My cub finally runs... little rough though.

I finally got the cub I've been working on over the past 6 years to run! I got this tractor after I came home from Afghanistan(with IA army nt'l guard). It was a basket case so I have spent the last several years buying missing parts and pieceing it back togeather. I had my buddy push start me with it the other week. After a little bit of tweaking on the carb we got it to run. Now I am seeing a small issue that I noticed before possibly coming back to hold things up a bit though. When it is running it backfires out of the carb intake. What I'm pretty sure is causing this is I have two lifters that are sticking a couple of valves open. A friend of mine told me to do both the cold and hot valve adjustments to see if that remedys the problem. Anybody think this will help? My timing is spot on so I know that isnt the issue. I have actually seen the valves stuck open due to the lifters hanging up. I pulled the cover off of the block behind the carb and saw two of the lifters stuck up while all of the others still move. Thanks in advance for any help. I get to go out to the farm to work on it more thursday so we'll se what can be done. Thanks guys!

do the adjustments and clean up everything with solvent and atoothbrush, and then run 25% of your engine oil as cheap walmart ATF fluid, plus a lil atf in the gas tank. yeah.. it'l smoke a bit and in the end you might sacrifice a set of spark plugs.. maybe not though.

see what it gets ya.

once it gets some hours on it with the higher detergent, adjustment, clean up and lube.. might just be fine.

I've seen ford N engines that sat up have sticky valves fro a while till the same 'ritual' was performed over them..

soundguy

Adjustments won't help sticking. It will just help them stick in the right place.

You've got a rust or gummed-up oil problem.

Mkirsh, I could easily see that being a source of the problem. The old oil I drained out was NASTY!!! I flushed with diesel fuel several times before putting in the new oil but maybe I didnt get all the sludge that was present cleaned out. Soundguy- cubs have a flathead engine with the valves in the block similar to old ford's like a 9N I worked on so that sounds like some good advice. I will give it a try tomorrow and see what I come up with. Thanks fellas!