Archive through June 05, 2006

[dfrisk]

JERRY - I've got some plugs at home that are 25 yrs old give or take a couple.... But that tractor only runs at most 10 hrs per year.... but it does have a set of ACCEL yellow silicon jacketed plug wires...with solid copper wire conductors..... so it makes the AM radio sound pretty poor but the FM or tape deck sounds O-K.
Old tune-up trick I heard was to run the engine in the dark and watch for blue traces of spark running to ground. Son, Dad, & I were looking at His '51 M Sunday morning after it sat idling for an hour or so.... missing on one cylinder even under load. When I checked the brand new Pertronix plug wires one was coated with hyd. oil from a leaking connection. I shut the tractor off and wiped that wire completely clean & dry and the socket in the distributor cap and after restarting the engine the plug cleaned up and the engine was firing on all four cylinders again..... All the while SON telling Me that oil on the plug wire wouldn't make ANY difference....It sure is hard being Young and knowing ALL the answers and having Your Dad & Grandpa be so stupid but Still fix the problem. Dad & I have about 135 combined years of keeping JUNK running compared to almost 25 yrs for Son...."Age & Experience will prevail over Youthful Exuberance" but unfortunately that doesn't apply to engine parts.

 

[charrin]

Dennis: Old Age and Treachery shall prevail against youth and ignorance every time...I am just 40, but my 8 year old hates it when I say that to him after a ball game!

 

[aowsley]

Dennis- ive been in the "industry" for 20 plus years now. i still have a saying that my boss had on a message board, its hanging in my shop now, i keep it as a reminder:

"What can be more embarrassing and devoid of fun than to watch the boss do a job you told him couldn't be done". he nailed me on it once(when i was young) but only once. every time i read that board i remember, oooohhhh the humiliation! T

 

[aowsley]

Matt- im not familiar with the stens rod markings but the kohler rods have the arrows(for the posi lock rods) for the match marks, by the kohler rod,the arrows will be facing the flywheel side and the oil hole in the rod will be facing the cam as Kenny said...T

(Message edited by aowsley on June 06, 2006)

 

[jhillegass]

Dennis F,

Yes, checking for "leaking" plug wires and loose connections in the dark works. My dad taught me that long ago, working on the farm truck and old tractors.

 

[bmavian]

My 1973 108 Kohler will run just fine for an hour or so then just suddenly dies down,backfire and stalls. I can start it again almost immediately but it soon does the same thing.After a while it won't start, smoke (exhaust?) comes out from under the carburator,and it makes all kinds of popping noises.After it cools down it'll start again and run for a long time again until it starts all over.I have tried Marvel mystery oil in the fuel and oil to no avail.I've changed the points,plug, condenser,and coil thinking it could be an ignition problem and I've sprayed carburator cleaner into the carburator.After reading various posts here,I think the problem may well be a carbonized or sticky exhaust valve.If you (whoever) agree;what do I have to know before removing the head?How do I clean out carbon deposits? Help!

 

[mhomrighausen]

Ron S. You stated that it doesn't appear that the PO had done anything to the hydro pump. Have you... checked control linkage. Inspected the by-pass valve. If so, some things to try for low charge pressure before assuming that the charge pump is bad.

If charge pressure is LOW... inspect inlet filter... OK... inspect charge relief valve... OK... inspect implement relief vakve... OK... inspect charge pump.

If charge presssure is OK... check system pressure...if it is LOW... inspect acceleration valves... OK... inspect charge check valves.

How does your tractor hydro perform when you are driving it around is my question? Do you have a loss of power when it is being driven type of thing. Just curious on this. Keep us posted.

 

[aowsley]

Bob M- does it backfire out the exhaust or carb,when it first dies? it sounds like ignition at this point, did you use a kohler coil or an automotive 12v coil? and how long ago did you replace the ignition parts?...T

 

[tcbusch]

I picked up my new tiller a couple of weeks ago. The chains seemed loose to me so I disassembled the tiller to check the condition of the chain. The chains looked like new though I could tell they were not because of the side play. I made a judgement call that the chains would last many more years so I oiled them and left them in.

As long as I had the whole thing apart I decided to weld up all the cracks. I wire brushed all the parts. I painted the whole thing with rust converting primer (or whatever its called). I finished it off with a top coat. I put the tiller back together with new bolts, I needed to cut a half a dozen of them off.

The tiller was missing one of the rear flaps. My next task is to fabricate a new flap, and pound the bends out of the old ones.

With any luck all my paint won't scrape off on my first till.

 

[rchristensen]

MY neighbors 1450 started acting up last year, it would run fine for and hour or two and then lose power. He would shut it off and then restart it and it would run fine. As the year wore on it started acting up more but would always run good after he shut it down and restarted it. I finally pulled the carb and checked it out and it was good, replaced the plug, but by then fall was here and it had cooled down and the mowing was short so he didn't have the problem very often.

This spring when it warmed up it started missing again. I gave him some MMO and we tried another plug. Since I am working full time again I didn't have time to play with it. It progressively got worse and finally it would run for 45 mins to an hour and then quit. Let it cool down and it would start and run good again.

Finally I got a Saturday to work on it and we replaced the coil and condensor and ran it to see how long it would run. After about 30 to 45 mins it backfired and quit. I was standing in front of it and saw sparks come out the muffler housing, then I knew what the problem was.

Pulled it into the garage and tore it down and the head gasket was bad, the head was cracked and chunks of the head around the crack were missing. I put a new head on it and replaced the componets I had previously replaced and it runs fine. I still can't believe how good it ran until it would quit and then restart and run fine again. I guess the gasket was letting go at high temp and then resealing when it cooled down or you restarted it.

That is one of the problems with a quiet line, had it been a 1xx you would have seen the black junk on the cylinder below the head gasket.

 

[dtiernan]

Charlie,

That spring loaded button on the Model "J" is a primer button to aid in cold starting. If you don't want to break your choke habit, there is solenoid that mounts over the primer and uses a dash mounted switch to activate it.

 

[rbedell]

Colin T:

the kt motors just are not as robust as some of the other kohlers... part of it dealing with series I/series II and the oil distribution system

I am a little confused what you mean by this.

Could you further explain or expand on this...??

 

[bmavian]

I can't seem to log in to administration with my correct password.How do I fix that?

 

[digger]

Bob M,
Administration is just for Bob & Bryan.

 

[digger]

Dennis T,
I like the solenoid idea, I might have to do that, thanks

 

[kmcconaughey]

Denny, Jerry, I've used that trick of checking in the dark for bad plug wires too. I *discovered* it by accident one evening in my youth when out carousing with some buddies. A group of us were riding around the east side of St. Paul, MN (this was not my normal stomping grounds as I was a farm boy from western Wisconsin, but my best friend at the time was a guy I met at my first "real job" and he had meet these other guys while he was in a youth drum and bugle corp and ya see....., well that's another story.....

), any way we were in a Buick that belonged to one of my friends. It had been running rough so when we stopped by another guy's place we popped up the hood and it was like a light show, blue sparks everywhere! I'll never forget how that looked and I have "tested" plug wires on my own and other's vehicles this way over the years.

 

[dfrisk]

ANTHONY - Son has been helping Me tinker with stuff since He was 5-6 yrs old. He's actually a pretty good mechanic. He's built a couple drag race engines, like a 408 CID 351 Windsor Ford in an '81 Mustang that will run DEEP into the low 10's with no power adders, just a BIG Holley carb. And He helped a Buddy tune another Mustang for WFC down in St. Louis two weeks ago that ran consistent 10's and finished 8th in His class out of almost 80 cars. But as a member of the "Nintendo Generation" some of the old technology can baffle Him at times....things like points & condensors.... and Is the adjustment screw on the carb adjusting gasoline flow or an air bleed....Sometimes He doesn't have the patience He should and it causes Him some problems. Like Wyatt & I caught Him in the shop one time trying to Exorsize the GREMLINS that possessed His truck. He'd just put electric fans on and EVERYTHING went wacko.... He was tearing into the wiring and changing stuff all around and nothing would work right. I grabbed a 1/2" wrench, pulled the battery cables and the terminal cleaning brush and cleaned the connections REAL good and reinstalled them and everything worked fine again....It's amazing how 12V components will act with only 4-5V

 

[mkopishke]

Anthony:

Just thinking about it, even if it was installed backwards (which I'm going to figure out) it doesn't seem like the difference between each side would be great enough to hit the cam.

I guess it could be te cam needing to be shimmed, I could have swore I checked the end play though...

 

[kmcconaughey]

Terry, nice job on the tiller!

 

[bbowman]

Just picked up a 3pt hitch for my 122, but it installs differently than my wideframes.Can't get any help locally; anybody got a post for this installation?