The motor can live just fine without the cold start device, only will have rough and smoky starting and first few minutes of running when the weather is cold. It is much nicer to live with when the device is engaged and in working order, but won't hurt anything if it is not.
It sounds like you have some kind of major fuel system restriction or an air ingress issue. Do you have a transparent fuel line from the filter to the pump inlet? Can you see any foam or air bubbles in that line?
Another thing to watch for is to make sure that you didn't accidentally switch the IP inlet and outlet banjo bolts. The outlet bolt has much smaller orifices and a little screen in it, and says "OUT" on top of it... if you reverse them, it will cause a big restriction on the inlet side and no control of internal housing pressure on the outlet side so it will run terrible, and maybe could stall after a while I guess.
One other thing I had happen once was an injector failure that caused this kind of issue. It was on a D24T that had been running well but then sat for a couple of years. The engine would start up if you bled the lines to the injectors but would run rough, and if you shut it off, it would not restart unless you bled the lines again. If you cracked any of the injector line nuts loose while the engine was running, lots of foam would come out, like the pump was sucking air in. I couldn't find any place air was getting in upstream of the IP so I assumed leaky shaft seal and replaced IP with a known good running one -- still had same issue. Eventually I found that although all the injector unions had foamy fuel coming out when opened with engine running, #6 had way more than the others. #6 injector had stuck open, allowing engine compression to be forced backwards into the IP, filling the pump up with air. Replaced that injector and all was well. I think if I had tried to run the motor for longer than I did, it might have filled the pump up with air enough to stall it after a while, like you are describing. If you can't find other causes, this might be something to check as well.
Good luck, sounds like a neat project -- looking forward to seeing pictures of how it turns out!
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