Does it say "Dursley England" on it anywhere? Then it is a Lister. "Listeroid" is the term used to describe a clone not originally made by Lister in Dursley England.
When you say "primed" what exactly do you mean? The symptom you describe(little puff of smoke) sounds like not enough fuel is being injected. This can be caused by a few things.
1. There is still a little air in the high pressure line between injector pump and injector. All the air needs to be bled out of this line. the injector fires by hydraulic pressure from the pump. That is why the line from pump to injector is steel as it must resist flex/expansion under pressure. The pump makes pressure as it strokes. Once the pressure rises above the popet release point in the injector, the injector fires and sprays untill the pressure from the pump drops below the injector reset point near the end of the pump stroke. If there is air in this line, it will compress and absorb/delay the pressure buildup from the pump just like a spring being compressed. This will delay the opening of the injector(or inhibit it completely) and reduce the spray duration and fuel delivered for a given rack position.
2. Rack(throttle) closed. Throttle position should be at a high setting to insure high fuel delivery at start, quicky reduced by hand or governor to prevent engine overspeed.
3. Fuel pump worn. Insufficient pressure/duration would be like having air in the HP line.
4. Injector worn or dirty and not delivering a fine atomizing mist spray into the cylinder. The compression temperature ignites an air/fuel mix. If it is just dumping the fuel into the cylinder, it is not mixing very well and will have a hard time igniting(same slobber symptoms as #6 below though).
5. Injector timing could be off. If not at the right time, it won't fire correctly(same slober as #6).
6. low compression. A cold combustion temperature caused by low compression could contribute to a failure to start and only make a little smoke. But where there is smoke there is usually fire so if this was from low compression, you would also start seeing unburnt fuel slobbering out the exhaust after you try and start it repeatedly. If you are delivering adequate fuel for start and it is not being burnt, it will find it's way out the exhaust and down past the rings into the motor oil.
Given that you see smoke, I would work on fuel delivery first. There should be a fitting where the HP line attaches to the injector. Loosening this with a rag underneath while you crank the engine/stroke the pump at full rack/throttle should purge most all the air from pump and HP line. It shoud also be relatively easy to pull the injector from the head, attach it to it's fuel line(purge air) and get it to spray outside the engine to observe the spray pattern(or lack of). If you have a good visible mark on the flywheel to mark TDC, you may also be able to gauge the spray timing to the piston position. It should occur before TDC so the spray is spread out and mixed with the air prior to the internal compression temp reaching it's peak.
Ron
