burning out carbon on an IH 240?

He said if I start to boil over just peel back the bag a bit like running a diesel in winter. He told me not to do it at night because the sparks and crap blowing out the stack, once I got the engine REALLY hot and burning the carbon deposits, would give me a fright.

This guy is 86 and knows a lot about old tractors. But I just want to do a sanity check with you other old-tractor experts to know if anybody else has heard of doing this and whether it is truly a good idea or just one guy's opinion. He's got a lot of old tractors but I only have this one and can't afford to replace it or do an engine rebuild. Thanks, guys.

Dave D

Don't do that; you really have to be on top of things for that method to work.

Do this and I guarantee you it will clean that tractor out and make it run like a new one:

1. Go to your local GM dealer and get a can of liquid "Top Engine Cleaner". Don't buy the "injector cleaner" type, but the fluid type. It will cost something like $12 a can.

2. Get the tractor hot as you can by working it a little.

3. Set the tractor at about 1/3 throttle

4. Use a spray bottle of some such thing with it set to "stream" so that you can 'feed' this stuff into the engine via the carb.

5. Feed this into the carb as fast as you can. The engine will start to smoke, fact is your neighbors will think you're tryin' to burn the house down, keep feeding it all you can, as fast as you can without killing the engine until you are down to about the bottom third of the can.

6. Finally, kill the engine by 'flooding' it with the remainder of the contents.

7. Let the tractor set over night.

8. In the morning, start the tractor, take it out on the road and run it up the road in road gear just as hard as it will go until the smoke clears up.

I have saved hundreds of engines in this way. Cleans that combustion chamber up clean as a whistle until you'll swear you own a new tractor.

Just my 2 cents,

Allan

I had a mail carrier one time with an old Chev pickup. Darned thing had over 250K miles on it and he brought it in for a second opinion.

Three cylinders showed no compression at all and everyone else in town including the Chevy garage told him it would take a motor.

I doped that ol' gal this way and it brought it right out of the woods. Hittin' on all eight and he ran it for years afterwards.

This was back in the days of the carburetors, though.

Allan

However blocking the radiator to help the engine fully warm up WILL significantly reduce condensation/gasoline dilution/sludge buildup in the lube oil. Also a warm engine runs better – especially in carb icing conditions - and will burn less fuel.

And switching the hotter D21 plug will go a long way toward eliminating future spark plug carbon fouling.

FWIW I’ve installed winterfronts that fully block the radiators on my tractors (which do only light work in winter weather) for many years. But as captaink suggests a working temperature gage – and keeping an eye on it - is absolutely essential if you do!

One clarification: Blocking airflow to the radiator does not increase stress on the fan blades. Rather the converse is true – it REDUCES blade stress. (Ask any engineer with axial fan design experience…). A blade failure behind a blocked radiator is purely coincidental.

Now stay warm!!

Second, I never, EVER, recommend placing anything directly against the front of the radiator when there is a shroud of any kind around the fan. I say this from a bad experience my uncle had doing this. The fan broke a blade off and it went through the top tank of the radiator! Looking back and learning from it I figure it was due to excessive pressures on the blades (because they were not able to move air through the radiator) that caused the fan blade to break. Could have been a freak thing, but I’m not taking the chance. Covering the front of the grill is another matter entirely. This allows air to still move through the radiator keeping the stress on the fan similar to an open front, but still changing the air flow to come from the warmer area near the engine. Usually this is sufficient to bring the engine up to operating temp.

As one guy on this board so wisely said, posting questions here costs nothing, fixing something caused by lack of knowledge takes time and money, sometimes lots!

I have an M with no thermostat that I run all winter with a feed sack over the grill. Still can't get it hot.

As with anything, just don't overdo it, like go in for lunch while it is running.

I would always take the advice of an old guy you can go back and see face to face rather than on a board like this when you have some advice-givers guessing about equipment they don't own.

I'm not knocking anybody in particular, but occasionally there'll be advice given that is suspect. I think people are more likely to give unfounded advice when they know they'll never be confronted.

Frankly, I don't know if I need to lie awake nights worrying about carbon buildup or not. I am not going to enter this IH 240 in pulling contests or bet the farm on it being available and producing horsepower to spec 24/7 like many other good men on this board. As a rural homeowner I only need it to start and run "pretty good" and swing the loader to cut through 6' snowbanks starting real soon.

But...the 86 yr old tractor guy really thought that putting a high heat load on this unit was "important," to use his parting word to me. Then again, he's never actually seen my tractor or listened to it run with the new carb and hotter plugs.

Thanks, guys.

If it aint broke, leave it alone!

Have a good one!

steveormary