Tractor Will Not Start

[bill18163]

I need help to troubleshoot why a tractor will not start. I'm helping my neighbor with his Cub Cadet 7260 26 HP diesel. We just got done putting a new dual clutch in it and he is having trouble starting it. It cranks well and puts out a puff of smoke but will not start. He says there was somewhat of a problem of this nature even before we did the clutch work but it would start. Battery is good and the starter cranks it over like normal. So, where does a guy start looking with this kind of problem? What do we do first then second, etc., etc., to get started on this problem.

 

[Roadworthy]

As I recall from having lived in NW PA the winters can be a bit chilly. I'd begin by checking glow plug operation - make sure they get power and are not burned out. Is your neighbor running winterized diesel? He should be. Be sure the air cleaner is clean and the air path to the intake is clear. Having done this you can go the next step and be sure you have good fuel flow to the injection pump. Many tractors are gravity fed from the tank to the pump so a blockage in the tank or fuel filter can prevent flow. Of course if you crack a fuel line bleeding off the air will be necessary. Be sure the fuel stop solenoid (if there is one) is permitting a flow of fuel. That's most of the basic stuff. Troubleshooting starts there.

 

[PILOON]

If you checked all the previous suggestions you might try heating things up a bit.
You did not say cold weather.
Heat gun blowing into air Intake?
Construction heater with a blanket over the engine?

I've faced that problem a few times when my block heater quit on me.
Brrrr!

 

[bill18163]

We have the tractor in a heated garage so the cold is not a problem. Today we took a look at the fuel system. We put in a new filter and bled the system at the filter housing and at the fuel injector arrangement. I was going to run a check on the glow plugs but I could find no specs in the service manual. Can someone help me there? I think there should be a spec on resistance if I'm not mistaken. We loosened each injector fuel supply line one at a time and cranked the engine to see if anything would come out. While cranking all we got was an extremely weak pulse. Literally just a drip. That doesn't sound right! Or am I wrong? We had to quit at that point and we will go at it again tomorrow. I am looking at the wiring diagram for the tractor and am focusing at the three wires that enter the back of the solenoid at the injector and would like to trace them tomorrow to see if there is anything wrong there. The wiring diagram is terrible. It is very hard to read the wire color codes and numbers even if you blow it up to a larger size on a computer. I'm thinking that maybe there is no power to that solenoid. There is a fuse in that circuit and I have to check that.

 

[PILOON]

Each glow plug will read low ohms, like 10 or less.
Be sure to disconnect each one from the buss bar that joins them and read from connection to ground.
Also if you cycle the plugs each one should feel warm to touch for a very basic go/no go test.

 

[Zebrafive]

Are you able to post the wiring diagram?

 

[dodge man]

Sounds like it’s not getting fuel. When you are talking wiring are you talking about the fuel stop solenoid? Can you manually trip it to the on position?

 

[bill18163]

Yes we have done that and the stop solenoid does work. We have given up on thinking that wiring is bad somewhere. First of all the wiring diagram is horrible. It is very hard to read because it is blurry. I have to enlarge it on a computer to read the wire designations and some of them I still couldn't read. Believe it or not in some cases the wire color code at some connectors was wrong. Per the wiring diagram it would not be correct. When this tractor broke down and quit running it made a lot of banging noises per my neighbor and we had to tow it into the garage. But why would anything happen with the wiring other than hooking up the wiring wrong when we put it back together after installing the new clutch. All you have is connectors to put back together and you can't put them together wrong. What we can't understand is why you see nothing but a drip of fuel if you disassemble one of the supply tubes or any of them for that matter and crank the engine. Shouldn't it spray out of that supply tube quite hard?

 

[bill18163]

I don't know how to put the wiring diagram in a post. How is that done?

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I'd be checking if there's power to the glow plugs when you glow them.

Then I'd check for fuel getting to the injectors, but you will have problems getting it started without the glow plugs working and a clue to that is, it was having starting problems before you worked on it..

SR

 

[mnKirk]

My 7260 had the same starting problem that got worse over time until it just puffed gray smoke while cranking. I used a multimeter to check the voltage of the glow plug bus bar when turning the key to "on". Since I had power there, I installed 3 NGK 6628 glow plugs which solved my problem. The glow plugs do not cross reference to Mitsubishi, but fit without a problem. They are MUCH cheaper at $8 a plug.

 

[Sittingbull2]

Take air filter out. Spray in where air filter was with wd40. See if it fires off. Try not to use starting fluid that ain't good on these diesel engines.

 

[LouNY]

In a heated garage the glow plugs shouldn't be an issue,
not getting fuel could be mechanical outside the injector pump.
Open the throttle up at least halfway, make sure the stop solenoid is opening,
preferably if you can operate the linkage manually open and close try to start it with the stop fully in both directions.
Also since you replaced a clutch you could try tow starting it, as long as you know the clutch will release and the brakes work.

 

[dodge man]

Ant chance there is something mechanically wrong with it and there was a problem beyond the clutch. The “clang” could be something not related to the clutch.

 

[bill18163]

We are beginning to lean in the direction of something else being mechanically wrong. The clutch was a problem so we didn't waste our time there. One of the three clutch fingers that contact the throw out bearing had lost it's adjustment height bolt and it fell down into the housing. The throw out bearing was only contacting two fingers. That's been corrected. One odd thing that I noticed when we had the flywheel off was that there are no timing marks on the flywheel. The only mark I saw on the flywheel was a horizontal sharpie mark that someone put there with a pen. Odd isn't it???? Now when we put the flywheel back on we paid no attention to where that mark on the flywheel was. Probably a mistake but that should not change anything, right?? Only if in the future you had to find TDC would that be a problem. You would have to pull the valve cover and set the #1 cylinder to TDC on the compression stroke and then mark the flywheel thru the sight window and that would only be approximate and not exact. So again, am I right or wrong there? Did we somehow change injection timing? We did have to turn the engine a lot using the nut on the pulley at the front of the engine to seat the pilot on the front end of the shaft that goes through the clutch arrangement. Back to the possible mechanical problem. My neighbor is really hard on his equipment. I am quite sure he doesn't keep up on his maintenance of the machine. Yesterday he mentioned that when the tractor quit on him it really made a lot of banging and crunching noises. The engine does turn freely. That is obvious because we were turning it to align the clutch shaft. Per the info from LouNY in his post we will try what he mentioned. My neighbor is really getting discouraged as time goes by and now he is talking about trying to find another engine. Probably a rebuild if we could find one. Anyone know of a supplier??

 

[dodge man]

Isn’t the injection pump driven by something internally? I wouldn’t think what you did messed up the timing but I'm not sure. I assume this is mechanically injected and not a common rail setup? Might be time to pull the valve cover and have a peak.

 

[Zebrafive]

I think if the flywheel was only supposed to be bolted on one way, the bolt pattern would have been "staggered" to prevent putting it on wrong.

 

[Fuddy1952]

Each glow plug will read low ohms, like 10 or less.
Be sure to disconnect each one from the buss bar that joins them and read from connection to ground.
Also if you cycle the plugs each one should feel warm to touch for a very basic go/no go test.

X2 on this test

 

[bill18163]

I think my neighbor is getting ready to pull the front gear case cover on the engine. He thinks there may have been some damage done to the fuel injection cam or the gear. He says there was too much noise from the sound of things breaking for it to be something simple.

 

[Fuddy1952]

I was going by post #1 "It cranks well and puts out a puff of smoke but will not start. He says there was somewhat of a problem of this nature even before we did the clutch work but it would start."
Sounds like noise occurred after clutch work.
Wouldn't hurt to check glow plugs.