[AT] Cub problem

Sat May 14 14:22:34 PDT 2016

Bo I had a similar problem several years ago.  At the time
I was doing some commercial bush hogging.  My tractor
would run fine at home.  I'd load it and drive as far as 40 miles
to a job site.  The tractor would run fine  until it warmed up then
it would spit and sputter and backfire for a while and then quit.
To make things even more complicated, pulling the choke partially
closed sometimes helped.  Sometimes I'd get the job finished, other
times I wouldn't.  One day I replaced everything in the ignition system
in the field.  New points, new plugs, new wires, new coil, condenser, rotor.
I was determined to fix it.  The parts cost more than the job I was doing 
paid.
The tractor cranked and ran fine.... for a few minutes... then back to the 
problem.

I pulled the carb off and went through it several times.  So you understand, 
this went on
for several months, from the middle of one season and into the next.  I'd 
use the tractor
around home and it was fine.  Get on a job and run it for an hour or so and 
it got to where
it just wouldn't run. I had to quit in the middle of one job and never got 
paid for about 5
acres I had mowed as I was embarrassed to ask for the money. The people had 
to hire someone
else to finish the job after I made 3 or 4 trips to their place and could 
never finish the work.

Finally, after I had replaced and rebuilt everything possible, by the 
process of elimination I decided
to replace the wire from the coil to the points (the little wire).  That 
fixed the problem.  It also blew
my mind so I set out to figure out why.  I soon realized that someone had 
replaced that wire with a
piece of solid copper house wiring wire.  After I stripped all the 
insulation off of it I found the problem.
The wire had work hardened and broken inside the insulation.  It was still 
making contact ( I assume)
until it got hot and the gap between the broken ends widened.

Two years,  a few hundred dollars in parts,  a few hundred dollars in lost 
revenue and another hundred or so
in fuel expense hauling the tractor back and forth and some lost business 
and it was a 6" piece of wire.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: Bo Hinch
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 9:15 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Cub problem

Several years ago a distance friend was having trouble with a ford 2000
that was a real problem as it started in early winter and while putting out
hay would always act up about the time he had to drive thur a bad spot and
some times would bog down as the tractor would run so bad . He had the
carburetor rebuilt and it seamed to help ( for a little while) , and then
got worse again . He bought a NEW carburetor , installed it and still had
the same problem . I went and checked it early one cold ( 38*) morning and
first thing I checked was the POINTS . The platinum had become unsoldered
and was just floating around and not making good contact . Replace both
points and condenser which solved his problems . A lot of money was spent
for nothing because of misdiagnosis . Live and Learn .

On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 6:38 AM, Cecil Bearden <crbearden at copper.net> wrote:

> If you ran the cheap unleaded gas in it, then I would bet there are some
> white flakes of dried surfactant in the carburetor.  If the gas had any
> ethanol ( as all of it has some, even the no ethanol ) then there is a
> flake of rust in it.    I run only the highest grade of ethanol free
> gasoline in all of my older engines that were built prior to unleaded
> gas.   I think I have told the story before of having to use the high
> grade of gas on my fire pumps to get them to meet the test
> requirements.  I have lost a lot of small engine carburetors to ethanol
> in the gas even  the no ethanol grade.  A little Marvel Mystery Oil
> seems to help keep the ethanol from attaching the carburetor when it
> dries out.    Unleaded low octane gas has a surfactant in it to make it
> burn at a lower temperature for less emissions.  It seems counter
> productive, but that's the EPA... The engine needs heat to operate
> efficiently and the gas has water added to lower the heat content.   I
> was told by a petroleum engineer that the white powder/flakes in the
> carburetor left  when the gas evaporates is the surfactant  to make the
> water mix... Ethanol just causes more water to be pulled from the air...
>
> I once had an Onan Generator with a 30 gal tank.  I had to run Methanol
> in the gas to keep the carb from icing when running in the middle of the
> night.  This was during the 2001 Ice Storm.   We ran for 27 days on
> Generator.   I bought a diesel generator and sold the Onan.  The buyer
> brought the generator back as it only ran one tank of gas through it
> and then would not start.   Rust from had built up in the bottom of the
> tank and blocked the fuel inlet.   The rust was very finely powdered.
> The gas tank was completely dry from the methanol.  I connected a 1/2
> inch pipe to my shop vacuum and sucked every bit of rust out of the
> tank.  I then put a 1 inch long tubing in the fuel bowl inlet to stick
> up in the tank and prevent water and sediment  from plugging up the fuel
> line...
>
> Just my $0.02
>
> Cecil in OKla
>
>
> On 5/12/2016 10:14 PM, Mike M wrote:
> >
> > On 5/12/2016 2:15 PM, Greg Hass wrote:
> >> Am having trouble with my 1949 Farmall Cub. It sat from fall until 
> >> about
> >> April when I started it.
> >>
> > IT SAT.  If it had fuel in the carb, my money would bet on a fuel system
> > issue. These carbs are so easy to pull apart, why not pull it and give
> > it a good cleaning and blow out? Stop trying to find the the zebra in
> > the room when the 900 lb gorilla is staring you in the face. Make sure
> > all the orifices and jets are squeaky clean. Then check for crap
> > floating around your fuel tank that could clog the screen if so 
> > equipped.
> >
> > Mike M
> >>
> >
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