heres my little ole ford 850

[Soundguy]

6mo is pretty old nowadays with this new junky gas. ethanol loves moisture.

Could be the advance.. IF it stuck again.. however if you lubed it up good.. it probably aint it.

One other guess is could be sticky valves... they will sometimes produce a pop, unless you have a plug not fireing all the time.. or the wrong heat range.. then you can get some pre det.. or detonations in the exhaust.

check the advance and change the plugs and wires, and points and rotor and condensor and cap.. if that don't solve it.. run a couple ounces per gallon of atf flud or 2 cycle oil in your gas and and also add a half quart of MMO or ATF to your crankcase oil.

If you do this.. try a run with only 3 g of gas & add a bottle of carb cleaner to boot.

yes.. she will smoke a bit.. and afterwards you may have to clean your plugs.. but will be usefull as a diagnostic tool. The oil in the gas will also raise the octane.. and if there was pre-det.. it would stop it... most of my fords are the 'old' style 4 cyl flatty and OHV models.

soundguy

 

[ampsucker]

well, i had a little time to work on it this weekend. here is what i've done so far.

i pulled the plug wires off one at a time while engine idling to see if it changed the engine speed. number four had the least effect, so assumed it was the number four plug and not something mechanical.

cleaned all four plugs. they were kind of carboned up but not real bad. they are not very used. probably only have 20-30 hours on them, but that equates to 4 years or longer of actual time (i rarely if ever run at pto speed, most of the time at 1200 rpm or less).

cleaned the cap and rotor. again, not many hours but there was a little carbon buildup on the cap electrodes. no visible cracking or shorts. lubed the weights under the distributor cap with light oil and reassembled.

cleaned the glass bowl on the carb and drained the carb bowl. gas smelled good and no visible signs of water.

checked the intake oil bath. oil level looked good and oil was pretty clean.

proceeded to carb adjustment. let engine warm up. adjusted idle set screw to 500 rpm. adjusted low speed jet. at this point, the settings deviated from the book as i had to almost totally close the jet. the book said 1 to 1 and a half turns open, i ended up at about a third of a turn open to get the smoothest running idle.

adjusted the high speed jet to the ball park.

the tractor started and idled good - a nice steady lope. tweeked the high speed jet for good throttle response. did not notice any odd mechanical sounds from the engine.

i took it for a test drive. throttled up and down good, drove around the yard a while, started heading back to park thinking i'd accomplished something. the thing started sputtering and died. ok, almost out of fuel, i thought. yep, tank was low. added a couple of gallons and started right up. got almost to the lean-to and sputtered and died. couldn't hardly start her up. acted like it was just starving for fuel. would start right up with a full choke but then starve out and die. was able to inch it into place under the lean to by restarting several times and putting it in gear before she died. called it a night.

i'm thinking i still need to do a carb kit. i bought the kit and had it there, but didn't have all the right tools with me. next time i'm bringing the power washer and will spray her down real good, then tackle the carb kit.

no more backfiring through the muffler, though! i think cleaning up the plugs and distributor fixed that and smoothed out the engine quite a bit.

any thoughts??? my money is on a small obstruction in one of the carb pathways....

amp

 

[Soundguy]

Idle jet is an air jet.. it is backwards of the main jet. IE. IDLE jet is 'in' to enrich.

Don't sound like she needs a carbkit to me. sounds like the carb is fine.. just having problems getting fuel.

Pull the drain at the bottom of the carb and have a glass jar ready... with fuel on yo should get a pencil sized stream there till the tank s empty.. if it tapers off you have a problem.

there are usually 2 screens in this setup.. one small finger shaped screen atop the small screw-driver on/off tap at the tank.. and a screen at the fuel sediment bowl by the carb.. assuming somone hasn't removed the fuel sediment bowl.. etc.

the screen atop the tap tends to disolve over 50 years of use.. so it may be gone and clogging the tap.

post back.

everything you have posted in the last message so far points to fuel delivery problem.

soundguy

 

[ampsucker]

well, long time since i've posted about this, but thought you might like to know the solution! i finally worked on the tractor this week and got her running again. here is the list of problems repaired:

*found two bad spark plugs with internal paths to ground. replaced both.
*drained and replaced old gas. no fuel screen problems.
*found intermittant open in primary ignition wire between distributor cap and coil. appeared to be an oily connection where the coil wire connects to the isolator of the distributor cap. cleaned it good and put a new ring terminal on.
* found out i was missing the little rotor clip that goes on the distributor shaft and holds the rotor tight onto the shaft. replaced.
* adjusted carb.

runs like a champ, now! thanks for all the help and ideas. as usual, it just took time and a step by step troubleshooting to get it going again!

amp

 

[Soundguy]

*found intermittant open in primary ignition wire between distributor cap and coil. appeared to be an oily connection where the coil wire connects to the isolator of the distributor cap. cleaned it good and put a new ring terminal on.
*amp

Question.. the wire from the coil to the distribuitor cap is a secondary wire.. and has no ring terminal.

the wire from the outgoing primary of the coil goes to the feed thru insulator on the distribuitor itself... not the cap.

which was actually the problem? the high tension secondary.. or the primary to the distribuitor itself...? Both will cause problems.. but in different ways.

soundguy

 

[ampsucker]

it was the low tension primary circuit. i guess some small amount of oil had leaked down from the engine or around the distributor base or oiler and had coated the base of the distributor and the insulator. i could get 12.2 volts by actually touching the copper wire, but the insulator rod would show much lower voltage. i just cleaned it up and put a new ring terminal on and that solved the spark problem to the coil wire. then i had to check each plug separately and that is how i found the two bad spark plugs.

amp