?? Farmall 560 Diesel

I have recently bought a Farmall 560 Diesel, and I have some questions about the operation of it. I DO have an operator's manual, and the I&T shop manual, and I have read both of them.

I don't have a lot of experience with diesels, and there are some things that the manual doesn't really address.

The most important thing is, how much shutting down and restarting is reasonable, ie, at what point are you abusing the battery, starter, and glow plugs. I know that with the old pony start Cats, and the gas start Internationals, they were pretty much fired off in the morning and run until the work was done or they needed fuel. On the other hand I see modern direct start engines being started and stopped repeatedly, just like a gas engine. I suppose that with the glow pugs, this engine is kind of half way between, but with $4.00 fuel, I don't need a lot of excuses to shut it down.

I won't be using the tractor for a lot of utility type work, but right now while it is raining at least once every day, I am puttering around, trying to work the kinks out of it, in case I ever get a chance to start haying. I got in a couple hours on it with the bush hog, and a couple more with the disk, what a difference from my old M. Mostly, however, I have been moving machinery around, hooking up, servicing, and testing, then parking that machine and pulling out another, nothing that will even warm up the engine.

I have gone through it, changed all the fluids and filters, and changed out the fast hitch for a swinging drawbar off an M. The thought of a hay baler flopping around on the fast hitch drawbar was too scary.

On a related note, it looks like I am stuck with shutting it down to be able to relieve pressure on the hydraulics when I need to disconnect hoses. With my M, I can just push in the main control rod, and cycle the two way valve a couple times, and the pressure is released. I don't see any way to do something similar with the live system on the 560.

You can start and stop that motor as you need to with no problems. Keep the glow plugs in good shape. You will probably need them even at 50 or 60 degrees as the 560 is not a direct injection motor. Wayne

Shoup Mfg. Co. of Kankakee has a pushon/pulloff style coulper with locking/unlocking levers like what comes as standard equipment on tractors starting sometime in the '60s. You could couple/uncouple hoses under pressure without shuting off tractor engine. I have two sets of these and they work sweet! Armand

Once warm, we never had any problems re-starting ours without using glo-plugs. You need good batteries, & the compression should be good-however. Even at $4 a gallon, that 560 uses so little fuel at idle that it won't cause a financial burden. Cool the tractor down for at least 2 minutes after working it hard so the heat dissipates.

Also YOU WILL REGRET REMOVING YOUR FAST HITCH. i WOULD NOT BE WITHOUT IT. I shelled over 200,000 bu. of corn with a PTO powered John Deere # 6 corn sheller and never had any trouble with the fasthitch! PUT THAT PUPPY BACK ON AND TRY IT. It can be locked solid and can't be beat for moving implemts around the yard as you can picked implemts with jacks off the ground with changing the jacks. Armand