Danica
Silver Member
Update-hired a young freelance diesel mechanic who spent 5 hours going over everything and even he’s not positive it is 100% solved but the root cause appears to be air leaking into the fuel system. He put a new brass flat sealing washer on bleed screw and tight ended all the other connections (including the line between tank and sediment bowl which had to be accessed by taking off instrument panel in cab). I’m not 100% sure we have found ALL sources of air infiltration but now it can run at 2,000rpm indefinitely. Hopefully it will act ok under load when a cut the fields as soon as weather turns sunny.
The most likely source of air infiltration was prob a combination of 20 year old fuel lines (replaced OEM for an obscene price) and old line clamps. Again I replaced all. I think the coup de grace was addition of copper washer on bleed screw. In other words the very thing you use to get air out of the system was very probably allowing very small amounts of air to enter.
Of course, none of this is readily linked to what clearly seemed to be an angina temp issue. If it warmed up at 1500rpm would take 30 min to start having problems but would take much shorter period if warmed up at 2,500rpm. Now, one could argue that the time diff is really attributable to the amount of air slowly (or more quickly) entering system.
**** cut 4 acres at 2,500rpm running pto art 540 for three hours straight with NO PROBLEM. So, issue must have been air infiltration. It is the only reasonable explanation.
Yes, same topic as before regarding a 1920 that runs 20 min then dies. Based on feedback in previous thread I have:
* Siphoned out old diesel and added 5 gal fresh
* removed and shot 30psi air thru every hose shown on top of fuel filter housing (for the one to tank I just shot in air to potentially dislodge any crud on the internal filter and the other two I completely removed to ensure they were totally clear)
* new fuel solenoid
* replaced fuel filter, bowl, and large o-ring
* checked tank cap (on/off)
* exhaust color perfect
* screamed at it (as effective as previously noted tricks)
* monitored voltage (14.64) at battery
* checked outgoing fuel stream from sediment bowl while it was dying and it was strong
* changed air filter
* cleaned radiator and screen
* changed fuel return lines
* changed the braided fuel lines
When it died just now I quickly unhooked the fuel line to the filter and it was gushing out. So, this suggests it can’t be fuel starvation or I’d have just a trickle coming down from tank. Same on the outgoing post-filtration stream.
If it isn’t a fuel starvation/quality issue could it be an air issue? I’ve ordered a new air filter due next week and the current one is 6 years old and seen 300 hours of work.
I haven’t bled the injectors but the fact it runs 20 min beautifully and then slowly dies doesn’t seem consistent with that.
Presence of a Woods FEL makes access really difficult.
The thing that is so boggling is that in a few hours it will start right up and run beautifully until the repeats itself. This is my last shot if the air filter doesn’t solve it (I doubt it will) I will have to get a diesel mechanic to look at it and in this case do dealers come and pick up a tractor or just try to fix it ‘in situ’ with equipment they would have in a repair truck. I’ve done everything on both my tractors for 20 years so this will be a first…
Thank you in advance. Pics attached just for curiosity sake and may show in “off” position inadvertently.
Finally, if the tank were clogged wouldn’t the engine run on the fuel in the sediment bowl until it dried up and then abruptly die?
Danica
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