84 300sd
setting intake 0.1mm
setting exhaust 0.35 mm
I'm no stranger to adjusting them. I've done it many times always with solid benefit to cold starts and more pep.
After meticulously going through them including using a check off chart it will hardly start after my adjustments. It will spin fast and even when you hear some combustion it won't go all the way. It will even start going and with the pedal to the floor stall out.
After I manage to coax a start out of it by plugging in and jumping with an additional battery it runs horrible for 30 to 45 seconds and I get much more white smoke than I usually have.

I pulled everything apart and went through all the valves a second time thinking that I had adjusted them too loose or set one wrong. Still no change.

Is something wrong with my feeler gauge mojo? Could I be using the wrong "feel" for how tight I should feel on the gauge.
I have always understood that its best to err on the side of too loose. My gauge can move in and out without hardly any resistance. Not enough space to wiggle though.

Could outside temps be messing the process up? It is 25f at night and 40f the times I was trying to start. The temp when I was doing the work was in the 35f to 45f neighborhood.

Is there something else that I might have knocked loose that is getting air in the fuel? Could I have changed something inadvertently in the throttle linkage arms? Do I need to re-examine how deep my foot is in the throttle pedal when I am doing a cold start?

Pulling my hair out here because the car was functional and dependable to start down below 30f before all this and I somehow have messed up a routine job.

Plugs test fine. Battery tests as 590cca (of 850) Even if the battery is a factor, jumping it off does not change the symptoms.

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84 300SD 274K
38K miles on flatplate heat exchanger and various diesel/veg blends. prior to that 4K miles on unheated veggie blends with kero and DinoD.