Deutz Engine Cleaning upgrade

[woodlandfarms]

On my 1850 I have to take the side cover off the engine with two bolts to properly blow it out. I had the welder out so I cut the plate up, welded some hinges on it and but a washer on one of the bolts to act as a thumb screw and now I can easily access the oil radiator. This, along with the raised out take vent should help keep the PT running cool... Just tell me this. Who in the heck decided it was a good idea to put the engine air intake and cooling intake in the back of the tractor where all the dust can get sucked in... Dumb design..

Also, I am just learning to weld, and I found doing this that doing thick 1/2" steel is much more forgiving than this thin stuff....

[MossRoad]

Originally Posted by woodlandfarms

...Just tell me this. Who in the heck decided it was a good idea to put the engine air intake and cooling intake in the back of the tractor where all the dust can get sucked in... Dumb design..

I think these engines are meant for forklifts and such, not mowing machines where dust, chaff and dirt are so heavy. Now that they know this, you would think they would switch engines or seal the engine compartment and provide heavy filtering.

[ponytug]

Dear MR,

I'm going to stand up for the folks at Deutz here. The engines are used all over; if you are an OEM ordering engines, there are lots and lots of alternatives for the engines and cooling. I think the design improvements rest at PT, who are the final arbitrators of air source/quality, and oil cooler sizing. PT elects not to use the standard Deutz cooling cowl for some reason. The fact that a number of the PT users overheat them without additional efforts (cleaning the oil coolers/ additional fans/cooling coils) speaks for itself. Whether we're a vocal minority or speaking for the silen majority is beyond my ken.

I think Altavista's success in using a larger oil cooler fan says quite abit about what might be readily achieved, as does Charlie & Sedgewood's filter designs. As always, YMMV.

To address Carl's original point: moving the air intake up would clearly help. So would getting a consistent air flow scheme, e.g. right hot, left cool, and moving all the air in one direction. Generally speaking, a rear intake in a front mowing situation is generally a good location to miss directing large amounts of chaf into air intakes, but it doesn't reduce it to zero, as we all know. :-)

I've pushed brush out a dirt road that had me and the tractor enveloped in a clouds of dust. I'd need to add a secondary engine oil cooler to keep up with all of the dust on the cooling fins, and increase the hydraulic fan cfm, if not add a secondary cooler if I were going to do this routinely.

For the moment, I'm just blowing it out more often.

On our old Deutz tractor, the cooling assumed you would have it coated with dust, and was sized accordingly. I don't ever remember cleaning it out, but the spacing on the cooling fins might have been 3/8". When haying season hit, it was going pretty much all day, every day, mowing, raking, baling and hauling hay down dirt roads. Dust, dust, dust.

All the best,

Peter

Originally Posted by MossRoad

I think these engines are meant for forklifts and such, not mowing machines where dust, chaff and dirt are so heavy. Now that they know this, you would think they would switch engines or seal the engine compartment and provide heavy filtering.

[MossRoad]

Originally Posted by ponytug

Dear MR,

I'm going to stand up for the folks at Deutz here. ...

I wasn't talking about the folks at Deutz. They make fine engines. I was talking about the folks at Power Trac. In my opinion (which is sometimes flawed badly) this is the wrong engine for a mowing application. They should have used a liquid cooled engine with the radiator in the back. Then they should have put an oil cooler hinged onto the back of the radiator and screen behind that. My IH had this setup, but in the front, of course. After a period of mowing time I would see my temp guage start to rise. All I had to do was brush off the screen, take off a wing nut, swing the oil cooler out of the way and brush off the radiator. It took about 5 minutes and I was back at it again.

[ponytug]

I agree with you.

The Aebi has this design for the hydraulic cooler. (They use a Kubota engine.) Given the Deutz design, it wouldn't be hard to do with an off engine oil cooler.

All the best,

Peter

Originally Posted by MossRoad

I wasn't talking about the folks at Deutz. They make fine engines. I was talking about the folks at Power Trac. In my opinion (which is sometimes flawed badly) this is the wrong engine for a mowing application. They should have used a liquid cooled engine with the radiator in the back. Then they should have put an oil cooler hinged onto the back of the radiator and screen behind that. My IH had this setup, but in the front, of course. After a period of mowing time I would see my temp guage start to rise. All I had to do was brush off the screen, take off a wing nut, swing the oil cooler out of the way and brush off the radiator. It took about 5 minutes and I was back at it again.

[Bob999]

I recall that someone did some investigation and determined that Deutz makes a radiator for agricultural applications. It has larger air passages. I think the problem is that PT has provided a radiator that is designed for clean applications.