Yes now O remember: Glow Bee's needed 2 to 3 volts and strong fresh batteries, and as you say totally incompatible with most others .
I wonder why adapters to standard glow plugs cause loss of power ? perhaps the standard glow plug has to much surface area and cools to quickly or has to much volume inside?
These questions about volume bring me to the though of taking a head and making it compression tunable by drilling through the thickest part and placing a fine threaded screw in so volume compression could be fine tuned on the fly, with today's flexible anaerobic sealants this could be done with no loss past the treads.Though usually not adjustable this sort of compression release is somewhat common on high compression two cycle engines for easier starting.
And yes that ball and socket wrist pin takes quite a beating . they get to running poorly when it gets loose, I've reset a few over the years with that special tool.