Dieselgman, i am glad you said that the flywheel is unlikely to come loose, besides which, it is not a high revolution engine and therefore when the con rod broke, and engine stopped, the flywheel inertia would not be that great,

I have wondered about being 180 degrees out. Yesterday i went through all the markings on the flywheel  and put paint on them to highlight them, then went through each cylinder and none correspond to TDC on any cyl.  Only the marks on the gear train match up with TDC no 1.  I understand the 2:1 ratio is the other stroke up to TDC which would be the exhaust stroke before the inlet valve opens. It was a bit wet yesterday so did not go down. But today I will go down and  "give her a coat of looking at" again. I am prone to moments of great stupidity and concede I may have overlooked something very obvious, but what really bothers me is, even if the markings are out, for what ever reason, the engine has always run fine, then the con rod breaks and I replace it, but now she will not start! When I stripped her down after the failure all I found was a busted con rod and the skirt at the bottom end of no 3 cyl was a bit shattered. Nothing else appeared to be wrong. She cranks round well enough to start and the fact that the markings on the flywheel are wrong would not affect the starting/timing in any way other than If I had set up the valve clearances to correspond to the flywheel markings rather than simply looking at when they open and close. There is nothing else in the engine that I can think of that might have changed or be damaged to affect the starting.

Well 'once more unto the breech' my friends and this time I will put on my x-ray specs and make logical observations with book in hand (all ten pages complete with misprints!), make notes and report back!

Hi everyone. Am new to this forum but not so new to lister engines.  I have run a lister SR3 on  my boat for 15 years and striped it down several times. Last year I bust the connecting rod on no 3 cyl. Thought I would do a recon and replaced all 3 pistons with aftermarket ones .002 oversize, that come from India along with 3 new con rods and big end bearings. As the cylinders were a bit short of cooling fins I also bought 3x 2nd hand re bored cylinders. All fitted and reassembled with reconditioned injectors. Spent nigh on a week trying to start her but barely a pop! By the end of the week I had had enough. Stripped her down again and double checked, noticing the throttle link arm had slipped off its cam just before the fuel rack. Also checked the timing marks on the gear trains and reset the fuel pump marks on the rack. Still no start. Decided to have a go at timing the fuel pumps. Hmm, when I set no 1 piston to TDC I was finding the no 3 mark came up on the flywheel! Removed gear train cover wondering if one of the gear train keys had sheared and the gear slipped. Removed the crankshaft gear, but that was ok. The camshaft gear key way seemed fine as it lined up with the keyway on the camshaft extension. Rechecked timing marks and none correspond to the piston positions! Could it be that the flywheel is from another engine and was never remarked? Or could the flywheel have sheared its key and slipped on the crank shaft? Perhaps the sudden stoppage under load when the con rod broke caused this. In any case that should not stop it from starting unless the flywheel is spinning free which it is not. So my friends why will it not start? I know the piston rings have not fully bedded in yet. I tried fan heater, hot air gun and flame in the intake but no joy. The suggestion is that something else may have happened as a result of the con rod failure. But there is nothing else that I can think off. As I found the timing difficult to do I removed a shim from each fuel pump to see if advancing the timing helped. no luck there either! So where do I go from here??