Urgent Help Need ---No power after W123 valve adjustment

[dailydriver]

Hi

i have had my Yellow Beast (1982 300D) for about 16000 miles now (ODO reads 149k) and i thought it was time to give it a valve adjustment. apart from a persistent fuel leak it has been running just fine. So one incentive was to hopefully rule out the valve cover gasket as the source of a persistant leak from towards the back of the engine.

Well i had never done a valve adjustment before so i did my research on this forum and started this morning when the engine was completely cold from sitting overnight. after carefully taking apart all the linkages i removed the valve cover and started with the first cylinder. the first one was tough but after that i got the hang of it and the rest of them went kind of smooth. All except the intake on the 4th cylinder were so tight that i could not get the feeler gages in. i adjusted them to where the feeler gages were rubbing just a bit when sliding in and out. 0.1mm for intake and .30mm for exhaust.

so i put everything back together and started the engine.....there was fuel squirting from one of the fuel lines to one of the injectors so i slid it back in place and no more leaks. then i noticed that i was having a hard time revving it......it wouldnt go past 1000RPM. i took it on the street in my neighborhood and the maximum it would do was 10mph and almost came to a crawl at even the slightest incline.

first i thought it had something to do with the first full tank of B100 biodiesel batch that i had filled it with last night. i have run increasingly higher concentrations of biodiesel in it before so i wasnt too convinced that that was the cause but i changed both the pre and the spin on fuel filters just to rule out the possibility of clogged fuel filters. the result.......no change....it still has trouble revving and still crawls.

i am taking the valve cover back apart to check the clearances again. the "yellow beast" is my daily driver so any and all help to get this fixed before monday morning would be greatly appreciated.

regards,

dailydriver