Newbie needs help!

hopin4alawn · Jun 28, 2004

I am new to this tractor thing and to this forum. A couple of years ago I purchased a L1501. I road it around a few times back a year ago and knew one day I was going to be using this thing for something other than puttering.
A few days ago I started in on what I anticipate to be my lawn at my new residence. Ive been dragging a 4ft box scraper around and I thought things were cool. My neighbor, who farms, stops by to see my progress and says that my orange beauty is not running right. Now what do I know about this? Nothing thats what. He said it was running on one cylinder. He told me to loosen each injector one at a time and If I loosen one and the motor doesn't want to die than that would be confirmation. I did that and he was right. He assumes a bad injector. Any opinions? Can an injector be clogged and able to be repaired or cleaned?

jim_wilson · Jun 28, 2004

Not sure about diesel injectors but I worked in a car dealer a number of years ago and you can clean car injectors. There are companies that do this - I believe they soak the injectors to clean them up and then hook them up to a special rig that pumps cleaner thru them under pressure. Again since I dont know anything about diesel I cant guarantee this but you might want to stop at some place that services heavy trucks - or maybe check online and find a diesel truck owners forum. They might have good suggestions as to who to talk to about this.

grandad · Jun 28, 2004

Has it pretty much sat idle for the past year? Just like with any machinery, disuse is not good for it. It may be that you just need to give it some hours of serious operation... burn a few tanks of diesel through it, maybe with some injector cleaner added to the tank.

hopin4alawn · Jun 28, 2004

Yes it has just been sitting. I have run close to 1 tank through it. I will continue but is it ok for the tractor? I mean running on 1 cylinder and all? /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Junkman · Jun 28, 2004

My older Mercedes had an injector problem that was an easy fix. The factory service bulletin suggested that a quart of Dextron ATF be added to each tank of 20 gallons diesel fuel for 4 tank full before any injector work be done. I did that in less than 2 tank full, the engine was cured. After that, I put a quart in a tank full every 2 or 3 thousand miles and never had another problem. I would suggest that you use Power Service in the white bottle to clean the injectors by using the tractor. I would try this before any tear down. A quart bottle of Power Service is $5.00..... an injector is probably more like $125 - $200 and that is just a guess. May cost more today. Time is on your side.....

chrisjbell · Jun 29, 2004

Surprised that your motor will run on only one cylinder... But if it does then there ya go. You can clean injectors and since your tractor has been sitting for a while that has a good chance of working. I'd suggest trying one of the recommendations for putting in some kind of cleaning solution (I'm no expert on those), because I don't think you have anything to lose. If that doesn't work, then you'll have to replace them, but I believe that there is nothing to be lost in trying to clean them first.