Diesel Discussion? Okay, I Have Some Diesel Discussion!
 

My small tractor has been trapped under a downed shed for a few years. I got the shed down and out of the way a few months ago and got my Ford 3000 diesel tractor pulled and pushed into my shop Saturday morning.

I checked oil, coolant and drained the water separator and turned the engine by hand to ensure that it was free. I put in a battery and then turned it about three turns with the starter and it lit off like it had been running the day before.

Diesels are amazing!

Have a great day,

Every time my wife talks about getting a new car, I say"Great, lets go down to XYZ place, I saw a Mercedes diesel down there"
She always says that there are other cars besides diesels, but I just don't think so.

That diesel story may be a little different if you lived in PA.

OK I can Talk Diesel Tractors
 

Twice in the last two days my Ford 5600 Diesel flashed its generator light at me. Once for a few seconds until I turned off the key and turned it back on... it is only the charging circuit.. did not turn off the engine... then this morning it just flashed at me...any ideas what would cause that ? It was very bright when it came on yesterday.... it has not done this in the past....has spent hours since with no flashing ......

Re: Diesel Discussion? Okay, I Have Some Diesel Discussion!
 

Yes they are!! With one exception, I have every intention of keeping my fleet entirely spark-free. :)

leathermang,

That one has an alternator doesn't it? If it does, I would be suspect of the brushes being on the edge of worn out. But, from the description of your problem it sounded like a generator with a flaky connection that caused itself to repolarize after shutting off and cranking back up.

vwbuge,

I can't imagine the story being different in Pennsylvania in June, now maybe if it were January..... The coldest I've ever started this tractor has been 9 degree Fahrenheit weather, with no problem. It does, however, take starting fluid at anything below about 35 or 40.

Have a great day,

i am just curious how it would have survived our "freeze-thaw" cycle. Last few years it is frequent to get down to -10 F and in the summer (like today) 80 F

First Post!

Ohtooman,

I'm not sure which is worse. My wife refuses to surrender the '87 for a while just so I can do some repairs on it, and now she wants the soon-to-be-released $67,000 Mercedes Diesel. At least it got her off that passat TDi kick....


:)

-Neil

GM 4-53 Diesel Discussion
 

...or how about Dad's marinized 4-53 that was leaking coolant out from underneath the liners and into the crankcase so bad that at one point it was increasing the liquid volume of the lube oil at the rate of a quart per hour of operation. We carried a five gallon jug of fresh water to replenish the coolant while trying to get home from that trip.

The lube oil looked like a mocha latte from Starbucks but the damned engine never missed a beat and after fixing the coolant leak, had exactly the same oil pressure as before and (apparently) no rod knocking either.

For some reason, it also had a switch that must have killed the field current on the alternator. You could switch it off and it would quit charging the battery...for pure diesel ops I guess. Knowing who and what I know now, I'd call that a "Moody Mode" switch.

Very glad to finally have that 4-53 (and the miserable boat that it was bolted into) out of my life...

I thought the old style Detroits were kind of neat in any size. The design is quite old, but being two cycle makes for good horsepower/torque for its weight.

What was the coolant leak, a liner o-ring?

I always thought a 4 53 would be a neat engine to put in a heavy old 4 wheel drive pickup.

Have a great day,

Love them Screamin' Jimmys. I work on two boats (volunteer work); one's an 82' Coast Guard cutter with two Cummins 1710 main engines and two 2-71 gensets, and the other's a 40' former admiral's gig with a 6-71 main engine. They're loud, they're noisy, but they're the simplest engines out there, and in my experience quite reliable. THe 40' flooded up to the top of the engine's valve cover once...we pumped the water out of the boat, drained the oil, put fresh oil in, and fired her right up. She ran great in spite of being immersed in the water for at least 6 hours (more like 12, probably) and still having a little bit of water in the crankcase. Ran the engine a few times, pumped that oil out, and it was almost clean and free of water. We'll need to drain the tranny again, but the engine's good to go as soon as we put oil and a filter in there. :)

I'm not really surprised that tractor started....... maybe a little surprised that it wasn't inhaling mice, acorns and whatnot, or blowing the same stuff out the exhaust.

Sounds like my beloved 6.9 F250. It sat 6 months thru the winter, and lit off in 1/2 second after glowing for 5 seconds (yes, I replaced the stock controller with a pushbutton years ago).

Love that truck--

Smart move. :) I haven't done it yet 'cause the controller's still working...when it dies, I'll put the pushbutton in (I already have the parts).

I was actually down in Watsonville yesterday, searching for boat parts (the 82's currently out of the water in Moss Landing)...

You might want to do it as a pre-emptive measure. Mine choose to go out when I was towing my 5er thru the Siskyious just as the snow was starting to fall. It fried all 8 glow plugs at once and I could hear the pistons smashing them to bits.

You never know when it will happen and the last thing you want to do is pull the heads if you don't have to.

Nate

You wanna talk Detroits? My buddy has two 8V71TI DD's in a 48' Hatteras, 1973. The original engines, never been overhauled. Hourmeters are both broke with over 4000hrs on them. You can still see crosshatching in the cylinder bores with a scope! They need injectors now but they still haul butt! Big ole' scavenging blower and two HUGE Airesearch turbos with big raw water intercoolers each. Really neat. RT

Here's how robust a diesel can be: at work two former spacecraft engineers are testing biodiesel fuels in a new engine hooked up to a hydraulic dyno. I giggle and thank the lord he invented the easy start John Deere every time I walk past that shop.

Amen to that! You're not using Autolite plugs, right? :)

What I might do is put in a cut-off switch so that the controller can cycle as normal, but I can cut power to the relay if the controller holds the plugs on for too long. I also want to put a cut-off switch in for the run solenoid on the injector pump and hide the switch, as an anti-theft measure... :)

RT, way cool :) I haven't had the opportunity to play with a turbo'ed -71 series yet...even the 12V-71's on the boats where I used to work (a tug/launch company) were naturally aspirated (still had the blower, of course, but no turbo)...

We recently had a fella turn a crane (Detroit v8 two stroke engine) over in a sludge pond at work. The only thing you could see was about 1' of the tires sticking up out of the sludge (the guy got out alive) and it is a big crane. The pond was pumped down to allow a bigger crane to lift it out of the pond and it was set upright on the bank. The mechanic removed the injectors to blow out the cylinders, changed the fluids, filled it with diesel and it started right up. It was running when it went over into the pond too. The guy that turned it over into the pond was VERY lucky.

Best one I heard I read in a Caterpillar book. Some bulldozers were left in the jungle after WWII. Many years later engineers went to find them. Put new batteries in them and they fired up! That diesel fuel was under 1600 psi and not a problem. Ernie

Screamin' Jimmys
 

Larry,
It was a liner o-ring causing the leak…that time. It was always something on that damned thing…

Yeah, those old 2-strokes are pretty interesting creatures. I think the thing I find so amazing is the variety of ways they can be configured to operate. For starters, I read in the books that came with that 4-53 that it could be set up to have the flywheel on either end and turn either direction. I’d imagine that any of the inline DDs could be done that way too.

I’ve also seen DD inlines set up to run with the cylinders near horizontal for low overhead applications.

I hated that boat but I always loved cranking that engine. It really sounded like something big was fixin' to happen…it would roll over and over and finally, about the time you thought that you’d toasted the battery, it would reluctantly start firing and run…puffing blue smoke rings out the stack and across the canal.

I wonder how many MILLION of those 4-53s and 6-71s have been built?

Cracker928, those Passat TDI's are a pretty nice car. (96-97)
They aren't terribly expensive, they're close to as big as a 300D and they get almost twice the fuel mileage. Unless you're talking about the new 132 HP Passat TDI that's coming soon. No telling what one of those would cost. You can buy an awful lot of fuel for the difference in a $2500 240D and a $30, 000 Passat.

Diesels sure are wonderful, if I get a new car is it going to be a diesel for sure. Either a W124, VW, or dodge ram 4x4 (one just turned a million miles not very long ago).

Anyway, last winter I had my 83 in front of the pole barn, 6" of snow on the ground and it was iced. So I put the benz in neutral and tried to push it out with my dad's 35hp (gasser) Massey Ferguson, amazingly something broke in the drivetrain (we theorize it was missing a cotter key and put a bad moment on it while pushing and snapped the collar clean off, I could push the benz by hand if need be). So next in the list was the john deere 25hp (gasser) with snow blower, the motor wouldn't turn. :-? So we let that one be, what was last? Case 580C Backhoe (diesel), fired right up with a little ether (sigh, no GPs) and ran like it was a nice summer day. :) I've probably ran that thing almost a thousand hours, it had 5400hrs on it when the gauge quit who knows how long ago. Gotta love diesels....

Can't let this one fade away
 

I really enjoyed reading this thread.

My grandma's Cadillac did the same thing after sitting for nearly three years.

Maybe Diesels aren't so amazing(!) as engines in general are amazing(!)

A few years back I used to run some truck-mounted soils drills. Most were gas powered, 4 cyl Ford Industrial and 6 cyl 3000 cid Ford Intrustrial. You basically ran the engine a little above idle and let the torque do all the work. NOT SO DETROITS--The one rig I had that was powered by a Detroit needed to run WOT to develop its power. Eight hours of listening to that screaming and I was ready to forget diesels forever. Thankfully, I found that not all diesels are like Detroits.

Here's a diesel story I was told:
Many years ago, up north, a mining company ordered a new, big dozer from down south, and it came by ship. Normally, a large load like this is transported from the ship to land by barge, but as the dozer was too heavy for the barge, they weren't sure what to do to get it to the land.
An old mechanic on board the ship has a solution. They attatched long pipes to the intake and exhaust, picked it up with chains or something, started it up, put it in gear, and lowered it into the water with the crane. When it hit bottom (25 ft or so), they let it go, and it chugged it's way up the shore to dry land. Someone jumps on it and shuts it off. I imagine they had to change all the fluids, however the story goes the tractor ran a long time after that.

I've wondered what they would have done it the dozer hit a big rock and wouldn't go any further.... :eek:

rear tires last... 4K miles "She'll Burn them off"
 

cracker928,

You will have to restrict her automotive news access Pronto!

Rumor has Mercedes bringing the E420 C.D.I. (Quad Cam,Twin Turbo,V-8, Direct
Injection Diesel) to North America.

My 220D sat for 18 years
 

Before I got it. I also turned it over by hand. It was a little stiff due to some rust haze in the cylinders as far as I could tell. The most suprizing thing to me was there was still pressure in the injector line I first unhooked to bleed out. So I put some fresh fuel in the tank. Some fresh cheep oil in the crankcase(I planned on running the engine about an hour and changing the oil again). And after about 8 seconds on the glow plugs. And 10 seconds of cranking. She fired up. Even though I didn't bleed the whole system. That old fuel in the lines reeked something awfull coming out the exhaust. But once she got to the fresh fuel,no problems. Love diesels.

a friend
 

used to own a concrete ready mix plant. his drivers on occasion would bring a truck back with a hole in t he crankcase and no oil. he said a jimmy was least likely to go on as if nothing happened, cummins was in the middle and usually a cat you could patch the pan fill the sump and go on as if nothing had happened.

he and the fellow who owns the large excavating co have a lot of interesting machinery stories.

the exc owner tells the story of the dump truk driver who forgot to put the bed down after unloading. he drove many miles that way, picking off power lines as he went along. and eventually had to keep down shifting because of the load of wire he was dragging. when he finally stopped it was because the front wheels were beginning to come off the ground. hmmmmmm he decided something might be wrong.

true story.

tom w

Z-Mac,

That story may not be too far from the truth. When I liven in the Middle East I saw a magazine article about a Japanese bulldozer, a Komatsu I believe, that they used to clean out small coastal harbors in Japan. It was run underwater by remote control. When I came back to the States I mentioned this to the guys where I now work. The story was met with a amount of snickering and the usual, "Well, here's another overseas story". I sent an email to Komatsu, mentioned the article, and they sent me back a picture and the story about the tractor. Of course none of the men ever appologized but I never got snickered at again.

Larry,

I have a 1960 some odd Ford 4400 tractor that I use for mowing and it is like yours in that it will start regardless of how long you let it sit. I ran it on WVO for a year or so and it never missed a beat. It has a bad habit of popping the ferrules off of the injector lines. They are easly silver soldered back on but when you are hip deep in the middle of clearing brush it is a little distracting to have limp back home on two cylinders.

whunter,

Thanks for reviving the thread.

Update- the old Ford 3000 is still going strong. I don't use it near as much as I used to but with a hay fork on the back, I used it as a fork truck to move a bunch of stuff from my old shop to my new one. I also have kept about 8 acres near the house shredded with it.

The generator has given up and I have just kept the battery charged. I thought about rigging an alternator on it, but the mechanical tach is driven off the generator. Maybe some day I'll attack the generator.

The ol' thing still starts almost immediately when turning the starter.

Have a great day and thanks,

THERE'S CARS OTHER THAN MERCEDES DIESELS?!?!?!?!
really?? you gotta be kidding, all those other things that you see on the road are not cars, they're plastic, duh :D

That sounds like my 2040, Henrietta (Deere Mannheim Werks - 1978) . Her alternator is trashed and a replacement (rebuilt, no less!!) is well over $250. But, she rolls over and starts so darned easily, I just keep the battery charger near to where she's parked and hook it up while she's resting.

I thought she'd met her match yesterday. I was trying to move an ancient, fallen mesquite out to where I could easily get the chainsaw on it. 20+ feet of 12" mesquite trunk lifted up 3-4 feet was all she could do. We tugged and yanked for several minutes, finally the offending roots were yanked loose and out it came like a terrier with a bone.

Doncha just love tractors?

No.

Thanks for your enlightening contribution to the forum.

neglected toys
 

Sometimes boats sit for years without being run. Smart owners use biobor. Dumb owners don't. The biobor treated boats usually fire right up. The dummies have their tanks purged, treated, and refilled.... then they fire right up.

I was given an '83 240D that had sat for a year. Put a battery in it and it started like it had just been run. :D

Just bought an '03 Kubota tractor with a 3 cylinder diesel. After using gasser tractors for years it's nice to have a diesel. It'll run for days on 5 gallons. Can't wait for the first big snow to give it a real test.

BTW....my Dad owns an Allis-Chalmers Wd45D. Anybody ever seen one? They seem to be ultra rare here.

Cheers,

Bill

WD45's
 

as well as WD's,WC's and later series such as D15's are real common around here.This is dairy country after all.But WD45D's are ultra rare here also.I only ever remember seeing one around here myself,and it was entered as a collector at the county fair one year.I myself own a WF.2 WC's,and a WD.Been looking for a WD45D for years to restore and use.No such luck.I don't think they ever made that many of them to begin with.Love my 220D Mercedes though.

Snow? Whassat? As best I can tell, my 2040 (3-cyl, 40 hp diesel) uses about 3/4 gal/hr when shredding (the only workout it ever really gets) .

A few years ago, my alternator went dead on my way from PA to NJ. It was just dusk, and I left my headlights on until it was light enough to turn them off, and I turned off the radio to save juice. I was able to drive approx. 70 miles to Millenium Motors in Bridgewater, NJ. but by the time I got there, I didn't even have turn signals or brake lights (used the old arm signals) I warned them that wherever I parked it, it was going to have to be pushed into a service bay. They gave me a ride to work, replaced the alternator and gave me a free battery because mine was only a year old and it was so far down they couldn't charge it. They even sent someone over to pick me up at the end of the day. That was a fine example of good customer service, and made me a lifetime believer in Diesels. This car now has just under 250K miles and I'd drive it cross country without a worry. I love diesels!!

Rick and Connie.....One day you may get a shot at my Dads' WD45D. PM me for details.....and yes, Wd45's etc. are common here too.

R Leo...My Kubota is a 22 HP. Much less fuel consumption than a 40 HP, not that 3/4 gal. is all that bad. ;) The snow came yesterday. Only it fell 4 hours from here.

Cheers,

Bill