My latest TO-20 problem....

[buckeyepost]

One thing after another it seems... So, now my TO-20 will start first crank but after about 10-15 seconds of running at 1/4 throttle it starts to misfire erraticly. I messed with it for a good few hours the other day and nothing seemed to work even after I changed the coil and the plugs. This season I have also: had the carb rebuilt, changed the points, changed the oil, changed the water pump, and changed the antifreeze. I played with the carb settings and cleaned and set the points again but nothing made even a slight difference, any ideas???

 

[Fergie Bach]

Does pulling out the choke (strangler) make any difference? If it does maybe you need a richer mixture.Adjusted at the carb with the big brass screw a little at a time.Ignition timing may be out.Adjusted by turning distributor a little at a time. Need to know other symptoms really -like how does it perform under full throttle and heavy loads.

 

[DJ54]

Just for the heck of it, take a look inside your distributor cap. Look on the pickup lugs for a buildup on them. Like a white-ish/almost light green material. I've had problems with that on my Super C Farmall, since newer caps have aluminum, instead of copper lugs. It scrapes off pretty easy with a knife blade. The buildup just causes it to miss firing, at the optimum time. You'll get buildup of a carbon track buildup on the copper lugs too, if it happens to have one of those.

I also had a friend that had that problem on his 8N Ford... He had 4 guys look at it, and couldn't fix it.. They'd replaced everything but the cap.. Apparently didn't bother to look inside. I pulled the cap, and it has some serious buildup on it. I scraped it off, and asked him to try it. Fired up, and ran smooth.

Just a thought....

 

[buckeyepost]

Does pulling out the choke (strangler) make any difference? If it does maybe you need a richer mixture.Adjusted at the carb with the big brass screw a little at a time.Ignition timing may be out.Adjusted by turning distributor a little at a time. Need to know other symptoms really -like how does it perform under full throttle and heavy loads.

I did play with the fuel mixture on the carb, the idle setting as well and nothing seemed to make it run better, ran it real lean and real rich, no change. Choke would just bog it down even more. Haven't even touched the carb since it got rebuilt and has run fine with the current settings. There isn't even enough juice to back the tractor out of the barn, that's how rough and erratic the missfiring is. Only a few random sparks per second. I'm not familiar with adjusting the ignition timing but that sounds like it might be a point of interest. Are you talking about turning the distributor cam shaft? Which way do I turn it? Is there a tool for it? Thanks for helping me try to figure this out!

 

[buckeyepost]

Just for the heck of it, take a look inside your distributor cap. Look on the pickup lugs for a buildup on them. Like a white-ish/almost light green material. I've had problems with that on my Super C Farmall, since newer caps have aluminum, instead of copper lugs. It scrapes off pretty easy with a knife blade. The buildup just causes it to miss firing, at the optimum time. You'll get buildup of a carbon track buildup on the copper lugs too, if it happens to have one of those.

I also had a friend that had that problem on his 8N Ford... He had 4 guys look at it, and couldn't fix it.. They'd replaced everything but the cap.. Apparently didn't bother to look inside. I pulled the cap, and it has some serious buildup on it. I scraped it off, and asked him to try it. Fired up, and ran smooth.

Just a thought....

Also sounds like something easy to try, thanks!

 

[buckeyepost]

Tried everything above and no change. But, I did notice that the volt meter is jumping with the misfiring so I plan to clean up some of the connections this weekend to see if that helps.... hopefully

 

[buckeyepost]

Ok, now I'm starting to get a little frustrated.... I've gone over everything listed here and talked to a local expert and he told me to check the sediment bowl and fuel lines. I drained the tank, took off the sediment bowl, and the fuel line going to the carb. No clogs, everything seemd fine. Ran a little better after I put everything back together for about 5 minutes then started missing again. Now my carb seems to flood real easily, I always turn the fuel off before I even kill the tractor to make sure it doesn't flood. So I'm thinking if it floods easily when it's not on then it might be flooding while it IS on giving it too much gas which is what it seems like is happening. But what would cause that or how could you even fix it???? I think I need a house call on my Fergie...

 

[DJ54]

Have you checked your air filter..? I bought one years ago from a neighbor who had their property repo'd, and sold everything and moved back to C'bus. They just had this tractor rebuilt by Eastland Vocational... Thought the boys put the oil rings in the wrong groove... Missed and smoked bad they said... I pulled it home, and started it up. It was black smoke... Dad was standing there, and said, " Check the oil bath filter..."

A mouse had packed it clear full, and it just couldn't breathe... Cleaned it, and added new oil, and it ran like a champ..!! If you haven't checked it lately, you may want to take a peek at it.

Those brass floats have been known to get pinholes in them and sink also, causing them to flood. Maybe the float is just out of adjustment too...?? Do you have a manual showing the proper measurement to set the float..?? I was thinking it was even in the I & T manual I had with it at the time.

 

[massey driver]

had a neighbour who's 8n did that and I did many different things like what you've done and what it ended up being is that I unscrewed the sedient bowl out from the bottom of the gas tank and found out that the screen that goes up into the gas tank was plugged with rust and flakes of crud.Once it was clean out and put back together it ran like a clock.Don't know what it looks like on yours but just thought I'd throw this at you as well to try who Knows??? As always Larry

 

[massey driver]

on this same tractor there was also another problem where the rubber hose that goes from the air cleaner to the carb was breaking down inside the hose and it was closing shut while the tractor was running yet on the outside of the hose it looked good not sure what it has on your tractor running from the carb to the air cleaner.Larry