Pretty confident in or diagnosis sight unseen don’t you think? It could be many things including a pump, we have seen it in our units before. We are running 6 chippers all with JD engines, a fleet of internationals, and a couple stump grinders. We have seen some strange issues over the years, one of my personal favorites was a relay for the auto feed on one of our woodsmen’s, everything worked perfectly fine until it got really hot, then it would it would start to act up, but not all the time. When switched it was supposed to send 24volts down the line, but when it got really hot and sometimes it would only send about 10 volts. Took sticking your head on top of the engine with a voltage meter while chipping large wood to find it.
On one of our 60tx stump grinders the engine would run great to start but then start to smoke after 5 or six stumps and lose power. Turn it off and start it up same thing grind a couple stumps fine then it would smoke again. Turned out to be the high pressure fuel pump. Run enough equipment you will see just about every unlikely scenario out there.
Good advice not to run it, no since buying a new engine or a complete rebuild just because you limped the unit thru a few extra days.