IH gassers no premium gas? thoughts on previous post

Just thinking about Tractor Vet's response to the post below re: can't get 93 octane any more and just brainstorming. What would happen if:

1. put an undersized piston or oversized sleeve so it has room to expand without seizing? is it possible without getting into blowby issues?

2. what about mixing something with the (admittedly inferior) gas to make it burn a little slower/cooler? thinking along the lines of adding maybe 5-10% #2 oil or even heavier oil eg 2 cycle. as long as you don't go overboard and start fouling plugs that should help the situation right? course you want to go back to straight gas for light load work.

3. isn't this the same kind of engineering problem that racers deal with by adding water injection? how big of a deal to add that to a 706 lol.

just wondering out loud here.

Funny you should mention water injection..I actually have the water injection system salvaged from a ww2 f4u corsair and I have a 706...I think if I altered my engine covers to make it look like a 706 LP it just might not look to bizzare..I have yet to have any fuel problems though so I think I'll wait.

If it were as simple as tossing in some 2-cycle oil, or using some different parts, tractor vet wouldn't be in the pickle he's in right now with his 706. He's done enough of them that if anyone would know the tricks, he would.

I agree, water injection would be an ideal solution.

Heavy oils have dramatically lower octane. My research indicates that premium fuel does bfix the problem R+M method of analysis. Advance must be accurate, cold plugs, and a bit rich. Real time knock sensors would be good to tell the tale. Loose pistons transfer even less heat and melt quicker. one answer is piston cooling jets in the crankcase. Soild oil cooiling works. I have a CM450E Honda It will run for 5 minutes without piston cooling. Jim

I dont think adding oil would help either, as Jim states,in fact it may hurt. The two-cycle engine guys know this well. If a two cycle burns down by going lean and hot and making the oil film go away...then adding more oil in the mix may help right? Wrong...the oil displaces even more of the fuel and it burns down quicker the next time !

> I have yet to have any fuel problems though so I
> think I'll wait.

Don't wait too long. I've a broken piston in my 544 for which years of knocking may be to blame. Water injection sounds interesting. My wife won't let me buy premium gas.

BTW isopropanol (gasline deicer) is about as good as it gets as an octane-increasing additive. Anyone know of a small-volume low-cost source for it? Industrial grade would be good enough, of course.

Certainly premium gas is the best. But in the other post TV mentioned that 93 is no longer available in his area. So my thinking is find a way to keep the tractor going with what's available.

they are not making the 93 anymore with out the methanol and this is the problem the methanol . way back when we had the first melt down and i saw the damage to the pistons i knew wright away that it was fuel related , from my past days with race engines and piston failure . and know that if it leans out they get hot , if the timing is to far back they get hot , if the timing is to far ahead they get to hot . Ok i know my dist work is correct i know that the changes to the carb is correct and i know that the cam was done correctly so it had to be fuel . Now my customer had ran the tractor with gas from the little gas station a mile and a half from the farm and i knew that he had bought hightest as i had to wait for him to finish putting gas in before i could fill my truck , and yes i ran the hightest on my 88F350 with a 460 in it . And after i filled we both went to the farm and hooked up the plow . He had about 32-34 hours on the engine after rebuild doing chore work thru the fall and winter and would come up and borrow a tractor off me to grind feed with so that he would not put tomuch a load on the fresh engine . Once the plow was hooked and they were a set of 540 4x16"s we went to the field and started plowing . I wanted to listen to it working and see how it was going to perform . Well i was impressed with it"s performance and stayed for about and hour and a half . There were no issues that day and he ran it for a full day on the gas he got up the road . During that day the guy showed up with 500 gallon of gas and filled Eugene"s tank with what was suppose to be 93 octane and he paid for 93 . Eugene plowed on into the evening till his wife made him come in. The next day he went to his tank and filled up then off to the field He did NOT make the end of the field when she seized . Well he called me and said she was LOCKED up . I went up and it had sat for about 20 min. to a half hour by the time i got there and it had cooled down and fired up BUT now it was knocking damage done , so back to the shop two miles away from the farm . Pulled the head and all six were toast Pulled the pistons out and you ould then see where the problem started . we were lucky enough to get away with running the ridged hone down and they cleaned up and instead of having the .004 skirt to wall clearance that i put on each piston we now had .0043 Still within the spec."s . We then started the quest of finding someone to test the gas in Eugene"s tank . His nephew down in Columbus Ohio knew of a lab that could do this work. we called them and they told us to go by a NEW plastic one gallon can and to run some gas out of the hose before we put the gas into the can and to seal it as tight as we could and then deliver it to them . we did just as they told us and as soon as the can had a gallon in it and the cap was as tight as we could get it we were off to Columbus . We handed it to the Chemist and he wrote down our phone numbers and we left . We never told him who"s gas was in that can all we told him was that it was SUPPOSE to 93 octane . As we were getting off I71 onto U S 30 east my cell phone rings and it is the Chemist and he proceeds to tell me that the gas in the can was Ashlands gas and it was 87 octane NOT THE 93 that Eugene paid for and it was laced with MTB and Methanol and that those two were the main cause of our melt down along with the low octane and that he would send us a detailed graph and try and put it into more LAYMEN terms as to what was going on and show the difference between the 87 octane burn and the 93 octane burn and the difference in heat at peak burn . He also told us that the 87 is a FLASH burn hot and fast and the 93 is a more COOLER and longer burn giving better power spread out over the burn . Now from what i learned Thursday our GOOD non Methanol gas went bye bye because of our great EPA mandate that we must now have the 10% and they are wanting up to 15% . Now i also can tell ya that my wife the War Dept has been B*%#(!t-en * because her 03 Durango has not been getting the fuel mileage that it has been getting , now mind ya with the 360 iron block 360 under the hood it has never got what i thought it should but it would do almost 18 out on the road and 15-15.5 running around her area of travel. My wife works for Girl Scout of NEO and has a lot of driving to do . If she is not working in the county then she has a 52 mile round trip drive to the office each day . well i drove the durango the other day and it is almost gutless with not much pep on the hill and she is down shifting on them to maintain speed = more fuel sucking . Asked her where she bought gas at last as the Durango is as fussy as she is , she tells me that she filled up at Shell , shell USE to run the best and the next best was Smith"s gas , OH GUESS WHAT they now have the 10% blend where up till mid March they did not So now we are down to 15 15.5 highway and 13running around the back roads and small town . Yep i put the scan tool to her just to be sure along with a new set of plugs wires and cap and rotor. cleaned the ideal bypass and throttle body , No change . Ya can not make power with out compression cam timing and ing. timing . And fuel to make this all happen . Myself i am still thinking on this. , a big help would be Forged pistons , and here again i had a talk with Clevite about this and the responce i got was well nobody uses them old tractors to do work with and we can make these pistons cheaper and faster just like we touched on the lack of parts for the MD thru the 450 D as i asked about how we could get a run of mains and rods along with pistons and sleeve made . well had i hit the big lotto i could have them make a run of 1500 sets . As hey were talking megga bucks to toll up .

Oh and Oil is a NO NO unless it is Low Ash or you can expect to learn all about exhaust valve replacement .

With great respect, Methanol and MTBE (Methel Tertiary Butyl Ether) are not put in any gasoline today in the US. Methanol is not Ethanol very different and it is much harder on plastic and pumps as well as an even better cleaner of deposits (not a good thing). Ethanol is used (it is distilled grain spirits, not wood alcohol).
MTBE has proven to be a health risk in gasoline, and its vapor pressure is way low. I have had an entire tank geyser out of an Audi onto an air compressor. It didn't blow because it was not running! Jim
I think you ment Ethanol. in your post. Jim

Jim, you need to put on your official tractor vet translator glasses.

When vet says methanol, he means ethanol. Just like when he says wright he means right or write.

As long as the message gets across, wright?

I concede on terminology it's alkihol my mistake . But when the lab report was done the gas did in fact have MTB in it . And you know yourself that the gas of today is not the same as what use to be made. Just like in my old Clevite engine part books from back in the late 80's in the performance section it cautions you on compression ratios for building a somewhat performance engine and it state back then that 9 to 1 compression ratio with LIMITED full advance of 36 degrees at 2000 on 93 for street use . Sure a far cry from the 10.5 to 1 and 38-40 degrees or the old 429-460 fords with 11 to 1 . as to what i am going to do with the 706 i am almost at wits end , I said something to Eugene that maybe we need to just replace it and got the NO . I sold him that tractor almost 18 years ago when he was down and out . He traded me as plum wore out S/M that i allowed him 650 for it and took that off the price of the 706 . 90% of the equipment on his farm come from me . sold his brother a bunch of equipment including a 706 gasser that we rebuilt just last year . I am not one for engine swapping even though i have done more then my fair share of it over the years But now i am starting to think about taking a ride up to the school bus junk yard and maybe getting a DT360 and seeing what it would take to stuff that in the 706 .

What about blending in the high octane race gas just for the heavy work ? It is still available outta the pump around here ( MN ) . Yes , I know it is expensive, but so is burned pistons. I used to do this with my high compression 327 chevy back in the 80s and 90s and never had ping or knock or burn down troubles. I think I was running it at about 25/75 most of the time unless I was expecting some heavy action ( wink ) and then it was 50/50. Might work....

One of the primary factors is engine speed. When a tractor turns 2000, there is way more time for the flame front to over pressure the remaining fule and air detonating it. The 6000 to 7500 RPM of a (then) hot engine allows the combustion to happen in 1/3 the time (about, and in milliseconds) Maybe one way to reduce detonation would be to put an adjustable stop on the advance, and set it back about 5 degrees from factory spec.
I still think oil cooled pistons work well. Jim

There was and still is quite a few of those ol' 706 and 656 gassers around here. I doubt very much if any of those tractors ever saw a drop of gasoline that was rated over 87 octane, and they are still going strong. None that I know of ever suffered any catastrophic engine failure because of the gasoline being used or for any other reason. Maybe that is because the owners of those tractors followed the advice of the dealer and pulled only a 4 bottom plow instead of a 5 bottom, or a 14 foot disk instead of a an 18 foot, and also because they chose a gear low enough that the engine did not NEED to make maximum power just to get the job done.

A 706 is NOT a 1206, nor even an 806, and it should not be expected to do the same amount of work in the same time frame.

Take care of your tractor and it will take care of you. Abuse it and it will be gone.

Good point about the rpm making a difference in the time allowed for detonation to occur, I agree. Maybe water injection would be the cheapest solution after all. It could be set up on a switch so the farmer could just use it when heavy loads are expected. It sounds like the operator in this case is conscienous enough to know when it would be needed. System could be automated too, but why complicate things I would say...

So now that things have quieted down let's stir everything back up. Don't want to pay for 100LL AVGAS to farm with but even though it's tagged "low lead" it's got a butt-load of the stuff in it, will we get the desired effect if we take 93 octane Shell or BP that purports to be "Ethanol free" and add 20-33% 100LL? Neighbor I worked for when I was in High School ran an 806 LP gas special, can we go back to working our '06 Farmalls by switching them over to LP gas? The farmer with the 806 wasn't known for his maintenance programs and tended to run things until they quit. Wasn't a fan of changing oil or filters. At about 3000 hours his 806 started running a bit rough and he figures it needed an overhaul so he sent it out. The folks that went through it said everything was within factory specs, they installed rings & bearings and gave it a good tune-up (which is probably all it really needed) far as I know it ran fine until he messed up on his Bobcat and killed himself. So back to the discussion topic will changing them over to LP gas allow us to work them to their full potential? It's really cool to see the water vapor rolling out the stack when you load 'em up on LP gas.

Tractor vet, let me know if you need a parts list to cram a DT360 into a 706.

I agree with you Rusty. Most of the 706 problems were from overloading or turning the rpms up to over use the engine. The higher octane was sure a good bandaid for some. But never really solved the main problem.

(quoted from post at 13:28:08 04/09/12) So now that things have quieted down let's stir everything back up. Don't want to pay for 100LL AVGAS to farm with but even though it's tagged "low lead" it's got a butt-load of the stuff in it, will we get the desired effect if we take 93 octane Shell or BP that purports to be "Ethanol free" and add 20-33% 100LL? Neighbor I worked for when I was in High School ran an 806 LP gas special, can we go back to working our '06 Farmalls by switching them over to LP gas? The farmer with the 806 wasn't known for his maintenance programs and tended to run things until they quit. Wasn't a fan of changing oil or filters. At about 3000 hours his 806 started running a bit rough and he figures it needed an overhaul so he sent it out. The folks that went through it said everything was within factory specs, they installed rings & bearings and gave it a good tune-up (which is probably all it really needed) far as I know it ran fine until he messed up on his Bobcat and killed himself. So back to the discussion topic will changing them over to LP gas allow us to work them to their full potential? It's really cool to see the water vapor rolling out the stack when you load 'em up on LP gas.

Click to expand...

Ever thought about using E85? Depending on which method is used, it is either 100 octane or 105 octane. Might need to tweak the inlet holes in the main jet a bit, but if you want to play around a bit, it might just wake that ol' girl up. My 1940 H runs just fine on E85. My 1940 M also runs good on it, but it does need a bit of tweakin'.

all your problems might not be the fuel,about 20 years ago i replaced a 250 6 cyl in a company van ran like a sewing machine until it made the first 60 mile trip the next day,came back had 2 pistons chattering,i caught the heat over that one even though i just swapped the covers and pan, engine was already built,next week i finished installing the head and remaining parts on a rd 403 ih truck engine put it in
the truck started it up and watched the oil pressure fall,the racket started again two engine that i had installed both with problems, i told them that i didn't do the machine work nor the short block assy on either engine,when i pulled one of the rod and main bearings there were no under size marking on the shells but the boxes were stamped .020 on the rods and mains,there again i didn't know what i was talking about, so i took the shell halves back to the machinist along with the pistons,upon measuring the bearing they were standard no wander it had no oil pressure .020 oil clearance,as for the pistons when i questioned him on them binding on the wrist pins he told me he fitted them himself and they were correct at the time he installed them on the rods,he walked to a shelf and picked up a trw piston and showed it to me then turned an opened a box that had a trw complete rebuild kit in it,then ask if i could see any difference in the pistons , my reply was a blind man could see the difference, then he pointed to the made in mexico on the box,only thing he could suggest was the cheap grade piston were an inferior grade of aluminum and shrunk after getting hot

Myself i am not sold on that and i have played with Alkihol before and if you want to make them run you just can not set and go as the time of day humidity temp and pressure changes so does your fuel rate need to change . Now maybe it will run ok on a old slow turn engine with a long stroke but with higher RPM's and a shorter stroke my thinking on this is that the pistons don't have enough time to cool . Plus to get the same power it will take a lot more fuel . Running thru a carb you will be to lean or to fat. with noway to keep up with adjustments.

Rusty , when they were new reg gas was 95 and the only gas i knew of that was less then 95 was Gulftane and it was 93 . when the 706 was new i was well aware of octane ratings on fuel and what needed what grade . The old B 60 Mack that i drove back then for the construction company that i worked for had a Thermodine 6 cylinder gas and it needed 105 octane fuel and we had two gas pumps at the yard and the octane was on the pumps and it was the R+M=2 and we had one diesel pump with Sohio diesel supreme and that diesel fuel was Red dyed back then as a trade mark reg diesel was a yellowish clear and the old man would not use that as he call it bottom of the barrel junk . God help ya if you put reg. gas in the mack . we also had a account out at the fuel stop on the outskirts of Canfield Ohio where we would get fuel from also and each and every old gas burnner semi ran hightest . Farm tractors ran reg. The old man also owned a large farm between Canfield and Ellsworth and on of my jobs was that on Tuesday and Friday evening before i went home was to take either a 150 gallon of gas and a 150 of diesel to the farm and fill the tanks from the shop . we had over 40000 gallon storage at the shop 10 each for gas and 20 for diesel . Had lot of practice hand pumping fuel back in those days.Gas did not really go down hill till in the late 80's early 90's .The first i started to notice it was with my Massey 300 combine as i was being cheap and was using the 89 as that was the lowest we had here at the time , she was running hot and nothing i did would bring it down . First i pressure washed the rad. out , no help ok change the water pump and stat , that did not help with anything other then lighten up the wallet . Pulled the rad and had it boiled and flow checked it was fine . Still running 210 -220- . One day i was at a auction in Stilesville In. and i bought a couple 110 gallon fuel tanks and i loaded them on my truck an headed home gas prices were 42 cents a gallon cheaper in In. then home and i stopped at the one truck stop off I70 and they had Farm gas and it still had lead and it was 94 octane i filled one of the 110's with it and filed the truck and the other tank with the high test as i ran hightest in my 460 . Come home and put the cheap Farm GAs in the combine the next day and we to shelling the engine temp never went above 185 on that gas when that was gone i filled the combine with the 93 we had down the road from the farm and the heat came up a whisker around 190 . and another thing you guys keep missing here is the material that the pistons were made out of BACK THEN also , THEY WERE FORGED , not cast . You Can not get Forged anymore .

Ah since when is grinding feed overloading a engine ?????? I can put my S/MTA on the New Holland 355 and grind a batch or the 706 or the 806 or the 1066 and we have even ground with the S/H when nothing else would start at 35 below . When our problem started was a load of 87 octane gas on a thiry plus hour NEW engine and she was plowing with a light set of 540 4x16' not 710's or 720 . That tractor ran like a swiss watch for six years till i sold Eugene a 1066 and the 706 got semi retired from tillage work . Myself i do not remember how many 706's that i have bought and farmed with and ok so i am a nut case i have always run the top grade gas back when it was two or three cents a gallon more , so now it is twenty cents a gallon more , so we pay twenty bucks more per 100 gallon BIG deal . If that twenty bucks more per 100 gallon we pay it will take 1200 gallon savings to cover the cost of the head set the rings for ONE piston and the gskt. Oh and that is at my cost your cost will be slightly higher . also you say overloading with a five bottom plow they were rated for 5x16's BUt most had enough sense to run 4 and i have had a couple with the 291 that you could run 1st high all day long with 4x16's at 10 inches. and with duals on they would pull a 16 foot wing disc just fine in 1st high on the first pass and you could jump to high2 on the next round . The other point that a lot of you are missing also is just how may times has that head been milled , i have never pulled a head off any 460-856 that did not need at least .007 taken off and sometimes 15 -18 . So say it has been milled three times since new and each time they milled off 12 times three that is .036 off making it HIGHER COMPRESSION . On my buddy's this makes for the fifth time i have had the head off and it has been milled three times now with a total of .033 off it . And god only knows how much was taken off before .

YEA, why not . I am getting tired of this. We had almost 5000 hrs on this with just shy of 3000 on this gasser . and i am starting to feel like i have 3000 hrs working on it .

From your description I am not convinced you have a fuel problem, at least not detonation. Operating in severe detonation should result in broken ring lands or a hole in the piston dome. Have you significantly increased the compression ratio of this tractor?

An engine that locks up under load and is then free after cooling suggests the pistons have expanded a greater amount than the piston to cylinder wall clearance - thereby locking up. OEM pistons typically have good expansion control and the specified piston/wall clearance has been tested and known to work. Perhaps the clearance measurement was incorrect or if using non-OEM pistons you really don't know what clearance is needed when you work them hard.

To your concern regarding combustion temperatures; lowering the inlet air temperature tracks through the entire combustion process. On a cold day the combustion chamber temperature will be lower simply because the process started at a lower temperature point. If you want to work these old tractors removing or bypassing the exhaust heating of the inlet air will take a significate amount of temperature out of the combustion process and reduces the engine's octane requirement. In addition you get a power increase; approximately 1% HP for each 10 degrees F the inlet air temperature is reduced.

Just my thoughts from your description....perhaps there are other details not provided.

I was a diesel mechanic for years, talk about high compression engines.
piston cooling nozzles pumping oil up to the bottom of the aluminum pistons keeps them from overheating, oil ccolers that exchange heat to keep the oil cool, now they all sport turbos, with charge air coolers to keep the intake air temperature down, this all with an average increase in horsepower from 350 now up to 600 and up.
Throw in the fact the old top-stop rocker arm operated injectors have now been replaced with electonically controlled "spark plug" type injectors that are fired via an ECM that reads exhaust, inlet air temperatures to adjust the amount of fuel required, and we have a " fuel efficient" nightmare when a small electrical connector fails.
What we used feeler gauges for on a tune up now is read by a computer talking with an on board computer.
I think a piston cooler squirting oil on the bottom of the piston would solve the non-available forged piston issue. That or we all pool together & have someone start making forged pistons for us. With the oil companies going to lower & lower octanes to keep within federal mandates, we are going to have to find a refinery willing to produce 93 octane just for Ag use. Until we can come up with one, the other or both, a simpler solution must be out there somewhere.

Well the piston is .019-.021 smaller in the area of the rings then the skirt area . spec.'s for piston to wall clearance is .0035 to .0045 and when i do and engine each piston is miced and each hole is checked and each piston is then fitted to each hole with .004 skirt to wall clearance . These cast pistons can and will swell over .025-.026 or more and when you look at the damage it is all above the top compression ring not in the skirt area of the piston. and believe me when i tell ya that this happens . and they do not melt down thru the center BUT they will melt down the side past the end gap of the top ring .like this last one did . Then part of the top ring came up on top of the piston and is not embedded 3/4ths it's width in the top of the piston. And as to the heat riser question the heat rise is working and was all brand new at the time of the major overhaul. No the engine is not turning more then factory spec. RPMs and the ing. timing is dead on through the advance curve dead on and was set on a Sun 505 Dist strobe as per factory spec.'s for a C291 as a 291 has a different curve then a C263 . Full advance is set at 18 degrees at high idle . I know what i am seeing when i open up a engine as you learn fast when your playing with the lets go fast stuff and you start making lots of spare parts . with the well lets try this and OH wow we got this one to twist over 7 grand But what if we do this and see if we can turn 9 grand , Well gee she was still making power at 9500 lets see if it will take 10 grand , Oh gee maybe 9500 was more then enough the whole while your dumping floor dry and scoopen up the spare parts on the dyno room floor. so then ya start looking at the pieces to see what broke first . Yep BTDT many times , so i do believe i know what i am looking at . And oh one more thing here had i been in on the design of this engine there would have been a few upgrades to it like 7 mains two more head bolts to each cylinder and maybe even a crossflow head. A hemi head would really be nice and now that we are in the age of hy tech a fuel injection system and computer and a turbo oil coolers and yes them nifty piston cooler jets and FORGED pistons. Had i knowen that the new junk that Clevite send now would have been so bad i would not have throwen out all them forged Zolner pistons that i took out And even if the ring groves were a little wore out i am sure that thru the progressive ring chart i could have found something that would work.

We can get what they call SPORTSMAN gas and it is 94 octane , BUT it only comes in 55 gallon drums and is either 6.20 a gallon or 6.40 not sure and we can get cam 2 and we can get VP BUT not at around 10 bucks a gallon . We will either do and engine swap even though i am not crazy about mickymousen something in there OR we will send her down the highway and move the 806 into the 706's place move the 1066 down to what the 806 use to do and get something bigger and not worry about it. I had one 4x4 bend in the middle tractor and been thinking about getting another . Get rid of the 18 foot disc and get a 24 that is on a 12 foot base forget about getting a 6 row planter and just jump up to 12 . a nice 200-250 hp older 4x4 would work nice on our smaller fields and it just might cut our fuel usage in half along with time spent in the field. It is getting to the point we can not fight city hall and win. Ya ain't going to get the nut cases out of there Office .

That's the difference in farming in this part of the country. Anybody pulling 5--16 with a 706 is either pulling in first gear or overloading the tractor.

That's the difference in farming in this part of the country. Anybody pulling 5--16 with a 706 is either pulling in first gear or overloading the tractor.