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Farmall A fuel system

E

Enar

Member
I have a 1939 Farmall A and it has a Zenith carburetor that looks as if it is set up to run on distillate (diesel). The tractor has the big tank and the little one. It was running on gas when I bought it. Can someone enlighten me on the process that starts on one thing and runs on another?

When I get this thing back together, I plan to run it on gas, but if I could make both work, that would be a little different.

I've had this tractor for about three years, but something called cancer interrupted my restoration efforts. Now I'm back at it and impatient to get it running again.

Thanks for any help.
 
The idea is that the old distillate fuel was pretty low grade and about impossible to start a cold motor with. You started the tractor and gas and ran it that way for a while. Once warm woul would swithc over to distillate. Between runs you had two choices. You could switch it back to gas for the last few minutes of running so that the bowl was full of gas for the next startup. The other would be if you shut it down without switching over, the dual fuel carbs typically had a drain valve on the bowl, so that you could drain out the remaining distillate and let gas down into the bowl to get it started.
 
Diesel is not the same as distillate. Distillate (tractor fuel, as it was called) is lighter (more like gasoline) than diesel. It will not operate well, or reasonably if at all on diesel. Some were made to run on Kerosene, which is like #2 diesel but more well refined. These run the intake system and coolant very hot to vaporize the oily fuel.
I would not run it on the distillate, I would use the second tank for gasoline, and run it dry periodically to keep it fresh and operational. Jim
 
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