By all means, now that you have blown out one of your plugs and have to replace it anyway, get the conversion kit to the 12v glow plugs that are wired in parallel as you expected them to be.
You will love the improvement. I converted both my 74 and 75 to the pencil type back in the early 80's.
Ok, ok, I don't own a diesel anymore, but I put a kazillion miles on the 3 I had!
