1988 BB Detroit Deisel 8V92 Wont Start

[mbulriss]

Just sitting here re-reading your posts and thinking to myself gas internal combustion engine needs fuel/fire/air; diesel compression based engine just fuel and air. If I read your post right, the engine fires briefly with the gas rag and ether but doesn’t stay running. Correct? You said the lines from the fuel tank to the fuel pump were checked. Was the output side of the fuel pump pressure tested? Your comment about the manual fuel primer turning soft immediately after turning engine over got me to wondering if the fuel pump is providing proper pressure. Did the mechanics check that?

As a reference, I recently went through a similar problem on the Kubota gen set engine. I know the little electric pump on the Powertech gen set immediately is pressurized when power is applied but falls off immediately when power is cut but I wouldn’t think the DD pump would fall off as quickly. Luckily for me, I never had to mess with fuel delivery issues on the DD outside of filters. But it got me wondering if you have fuel pressure. BTW, the gen set was a water level sensor in an expansion tank.