WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT! AND I REPEAT DO NOT REMOVE THE TIMING COVER UNLESS YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING!
I don't recommend takingg the timing cover off unless you know exactly what to do, if you remve it incorrectly or don't reinstall it right you run the risk of having you engine enter a runaway state and if that happens you will have to replace your motor. If she will run, take her to the closest reputable diesel shop and have them time it. If it were me I'd rather spend a lil money on the shop timing it rather then a few thousand replacing the whole motor.

ok will see if i can get it in there without anything happening to it on the way

hey man I hope your not going into that yet? The first thing to do is pull the glow plugs out and remove the rocker arms on that side. use a rubber tip blow nozzle and blow air into the cylinder. It will come out somewhere.

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that is the best way to do a compression check. I am doing a head gasket on a friends truck right now with the same symptoms. Also You didn't say whether or not it was smoking? if so what color?White?Grey?Blue?Black? Any Loss of antifreeze or oil? Any large amounts of oil in turbo hoses? Loosen lines on the suspected missing cylinders to confirm which is missing.

i just had one come threw, had knock on left bank. checked bearings, all good. head checked good. ended up being a wrist pin that had a little play and was allowing pistion to move.

DOES ANYONE KNOW SPECIFICALLY HEAD BLT TORQUE SPECS FOR 6.5 CHEVY????:tttt::argh:

try in the chevy forum.

or it could be a possible injector issues i had a injector that was clogged and i had a noise that sounded like the motor was knockin if its still runin start it and feel each line if its an injector the injector line is going to be warmer than all the others atleast thats what i had but my truck also blew white smoke like he11 so hopefully thats all it is thats an easy fix