Oil & Fuel Compact Diesel Power Loss

[jsdyer]

Perchance someone can help me out with this. My Ford 1720, early 90's model with 570 hours got some bad fuel in January. I drained the tank but in the process had a great deal of difficulty getting the tractor started again. Really had trouble getting the air out of the injection pump and lines. I pulled the injectors and had them tested; they were all in spec. Finally got the air bled out of the fuel lines to the injectors and tractor was running okay again, or so I thought. I used the tractor for hauling firewoood in February/March and seemed to be normal, but lately when I have plowed, disked or mowed, I note that I don't have the power that I had previously. I have to use one or two gears lower than in the past. Today, I mowed with a rotary cutter and could barely get through grass that would have been a non event in the past. When the tractor starts to lose RPMs I notice blue smoke from the exhaust. With the tractor idling, I loosened the number one cylinder injector fuel line, and the engine started to die. Same with the second cylinder. However, when I loosened number three cylinder, diesel squirted out, but the engine did not change speed, so three cylinder is not firing. I removed number three injector from the block and will have it checked out by a diesel mechanic. Maybe plugged, but I doubt it. It seems that today the amount of power that the tractor put out became progressively worse. Please note that I have changed the fuel and air filters recently. Any ideas on what is going on here?

 

[john_bud]

You did a great job with the diagnostics. Really spot on. Your 3 cylinder will try to die when you loosen injectors #1 or #2, but makes no change when #3 is loosened. That's a dead giveaway that injector #3 or the line is clogged.

Call around to diesel repair shops that do injection pumps. You can probably buy a refurb injector for less than the cost of having yours done. I feel that the service you got on the injectors before was potentially lacking.

jb