Fuel Issues
I put about 15 hours on the tractor this weekend. Found a few more gremlins in the machine. I think my dad, brother and myself are beginning to be good farmtrac mechanics.
This past week I'd planned to take off Wed, Thur, Fri and Sat from work to help dad and brother do some dirt work (box blading) on some land we've been clearing. Had planned to go get a brand spankin' new MT800 box blade in Boaz at Lowery Brothers on Wed, unload and be ready to work the farmtrac the rest of the weekend. Dad had gone over Tuesday to use the farmtrac while hooked to the bushhog to cut a spot for my brother to park his gooseneck and unload his Kubota. Late Tuesday I get a call from dad saying the farmtrac had quit on him after a few rounds of bushogging. Now dad had been ribbing me a little about the farmtrac prior to this and he's been known to kid, but this time I knew he was serious. My heart sank. Anyway, he said it sounded and acted like a fuel starvation issue - about the only thing it could be with a diesel. He primed and primed and got it started and headed straight for the barn with it. Didn't know if was a one time thing or not...so plans were still on.
Wednesday we go buy a 8' heavy duty box blade at Lowery. The only one they have. Stopped in at Snead Ag Equipment and kicked some tracks on some machines. Got the box back to the farm after lunch and we unloaded it with our 175C. The farmtrac started right up! We unhooked the bush hog, hooked up the box and started doing a little box work on a small ditch by the barn. After about 15-20 minutes, the farmtrac quits again and won't start. We hooked it up to the 175C and drug the farmtrack up to the barn. We start trying to diagnose. We removed the fuel line just past the primer plunger. No fuel is coming out. We removed the fuel line up to the primer and fuel is running out at a fair rate. Looked like the primer was suspect. We disect the little Bosch primer and notice it looks good. Has a pretty strong spring inside it so the pump has to suck fuel at a pretty strong rate to get fuel to the pump. I didn't know that.
We reattached and started thinking maybe the Wix filters at 15micron were too restrictive. We took off the primary and it was extremely dirty. We went so far as to cut it into and it was pretty dirty, but not enough we thought to be restricting fuel. Remember it's just been replaced about 15 hours ago. Looked like rust in the tank. We removed the shut-off valve thinking their may be a screen there that was stopped up. No screen in this one. With flash light we saw the tank was in good shape, just a little rust in the bottom at the crease. We're wondering if someone removed a screen in the past?? So we reassemble everything and go buy new filters hoping but not confident that's the problem. The Massey Fergusson place actually had the Bosch primary filter (F002 part number). It was only $18. I got an Agco secondary even though I think the Wix was fine.
Came back, installed new filters, primed and she cranked up. Used it for a little while and it went dead again!! With a sense of dread, at this point we're thinking it's got to be in the pump. We started looking at the connectors to the front solenoid. The front one looks like it opens depending upon the intake temperature...at least that's where the wire goes to. It opened and closed intermittently when it was warm, but the tractor would run whether it was connected or not. The second solenoid was for fuel shut-off. We could remove it while running and the engine would act like it was going dead. We turned the tractor off and left the key on. The solenoid appeared to be working fine as we could hear it click anytime it came in contact. So we put it back on. With it fully seated on the terminal I wiggled it and heard it click!! I was thinking we have a bad connection! The female connector was snug going on, but once fully on it was slightly loose. Also the terminals had a bit of residual fuel on them from the cracked line. We cleaned up the connector and tightened the female terminal and snugged it on the fuel shut-off terminal and it fixed it! Never had another problem with it going dead the rest of the weekend. I was so thankful it wasn't in the pump.
