farmall h sn and fuel

frogbert · Sep 28, 2010

I inherited a farmall h and have a couple of questions.
the sn is FBH 181058 (1944) with no other numbers or letters after it which indicates it should run on distillates. what are distillates? There is no second tank but there is an extra hole in the hood in front of the water temp gauge. if this tractor is supposed to run on distillates how does it work and how do I reconvert it? Is distillates cheaper than gas?
Thanks for any info. Kevin

CNKS · Sep 28, 2010

It was designed to run on distillate or kerosene. Distillate, at least the version sold in the 40's is no longer available, kerosene is much more expensive than gasoline. Your tractor will run fine on gas. It's not worth changing unless you want absolute originality. You will need the small tank, shutters for the radiator and the accompanying linkage, along with a manifold with a working heat valve, most are stuck. There are 10's of thousands of H's and M's like yours running on gas.

Anonymous-0 · Sep 28, 2010

Distillate is kerosene. This was an option during world war II, and at the time it was a cheap alternative to gasoline. You could burn either, but if you ran on distillate you had to start the engine on gasoline and then switch it over to distillate, so there was a small starting tank for gasoline. Yours has had the starting tank removed, so there is a hole in the hood. If you are restoring it and want it to be original, you should find a starting tank and hook it up. But you would not want to run it on kerosene now, it"s super expensive.

CNKS · Sep 28, 2010

Distillate and kerosene are two separate products. IH made 3 engines, one for each fuel. Differences are in the parts book.

Tyler Jackson · Sep 28, 2010

Mines a 46 that has never run on distilate. Got it off the original owner and he said he never did because he thought it hurt the engine because it sounded bad. So you would be ok to run just straight gas. You start on gas with the little tank then if it's the correct sediment bowl it should have 2 inlets. One from the gas tank and one from the little tank. On the bottom of the little tank it has a shut off valve so first you shut it off thn you turn on the big tank valve and itll spit and sputter when it switches over. I have an extrs tank but its shot. i picked it up off an H at a local junk yard. Also I believe it has a higher compression head to run thr kerosene

Tyler Jackson · Sep 28, 2010

I agree with CNKS. It's easier to fill up the large tank with gas and run it. If the original sediment bowl leaks I don't think anyone make replacesments either. I had to change the sediment bowl on mine from some kind of pot metal to glass because it leaked so bad. side thought ha

pete 23 · Sep 28, 2010

I have done engine rebuilds, valve jobs etc on a jillion H and M tractors with dist and kero heads. Most had been overhauled a few times and to compensate for the low comp head we used a high alt piston like a 5000ft. or even 8000ft. to bring them into a comparable compression ratio of a std gasoline head and they all burned gasoline. This was starting way back in 1958 and I never saw one running on what we referred to as tractor fuel in those days, always gasoline. My father in law was running tractor fuel in his John Deere G and D but brother in law switched both to gasoline pistons in about 1960 and 61. The old tractor supply catalogs gave compression ratios using different altitude pistons with all the different heads.

frogbert · Sep 29, 2010

Thanks guys I will leave it as is, just wanted to know.
kevin

farmall h sn and fuel

frogbert

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CNKS

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Tyler Jackson

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Tyler Jackson

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pete 23

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frogbert

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