

I'm amazed it ran at all, but there y'go.