[Farmall] F-20 runs

[Karl Olmstead]

Finished my long list of things to do on that 1936 F-20.  Decided to share 
the first start with a couple of friends who came to dinner last night. 
Plus that gave me somebody to run the towing tractor.  Since I had no 
experience with the F-20, I decided to pull-start it rather than risk 
getting kicked by the hand crank on the first startup.

I had towed the tractor around in gear earlier in order to prime the oiling 
system and observed a major oil leak in the oil filter cannister.  The pot 
metal oil filter base has been damaged by overtightening.  The center, 
threaded portion is pulling away from the rest of the unit, and the lip 
which holds the seal is badly warped.  The best I could do was to wrap a rag 
around the housing temporarily.  I'll need to find a new base.

Fuel came pouring out of the sediment bowl when I first opened the petcock, 
so I spent a few minutes fiddling with it to make it seal.  Then I hopped 
on, and we towed the tractor around the yard.  It took fifteen or twenty 
feet to get a pop out of the engine, then I figured out that it wanted the 
throttle opened.  After that it took off.  There were two immediate 
problems.

First of all, a ton of rust and carbon came blowing out of the stack and 
raining down on me; more than I've ever seen before.  The good news was that 
it hadn't had time to get hot.  I hate those showers of hot cinders!

The second problem was that the engine runs like dog doo.  Despite my best 
fiddling with the mixture and ignition advance, it ran mostly on two 
cylinders.  If I backed off the throttle and then opened it wide, it would 
run on all four for an instant, while the engine caught back up to the 
governor.  Then it would drop back to two cylinders.  The governor is also 
pretty unstable, I think.

Although I checked and re-checked the carburetor when I rebuilt it, I think 
it may be the problem.  In order to find out for sure, I think I'll pull the 
carb off my T-20 and try it.  I rebuilt it recently, and the T-20 just purrs 
now.

At any rate, my visitors were impressed, but not exactly the way I had 
hoped.  At least the F-20 did manage one lap of my yard under its own power, 
so the event was a success. But the tractor needs a lot more work.  I had to 
start Bob Currie's F-20 just to show everybody how a F-20 is supposed to 
sound.

Nobody asked me to tune up their car afterward.

-Karl