Glow Plug Kit available for Y385 engine?

[succor]

Dumbass is not the right work; learning is a better one! Anyway glad you found the glow plugs; now you say your gauges don't work when you go to start? In other words, do the gauges and such come on when you turn the key once before you go to pre-heat? If so, they work but you may have a grounding problem if they go dim or out! On mine when pre-heat is on, my amp gauge zips right to the left; 30 amps or so; things dim very slightly but than again I have very good grounds! I've also had to reroute with new relays and heavier wire for pre-heat as well as starter. If it wasn't for glow plugs, than I guess it's "nose candy" for the engine to go vrrmmm in -40 if you catch my drift haha!

 

[jimogeek]

Yep. All the gauges and lights work fine, then I go one past the 'on' position to 'H', and everything cuts out. One more over to start and it cranks, when I release it back to ON all the gauges and lights come back on. I'll check grounds and probably wire up something more substantial with a relay and 10 gauge wire this weekend.

 

[erj]

You said that you rewired the glow plugs. Where is the wire that used to go to the plugs? Any chance that it is shorting things out?
RonJ

 

[greg_g]

Yep. All the gauges and lights work fine, then I go one past the 'on' position to 'H', and everything cuts out.

That means you've got a dead short to ground somewhere between the H post on the back of the keyswitch and the buss bar. Alternatively, if your keyswitch is still OE - it may be collapsing internally. They're historically unreliable, with typically short lifespans.

//greg//

 

[jimogeek]

Sounds like the culprit. I didn't re-wire anything, just cleaned up the connections on the glow plugs and buss bar. I'll put in a relay and new wiring tonight probably, the tractor is going to have a hard time starting at 9 degrees tomorrow!

 

[jimogeek]

Wow. Put in a 40a relay I had laying around from another project and hooked it up to a momentary switch, and replaced the wiring with 10 gauge and without the block heater plugged in the darn thing coughed to life (stubbornly, but it did) in just a few revolutions and it was about 15 degrees. Very happy! One goofy setup with this tractor is the busbar for the glow plugs actually sits on top of two of the head bolts. Did some tweaking with that setup, could have been grounding the bar. Eventually I'll just hook up individual wires in series but for now I'm a happy camper. Thanks for all the help on the site.

 

[greg_g]

Well, 30A would have been sufficient. The correct wire gauge for a 40A would be 8AWG. Nevertheless, I'd recommend your wire conversion to be a parallel configuration rather than series. In a series circuit, any open will isolate the components on the far side of that open. In other words, a broken or disconnected wire will result in no voltage being delivered to the GPs on the other side of the break. Get a simple 30A terminal block, and configure it for parallel distribution; 1 in, 3 out. For a little more money, you can get terminal blocks pre-configured for parallel output. You feed it with your new 10AWG, but can use lighter gauge wire from the block to the individual GPs. Reason being, each individual GP will only draw only up to 1/3 of what's being provided to the block.


//greg//

 

[jimogeek]

Good suggestion on the wiring setup. For now it works as is, so I'm not messing with it any more! When it's warm and I feel like tinkering I may go retrofit it, or when glow plugs start failing, until then I'm good to go. Man is it nice to be able to fire it up instantly again, had to use it yesterday to do a few chores and it was 15 out.