Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Adventures in old tractors...

Last Friday I drove Gulchendiggensmoothen home with smoke coming off the exhaust manifold from the diesel dripping onto it. The return line from the fuel injectors is interrupted by this ... thing, and the thing is made of aluminum, and threading steel fuel line fittings into an aluminum ... thing, if you do it often enough over a long enough period, is going to bring its own reward at some point in the form of tiny aluminum shavings where the threads used to be. I hate that. I thought that fitting was leaking before because the flair was cracked, which it was. But the replacement line and a little more vibration pulled the threads right out of the ... whatever it is.

In true shadetree fashion, the obvious solution to this problem was to just bypass the whole ... thing ... with a piece of flexible fuel line. I needed to actually get around to doing this, because a) I'm leaving for a week and need to park the tractor somewhere a bit less conspicuous, and b) it's threatening rain and I need to put the engine hood back on.

My main point of concern is that three fuel lines go to this whatever the hell it is, and I can only bypass it by tying two of them together. The third seems to go to the intake manifold, but because at one point two of them disappear behind the engine block I can only take an educated guess as to which is which, coming out the other side. I guessed poorly the first time, and when I cranked the engine fuel started shooting out the ... thing ... and I had to swap stuff around again.

The only way to be sure I'd really gotten the leak corked up was to start the engine, and of course at this point the battery, weakened by most of a week of sitting out in the cold, packed it in. The Jeep does that to me on a regular basis, which is why I'm never far from a battery charger.

So now we're patiently waiting for the damned battery to recharge, and I'm gonna go do something else now.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Without seeing the thing, could it be a "bleeder" for getting air out of the fuel line,in someone lets it run out of fuel? That's just a guess. The old Ford Dextra at work two jobs ago had a gizmo on it that sounds similar-I was told it was a bleeder valve..

Joel said...

No, the bleeder's on the fuel pump. This thing has almost got to be some sort of emission control device, as though it's supposed to draw fumes into the intake manifold. But the design doesn't seem quite right for that. I really don't know what it is.

Charles said...

Have you considered using a Helicoil (TM) to repair the damaged threads? Might be cheaper than replacing the "thing". Or possibly screwing something else up by bypassing the "thing".

Anonymous said...

Could it be a vacuum-operated valve of some kind? A fuel shut-off? How old is this thing? I've never seen emissions controls on farm/construction stuff. Again, these are guesses. Does it have a blower? Some sort of overpressure shut off? Sounds to me like something vacuum operated...

Anonymous said...

Ahem ....
Photos would be very handy.

Then those that actually deal with these "things" on a regular basis [ or used to ...] can make more lucid suggestions ?

I'll go be quiet now ....

gooch