Farmall M serial number questions

SMinWi · Dec 26, 2009

I've been reading the book that was from my grandpa's Farmall M
I was always told it was a Distillate, but it was over hauled so it was a gasoline.

The tractor and engine serial numbers are in this book. I noticed they start with FBK I also noticed that they made a M with Kerosene engine.

Does the K in the serial number stand for Kerosene??

Red Mist · Dec 26, 2009

No. FBK is the model designation for a Farmall M. Why? There is a lot of speculation, one theory being that when the tractor was in the design stage, it was originally going to be called the Farmall K. But, as far as I know, that is only a theory.
mike

sflem849 · Dec 26, 2009

Red mist is correct on the FBK. If you need some useless trivia info the diesel version was FDBK ######
Your hood will probably have an extra small hole in front of the gas tank opening. This 7/8(?) gallon tank was for good gas while distallate was stored in the big tank. You would start on the good gas and then run on the distallate. It had less power, but it was really cheap. Other indicators of a former distallate tractor include a heat regulating manifold. Not sure if that is what it is really called, but it had a lever thing on the side that you could control the manifold heat with. They also came with radiator shutters to make the tractor run hotter. I guess they needed to be good and warm to burn the junk fuel.
Do some research on it and you will find a lot of info.

big_red_man · Dec 26, 2009

While kerosene and distillate were/are not the same, I believe really old, old tractors sometimes burned kerosene and later ones more often burned distillate. Many people thought they were virtually the same. A one-time distillate tractor may still have the small starting tank next to the large fuel tank and/or the hole in the hood for the small tank. Hope this helps.

Andrew Z · Dec 26, 2009

just to add to what the others said, a kero/dist M would have a diffrent head then a gas M. The compression ratios were lower to reduce engine knocking from buring lower grade fuels. Other things would have been slightly diffrent are internals to the carb when compared to a gas one. And as one fellow already said the kero engines were produced earlier 1939-1940. In the end of 1940 the kero engine was droped from the line and just the distillate remained, along with the gas and latter the diesel in 1941.

Andrew

SMinWi · Dec 26, 2009

(quoted from post at 03:31:38 12/27/09) Red mist is correct on the FBK. If you need some useless trivia info the diesel version was FDBK ######
Your hood will probably have an extra small hole in front of the gas tank opening. This 7/8(?) gallon tank was for good gas while distallate was stored in the big tank. You would start on the good gas and then run on the distallate. It had less power, but it was really cheap. Other indicators of a former distallate tractor include a heat regulating manifold. Not sure if that is what it is really called, but it had a lever thing on the side that you could control the manifold heat with. They also came with radiator shutters to make the tractor run hotter. I guess they needed to be good and warm to burn the junk fuel.
Do some research on it and you will find a lot of info.

That small Gas tank was taken off of ours, but i can remember it laying in some junk pile here. My dad welded the hole shut in the hood. It had a Gas maniflod put on it, and it had the shutters.

Farmall M serial number questions

SMinWi

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Red Mist

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sflem849

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big_red_man

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Andrew Z

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SMinWi

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