Anice little Series III was in for an MoT and service a couple of weeks ago. It was a short wheelbase hard top with the good old two and a quarter diesel engine and had started life with the fire brigade. I suspect that if you dispatched a Series III diesel to a conflagration, by the time it arrived the fire would have burned itself out. I am very fond of the old diesels but they are not exactly the fastest thing on four wheels. This one seemed to womble along happily enough at 45mph or so, but I noticed a roughness at idle, as if it was only running on three and a bit cylinders. I set about finding out why.
These old diesel engines are a bit fussier about valve clearances than you might expect, and as the vehicle was in for a major service I tackled these first using the rule of nine: turn the engine by hand until a valve
