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Farmall H with fuel issues

N

Nick Schaff

New User
I have a 1952 H and I am at my wit's end trying to get it to run right. This tractor's primary duty these days is to be my woodcutting tractor. It ran fine the first couple years I cut wood with it, but now it has some problems.

First I should say that my father-in-law has owned this tractor for about 40 years. It is now mine, but he rebuilt the motor as a high school shop class project. It has seen no updates since then.

My problem started when I would pull the old manure spreader out to cut wood. The engine started to sputter and hesitate when it got warm. This progressed into a very hot muffler: hot enough to vaporize the galvanization off the new muffler. Then it started to backfire when I shut it off. Now it acts like the governor isn't working since when I put a load on the motor it just bogs down instead of compensating.

I should also mention that I have put a carb kit in it, but it doesn't seem like I can get the carb adjusted properly. It also has a dual fuel manifold, even though this isn't a dual fuel motor.

Any advice would be welcomed!
 
Your symptoms all point to a lean fuel mixture. See if you can get it to run better by gradually closing the choke while under load. If you find a choke setting where it runs better, a lean mixture is the culprit.

Some possible causes:

1 - Restriction in the fuel supply (plugged sediment bulb or carb inlet screen, junk in the tank covering the fuel outlet, kink in the fuel line, etc)

2 - Carb float set too low. (This is unlikely – can usually be compensated by tinkering with the mixture screws a little)

3 - Junk inside the carb is plugging the primary fuel circuit. Also possibly grossly misadjusted carb high speed screw.

4 - Vacuum leak at the carb to manifold and/or manifold to head gaskets. Also since yours is a dual fuel manifold could be it’s rotted internally and is sucking exhaust directly into the intake manifold.

5 - If the manifold heat flapper is set at “hot” it’ll cause a lean mixture when the engine warms up – especially with the crappy “emission friendly” gasoline we’re now forced to buy.

Hope this helps!
 
Your problem is not the gas. Chech your timing check your plugs make sure the wires are going to the rite plugs. Check the cap and rotor are they clean. Take all the plugs out and run a compression check you can mess around forever but if you dont have even compression on all four it probably wont run good.
 
How are the points & condenser/ point gap? Many of your symptoms are classic for bad ignition components. Possible coil----but not likely.
 
You bring up a good point. The piston rings are rather worn on this thing so some oil gets up into the combustion chamber. My father-in-law always used synthetic oil in the H since it didn"t seem to foul the plugs as bad as regular oil. I put some regular oil in it last year and that seems to coincide with when this problem started. I replaced the plugs and also change the oil back to synthetic, but the plugs may have fouled again.
 
I've never liked having the dual fuel manifold on the tractor. The shutter lever is frozen in place, so I can't move the shutter to open or close it. This is one of the things I have suspected to be a problem; that it was sucking exhaust gases into the intake side of the manifold, causing the lean condition.
 
I haven"t had time to look yet. I have a small baby and a 2 year old daughter, plus a dozen other projects to get to, so the H is waiting. I hope to maybe cut some wood of Friday so I"ll look into it then.
 
Well I tried to start the H this last weekend but it was too cold outside and the battery needed to be charged. After a day on the charger I managed to get it fired up last night and I fiddled with the timing. All I did was turn the distributor clockwise to the end of the adjustment and then turned it counter-clockwise a smidge. This smoothed out the idle quite a bit. It sounded like it was laboring beforehand, and and then sounded more like an H should sound afterword. Then I decided to take it for a short spin to see if the governor would work or not, or is it the timing advance??? It seemed to run better but then I wasn"t able to put much of a load on it during my short test drive before supper was ready.

Another question: where is the timing advance apparatus? What do I check to see if this is working properly?
 
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