D Stalling When Hot

[Joel Sanderson]

I'm having troubles with my '47 D. It has the standard all-fuel manifold. I'm pulling an 8 foot disk in a plowed field. Not long after it gets warmed up it starts to miss, pop and stall. This happens every half round in the 5-acre field I'm fitting. I stop, pick a few rocks, and then I can make another half round before it happens again. During these breaks I can see no change in the water temperature (suggesting that it is an overheating issue somewhere else). I thought it was from the E-10 that I was burning, so I switched to straight gasoline. That stopped the problem--for awhile--and the engine ran cooler and better overall. Now it's doing it again. When I let it rest it will ping and bark for a few cycles inside somewhere.

I will add here that the gas company made a delivery to the farm tank between these times, and since I wondered if they'd made a mistake and delivered the wrong fuel, I called and asked. They denied that they did, claiming there was "no way" that could have happened. Is there a way to test fuel to see if it has ethanol in it?

Its water temperature is running about 190, and the air temperature is around 80. When it was in the mid 90's awhile back it overheated to 210, so I quit and finished the next day. Not sure that's relevant. It won't run right at all now.

To throw another wrench in the problem, in June I plowed another 5 acre field pulling four 14" bottoms. It did fine and had lots of power, ripping through tree roots around the edge of the field with unbelievable strength and torque. I went to the next field, and I had problems with the carburettor float, which filled up. I replaced the float, and it ran fine. (It was stalling out when I'd hit a bump because the float was barely floating; that problem quit.) Now I have this heating and missing issue. I don't think I did anything to cause a fuel issue when I removed the carb. I have tried changing the main jet setting from leaner to much richer, and neither helps the problem.

Anyone have suggestions what could be happening? Thanks for any help.

Joel

 

[Loosehandle]

If your fuel flow is good I'd start thinking ignition, point gap, condenser, coil even if its magneto.

 

[Joel Sanderson]

Hmmm. Ignition might explain why no change to the carb's needle settings affects it.

It started to miss yesterday on the way to the field, just zooming along at road speed. (!!) That doesn't sound like an overheated manifold or gas problem, does it? Hmmm.

Thanks, Loosehandle. I'll look into it.

 

[NDIHC]

You can get fuel test kits. For about $300 you can get one that will test ethanol content of gas and specific gravity of gas or diesel. I've used those kits to find out if someone got a bad tank of gas. If the specific gravity is something between gas and diesel you know they either filled their tank with diesel and ended up with a gad and diesel mix or wherever they bought their gas got a load of diesel or jet fuel dumped in their gas tank. It happens more often than you would think. You can also buy the ethanol test bottles pretty cheap to test just ethanol content of gasoline.

 

[Joel Sanderson]

Oh wow. Didn't know those were available. That could come in handy for testing the old reclaimed fuel I use in my shop's engine (1898 Reid) that's a mixture of who-knows-what and varies from batch to batch.

I wondered if the delivery truck's tank wasn't as pure as supposed to be.

Thanks for the information about those tests.

 

[Dick L]

I'm having troubles with my '47 D. It has the standard all-fuel manifold. I'm pulling an 8 foot disk in a plowed field. Not long after it gets warmed up it starts to miss, pop and stall. This happens every half round in the 5-acre field I'm fitting. I stop, pick a few rocks, and then I can make another half round before it happens again. During these breaks I can see no change in the water temperature (suggesting that it is an overheating issue somewhere else). I thought it was from the E-10 that I was burning, so I switched to straight gasoline. That stopped the problem--for awhile--and the engine ran cooler and better overall. Now it's doing it again. When I let it rest it will ping and bark for a few cycles inside somewhere.

I will add here that the gas company made a delivery to the farm tank between these times, and since I wondered if they'd made a mistake and delivered the wrong fuel, I called and asked. They denied that they did, claiming there was "no way" that could have happened. Is there a way to test fuel to see if it has ethanol in it?

Its water temperature is running about 190, and the air temperature is around 80. When it was in the mid 90's awhile back it overheated to 210, so I quit and finished the next day. Not sure that's relevant. It won't run right at all now.

To throw another wrench in the problem, in June I plowed another 5 acre field pulling four 14" bottoms. It did fine and had lots of power, ripping through tree roots around the edge of the field with unbelievable strength and torque. I went to the next field, and I had problems with the carburettor float, which filled up. I replaced the float, and it ran fine. (It was stalling out when I'd hit a bump because the float was barely floating; that problem quit.) Now I have this heating and missing issue. I don't think I did anything to cause a fuel issue when I removed the carb. I have tried changing the main jet setting from leaner to much richer, and neither helps the problem.

Anyone have suggestions what could be happening? Thanks for any help.

Joel

My guess would be you have something floating around in your fuel system. I had a problem with an Oliver 66 mowing hay with a cylcle bar mower on a down hill 90 degree turn. A bid flat washer was the culprit. Also with one of my pulling tractor that bounced around on a trailer had a piece of something stopping up the main orifice in the carburetor. A bad coil can open as it heats up and makes contact after cooling. A bad distributor can get fickle before giving up.

 

[Mark Poss]

I had a G that acted like that. Turned out to be the coil. That had a distributor

 

[Mike Fitz]

Might be a partial obstruction in the fuel passages in the carburetor, had that happen in a DC i have once, fine particles in the main jet. Do the spark plugs look like they are running lean?

 

[Joel Sanderson]

I haven't pulled the spark plugs to look after this problem came along. I replaced them in August though, and the old ones looked all right.

I called our John Deere mechanic (who has been in this tractor), and he though it sounded like the coil. I bought a new one this afternoon and put it on, but it's too wet to disk today, so I'll need to wait for another day to see if that solved anything. Hopefully it'll be like your G, Mr. Poss.

 

[Watthour]

I had a '38 D with a Splitdorf mag, and the pole piece was weak. A re-magnetizing of that and it would easily produce a 3/8" spark cold, and didn't miss when warmed up. Weak ignition, susceptible to heat, can certainly do that.

 

[mrslesq]

I'm having troubles with my '47 D. It has the standard all-fuel manifold. I'm pulling an 8 foot disk in a plowed field. Not long after it gets warmed up it starts to miss, pop and stall. This happens every half round in the 5-acre field I'm fitting. I stop, pick a few rocks, and then I can make another half round before it happens again. During these breaks I can see no change in the water temperature (suggesting that it is an overheating issue somewhere else). I thought it was from the E-10 that I was burning, so I switched to straight gasoline. That stopped the problem--for awhile--and the engine ran cooler and better overall. Now it's doing it again. When I let it rest it will ping and bark for a few cycles inside somewhere.

I will add here that the gas company made a delivery to the farm tank between these times, and since I wondered if they'd made a mistake and delivered the wrong fuel, I called and asked. They denied that they did, claiming there was "no way" that could have happened. Is there a way to test fuel to see if it has ethanol in it?

Its water temperature is running about 190, and the air temperature is around 80. When it was in the mid 90's awhile back it overheated to 210, so I quit and finished the next day. Not sure that's relevant. It won't run right at all now.

To throw another wrench in the problem, in June I plowed another 5 acre field pulling four 14" bottoms. It did fine and had lots of power, ripping through tree roots around the edge of the field with unbelievable strength and torque. I went to the next field, and I had problems with the carburettor float, which filled up. I replaced the float, and it ran fine. (It was stalling out when I'd hit a bump because the float was barely floating; that problem quit.) Now I have this heating and missing issue. I don't think I did anything to cause a fuel issue when I removed the carb. I have tried changing the main jet setting from leaner to much richer, and neither helps the problem.

Anyone have suggestions what could be happening? Thanks for any help.

Joel

I had a G like that. The valves needed resetting. And it usually went to my mechanic Uncle Floyd to pull the head and grind the valves because one or more were burnt.

 

[David from Kansas]

About the overheating; I have plowed many a day back in the '50s and 60's with JD D tractors and if it was a hot day and you were pulling the crap out of them the temp gauge would peg. I would complain to my dad and his reply was "was it boiling over?" If not, and the radiator is full you are OK. We were burning distillate at the time and using the water injector so we had to refill the radiator each day. If my memory is correct, those old Ds had a pretty hefty coolant capacity.

 

[cushman]

I had a G that acted like that. Turned out to be the coil. That had a distributor

I have a G that had the same symptons,and the condenser was the cause that time.