Pouring fuel into the intake to try and start a diesel not only won't work like it does on a gasoline engine, but can easily cause serious engine damage. Diesel doesn't evaporate like gasoline does, and needs to be sprayed through an injector to be atomized enough to properly combust. Putting liquid fuel in the intake can indeed hydrolock the engine and damage internal components. The cylinder volume in a diesel at top dead center is much smaller than a comparable gasoline engine due to the compression ratio, so it takes a lot less liquid to hydrolock a diesel.Thank you AirheadNut. After the compression test, I shared the results with my friend who owns the compression kit. He told me then that his 13B showed 250 across the board just after the machine shop rebuilt it and it runs great. Perhaps the gauges are faulty or those numbers are low because he didn't have the engine warm or the engine needs a rebuild.
I did a little more research and read something about if an engine was flooded, it would wash away the oil from the cylinder walls and also give a low compression reading. Weeks ago, I was trying to start it and my primer pump was bad so I was pouring fuel into the intake. It would start but only run for a second or so because it was running out of fuel. So I poured more in until it almost hydrolocked (didn't know this could happen until I asked someone later). So perhaps that could be contribuing to the low readings. It still doesn't explain the one cylinder that was lower than the others.
Researched a little more and read that the engine should be warm. It was not. The engine is out of the truck and I have no water running to it so I can't warm it up right now. I am going to do a wet compression test and post the numbers. My understainding is that if the rings are bad, then the numbers should increase as I add oil to the cylinder. Also, I am probably be just restoring the oil that I washed away by flooding the engine.
Open to thoughts and recommendations. Thanks again.
Thanks.