I never had any luck at all with the drip method of timing. What worked for me was:

Pull the #1 injection pipe off the IP.
Pull the glow plugs, partly to reduce compression for ease of cranking the engine over by hand, but more importantly so it doesn't start....
Give it one good solid push past firing point for #1 and it'll squirt all the fuel out of the delivery valve passage, leaving a clear passage down into the DV.
Turn the engine over slowly 1.5 more rotations, then with a large breaker bar on the main crankshaft bolt, ever so slowly bump the engine forwards while watching that passage like a hawk. Stop the instant you see any movement in that passage and read the crank position off the timing cover and pointer. This may take multiple attempts to get right, as the engine takes a bit of force to get started rotating and then it rotates quite easily, making it easy to go quite a ways past the firing point. You may have better luck tapping on the end of the breaker bar with your hand, and the longer the breaker bar the better, as it increases leverage. If you miss it, it'll fill the passage with fuel again and make it impossible to see the beginning of injection. Spin the engine over two turns quickly so it'll squirt the fuel out more forcefully, clearing the passage, then try again.

Make sure you're wearing safety glasses, as you will be spraying diesel around. Also make sure you ONLY spin the engine in the correct direction. If you miss your mark, you missed your mark, continue rotating the same direction and try again.

This seems like a kludge method, but it worked well enough for me. I have one of the later IP's on my engine with the timing port, and using the above method got me dead-bang-perfect on correct timing according to the timing port.

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617 swapped Toyota Pickup, 22-24 MPG, 50k miles on swap