Farmpro 2425 / Jinma 254 hard starting in the winter.

[Diamondpilot]

I have the same tractor. I have a lower hose heater and it works great but the best thing I did was use a simple Ford Relay to supply power to the glow plugs and sone 8ga wire. Simply mount the relay. Run one length of wire to the positive post of the batter to one big lug on the relay (solenoid). Now take another lenght from the other big lug to the glow plug bus bar. Remove the factory wire from the bus bar and hook it up on the small lug on the Ford Relay. This will supply much more amperage. Your meter is now out of the circuit though so you will not see a drop. What I did was install a LED indicator light on the dash powered off the glow plug circuit. I have started down to -25.

Chris

 

[Diamondpilot]

One other thing. My Lower Rad hose heater will trip my barns GFI. I replaced both the heater and GFI with the same results. My electrician came over and checked it out and all is fine. He said to rest the bucket and rear grader blade on rubber so I put old tires under it and now it works fine.

For some reason the metal bucket and grader blade resting on my barns concrete floor trips the GFI.

Chris

 

[EE_Bota]

That's interesting. Usually GFI's are used for outlets where a person may have the powered device in their hands. I wonder if a hot water heater might fail for the same reason. No one ever puts a GFI on a hot water heater so far as I know, and now I suspect if they did, it might very well trip.

A clamp on meter clamped around both wires may confirm. Essentially, a GFI is just running both wires through the same current transformer window, expecting to find both current cancel each other. You had to force the currents to cancel with your rubber trick. It makes me wonder what voltage you would read to a good earth ground compared to your loader bucket.

 

[SPIKER]

GFIs are required on concrete floors on some code areas. Though like stated trip easy. I added them to my barn for safety reasons and have had a few trips usually when plugging in something.

The Relay in line works best on the Glow Plugs but something I forgot to mention was to upgrade the battery cables. I tossed my OEM Jinma maybe 4awg cables and made my own 1/0 Weld/Battery Cables. Pull off ALL of the connections clean up all the connections and even make sure the block to the Neg is good if you are bonding to the Frame and not the Eng on the Neg cable.

My tractor is a 2002 with the ORIGINAL BATTERY which was/is the China Battery which was pretty good HEAVY Lead. I keep the terminals clean and the levels up using distilled water. I also treated all of the cells with the "Battery Corrosion Inhibitor Electrolytic" stuff. I'm really happy with the chemical treatment stuff as I've not gotten 10+ years with 3+ full kills by leaving key on or short issues... Pull battery hit with high boost power, for 15 min till boil acid then 10 amp charge for couple hours then 2 amp charge till fully charged.

I also keep trickle charger on when cold...

Mark

 

[theghoul]

One other thing. My Lower Rad hose heater will trip my barns GFI. I replaced both the heater and GFI with the same results. My electrician came over and checked it out and all is fine. He said to rest the bucket and rear grader blade on rubber so I put old tires under it and now it works fine.

For some reason the metal bucket and grader blade resting on my barns concrete floor trips the GFI.

Chris

That's curious. My tractor is sitting on a concrete floor. I've never heard of that before. I usually have the rear blade attached and it's sitting on the floor. I need to look at that.

I'll check the amperage to the plugs with my trusty fluke. Worst case, I'll replace the glows and the heater. The tractor has less than 300 hrs on it, is it normal for those parts to fail so soon? Of course I don't know how it was treated before I got it.

Tommy, expect another order from me

 

[RonMar]

Well if it is tripping the GFCI, it is obviously leaking current to ground which is passing to the concrete thru the impliments. It dosn't have to be much of an imbalance to trip a GFCI. So the wiring to the heater on the tractor could be creating a circuit thru damaged insulation. When you replaced the heater, did you replace the entire wiring harness, or just the heating element? Dirt/crud moisture in an area where the wire runs along the chassis, and a hairline crack in the insolation and you have a low flow circuit to chassis ground...

Another thought is the heating element is damaged or improperly assembled(not constructed to NEC) and the conductor inside the element is in contact with the coolant, allowing a circuit to be formed with the coolant. This could allow a small ammount of current flow to ground thru the coolant in the engine to the chassis and on to ground. Is the wiring to the heater a 2 wire or a 3 wire circuit? If it stops tripping the GFCI when the blades are lifted, I am guessing 2 wire? If it was a 3 wire, it would pass this current back thru the third conductor(ground) and it would trip regardless of blade position. The problem with lifting the blades onto rubber is that you are now allowing this unknown ammount of leakage to build electrical potential in the tractor. This potential is now waiting for access to ground, perhaps thru you when in damp shoes on the concrete reach out to touch the frame and complete the circuit to ground...

I run my tank type heater off of a GFCI outlet without any issues. I am on gravel under a lean-to alongside my garage instead of concrete, but it is on a 3 wire circuit. In this type heater, the ground wire is connected to the outer shell of the heating element so if a circuit is formed that could contact the coolant, that current quickly passes to ground that would trip a GFCI. I have never used a rad hose type on a GFCI, but they are basically the same hooped type heating element so the conductors should not be in contact with the coolant. The tank type does offer greater isolation thru it's smaller hoses and remoted location.

If you have a meter, you could plug the tractor heater into the GFCI with the blades raised and carefull not to make physical contact with the tractor, measure the voltage between the tractor frame and the third round hole on the GFCI outlet, to see how much potential the tractor is reaching... If you have a shorted harness(shorted to chassis) on the tractor, you will probably see 120V on the tractor frame when making this measurment. Nothing like grabbing a bare live wire/tractor to wake you up in the morning before you go plow snow An electrician who comes to look at this and suggest you isolate the tractor frame from ground instead of helping you resolve this potential safety issue ought to have that type of wakeup...

 

[mrmikey]

I replaced my ignition switch with a regular one from an International truck as I had busted the key off in the tumbler and wired up a separate pushbutton and relay for the glow plugs. The relay panel is fed off an 8ga (if I remember right) fused wire directly from the battery and also feeds my extra lights

[/URL][/IMG]. ......Mike

 

[theghoul]

Well if it is tripping the GFCI, it is obviously leaking current to ground which is passing to the concrete thru the impliments. It dosn't have to be much of an imbalance to trip a GFCI. So the wiring to the heater on the tractor could be creating a circuit thru damaged insulation. When you replaced the heater, did you replace the entire wiring harness, or just the heating element? Dirt/crud moisture in an area where the wire runs along the chassis, and a hairline crack in the insolation and you have a low flow circuit to chassis ground...

Yeah, I checked the cable like you guys suggested. There may be something else going on with the heater, but the power is frayed and exposed. This doesnt fix the starting issuge, but I'm going to replace that thing along with a set of glow plugs.

Going through it prepping for the winter I also found some rubber boots failing. New thread for that unless the search yields some results. For such a decent working machine, the ancillary parts (gaskets, o-rings, seals) are sure cheap. The clutch housing gasket looks like it's cork or something. I'm seeing fur like material seeping out. lol.


MrMikey, I like that setup along with running a relay like another poster mentioned. That may be a bit more than I can handle quickly, but it definitely seems like a good way to go for this chilly state.

 

[Smalljobs]

It's a tried and true recipe to use an inline water heater or sump heater with no shorts or frayed wires. Add a relay to the glow plug circuit. If your battery and glow plugs are good, AND you know how to use the compression release, your are "good to go".

 

[Circle G Tractors]

We have had a lot of jinma's go thru here in North Ms. and it gets colder here than most folks think, our experience with these little units are if all three of your glow plugs are working and if they are preheating as should that little jinma will run unless you have some other issue, we mostly see people who think their glow plugs are working but really arn't. Check your glow plugs, simple way is take hot battery and run P+ to top of glow plug and Negative N- to the bottom of plug, you will know very soon if they are working, after you discover they are all working purchase a good 2 way toggle switch run you a direct wire to hot cable on one side of switch and run wire from bus bar connecting glow plugs to the other plug on toggle switch (drill hole in dash and mount toggle switch) and I believe your unit will start, you may need to use decompression lever on very cold mornings. Let us know how it works.

Ben
Circle G Tractor Sales, Inc.
662-252-5272
Jinma Tractor Parts, Farm Pro Tractor Parts, Farmpro, Nortrack, Agracat