Hey Tractor Vet. Question about your fuel problem

I"ve been reading with interest about you dilemma with today"s gas and old gas tractors that work for a living. We have a few old gassers but they are pets and don"t do a lot of work. If you can"t buy suitable gasoline for these old horses what about converting them to propane? Is this an option or is the quality of propane as bad now as gasoline? Just curious if this is an option you have considered?

Propane sounds good until I consider the awkward size, shape, and cost of the tank.

If converting to propane why not just put the tank out front. No cutting and sheet metal stays intact if you change your mind again later. or on the rear if a loader tractor. Did several that way years ago

> If converting to propane why not just put the tank out front.

That's an idea for my 560. Not feasible for the 544 as I use it both with a loader and the three-point. Fender-mounted tanks might be another approach.

So just where do you live that you cant run your "old" tractors on pump gas. Mine have been running on the 10% ethanol blend for 30 yrs or so mowing huge yard ,tractor rides lasting three days, parades ect without not one problem they set all winter in unheated shed and start in the spring and run just fine without adding anything on the gas that was in the tank when i shut them down in the fall.

No offense man, but try to keep up will you?

The issue is WORKING, i.e. plowing, with one of the later high-compression 6-cylinder IH engines. In this case a 706 gas had a piston meltdown because the "93 octane" gas was actually 87 octane gasoline with 10% ethanol added to bring it up to 93 octane.

Seems not only does the gas have to be 93 octane, but it also has to be PURE gasoline, or else these high-compression gas engines will melt down when worked.

The old low-compression 4-cylinder engines like H's and M's and 300s and 450s will run on pretty much any sort of gasoline, even E85. Totally different animal.

OR he needs to richen the fuel mixture cause lean will melt
pistons and E10 does need more fuel. 93 octane is 93 even if
made from spit.

Running 2 F Gleaners on E10 for 20 years (292 Chevy) and have
yet to burn a piston and they will run harder than a plowing
tractor; 2250 RPM for 10 hours a day.

AFAIK the 706 carburetor does not have the ability to "richen." There is no main metering jet, only a solenoid valve.

Also doesn't help that the fuel company allegedly "snuck" the 10% ethanol into the tank without telling them. Even if he COULD richen the mixture, he wouldn't know to until it is too late. Remember the story, the tractor ran FINE until the piston melted.

As a rule of thumb 10% ethanol will add two octane numbers. If indeed the base fuel was 87 octane then the resulting E10 blend would have been 89 octane; far short of 93.

The 06-66 tractors are FULL FUEL when you turn the key on and it is the Same if you back the screw out five turns on the rest . The jet determines the fuel flow. , yes you can lean wean what ever ya want to call it on the rest . BUT if your working them open the fuel up . Running them FAT is better then lean . I have already fattened the 706 up when we did the overbore from 263 to 291 along with doing a recurve on the dist as a 263 runs more timing advance then a 291 . A 263 runs 23 Degrees BTDC and a 291 runs 18 .

Well on that subject here i am no expert BUT when you look at the HP of the LP they usually are a little lower . Then you run into the problem of filling them and having the tank. . I just got home a little while ago from the farm and the new piston is in the engine and other then some clean up and chasing the head bolts and the block and a final clean up of the deck and head she is just about ready to go back together . If it was not for getting chores done i would have probable had the head back on . One new Clevite Piston MADE IN TURKEY one new set of rings Made in the USA and a Victor head set and at this time unknown country of MFG. as i did not look yet. So now all i need is a few more hours of NO rain and it will run again . I may go back out to Ohio Twist drill and have Lee make me a ream a whisker bigger and ream the main fuel jet a couple tenths of a thousandths and fatten up the fuel mixture a little more . what would be nice is to remachine the carb so that i could use Holley jets and just unscrew one and screw a new one in . with alkihol ya have to really play with it and the down side is WEATHER conductions . Years back my one friend and i played with a built Oil all OVER 1650 with a bored and stroked engine and we had a holley 4bbl. on it and a TO4 turbo on alki. Lets just say it was a learning curve and we made lots of spare parts in the learning curve . when we were getting close to getting it right the weak point was the head bolts , ya know that at 25 lbs boost you can stretch then over 3/16th's of and inch and lift the head , We over came that small problem and found out that ya know you can literately put the oil pan and crank on the along with all seven of the main bearing caps And the heads of the main bearing bolts on the ground . Then if you make a girdle to hold the head down and the crank up for some reason the side of the block blows out . Maybe a tad to much boost . Playing with plain old gas was a lot cheaper.

Well so they tell us . Now this is what i have learned over the past couple days. The only ting that is coming down the pipeline is 90 octane and it is BLENDED at the rack with 10% ethanol and they are Clamming 93 , NOW remember that they are CLAMMING . So say that they did not really get to the target of 93 and it is only 91 or 92 HUMMMMMMMM whose going to know . You going to fill a gallon NEW can and drive three hours to the lab pay the money to have it tested ????? Just like the diesel fuel . Why does my Dodge Cummins get pizzs poor fuel mileage if i get fuel and Speed Way , but if i go to another place it runs better and does real close to three miles to a gallon better??? Whose going to check the CETANE rating?? . Something is different . Five . four miles from my driveway to the farm and five . four miles back . 6.7 miles over to John Boys farm and 6.7 miles back . Speed Ways fuel runs through like water Murphy's fuel sometimes yes and no , go to Salem Oil and ya get better milage and the old Cummins doe not rattle as much. So gas differs and so does diesel . OK i am and old fogy but i liked the old days alot better .

Oh you can MOW grass , you can go for a long ride they can set all winter and restart in the spring NO PROBLEM , Just don't take a later 4 cylinder or 6 cylinder gasser and try and put her to work . the fuel requirements for that tractor are in the owners manual and are LISTED as MINIUM not maximum . We do not plow with the 706 anymore since we got the 1066 but the 706 does grind feed it does 90% of the hay mowing with a 1219 John Deere haybine , Sometimes it pulls silage wagons that weigh in at real close to 30000 lbs it sometimes runs the Krone 130 round baler or the john Deere 336 idiot cube maker it rakes maybe 60% of the hay four times a year over about 110 acres . First cutting can work the snot out of the 706 and has worked the snot out of the 806 diesel . The grinding of feed works her pretty good for about 15 min. where she is doing all she has to hold PTO speed , When the 806 is on the grinder she will put up a pretty good plume of black hooked to the New Holland 355 . We grind right at 35-3600 lbs of ear corn thru a 5/8th screen for the cows Then there is the sheep and hog feed when we get some hogs and that goes thru a 3/16ths screen . That is when either the 806 goes on the grinder or the 1066 and that grinding can bring either one to there knees . And oh we like the 706 on the corn picker it just seams like it is better suited then the 806 or the 1066 , it is a lot easier to pull the 706 out then say the 1066 when ya find that one wet spot that was not there last year.

706 was best corn picker tractor ever built. Our family had one on a new idea picker. There were very common in our part of Indiana in the late 60s.

Holley jets can be installed. a drill press, a tap and a tool that grabs them jets n holds them tight so they dont fall inside the bowl when u install em. our old 706 with a 291 kit, we overhauled it, and was retuned on the dyno. I removed the elect solinoid, put in a manual adjustment screw from a M. jetted the main to .093. seemed to help with pump gas. them heads r choked thru the exhaust. Holds in alot of heat! cant exhale well! Opened em up a lil bit n dropped 10 degrees operating temp under a load. Had a 560 that had an eggshaped bore in the block when the sleeve was installed, it got tight. had to put in a repair sleeve to straighten it back out n she is still going. Now, if i can get brave enuff to put a new headgasket in dads 856d with a M&W turbo!

At the time of rebuild she started out as a 263 with two AB holes and four C D holes the deck was a little out and .007 was removed from the deck to make here flat. The main caps were ground and the block was line bored not honed . Then the block was set up on a stationary Wynoia van norman Computerized boring station and was bored to take the 263-to 291 over bore off the center line of the crank . So all the bores are within .0002 . Then each piston was hand fitted to each bore all was balanced , head was C/Ced and port matched , cam was rebuilt and blue printed the carb was fattened up a little over the factory jet. Dist. was recurved to 291 spec. Yea , i can ream the jet and adding a needle adjustment screw will do nothing more then the pintle does , when the key is switched on the pintle moves way off the jet and by no means restrict fuel flow. The org. solenoid did come with a adjusting screw and people would try and run them to lean so they did away with the adjustable one and and made the non adjustable one that did not restrict flow . When ya turn the key switch off then the pintle drops and shuts the flow off to prevent dieseling on a hot engine. Now i agree that the instillation of the holley jet could be done , BUT that would set the jet back to far for the solenoid . So ffor now i think that i am going to go back into the carb and do some light reaming . Should have never sold my 1020 Sun as with it i could stuff the tube down the pipe and got a better idea on the mixture.

YEa i know , I was one of them jockeys that helped remove a bunch of 706's from the excess inventory of that state along with the New Idea pickers. Normally a good average was like 4 a month on the tractors and at times more . Just loved buying them out of the dead rows and 90% of the time the reason they were in the dead rows was that the charging system was trash and they would not stay running and they were sent to the killer pen. New battery new gen or alt and a regulator and a tune up and they ran . Paid anywhere from 650 up to 3250 for them . They sold like hot cakes . Use to drive the local I H dealer plum crazy with them as he kept telling me you can not sell them and i just kept on selling them . Then the day came when he sent his one saleman down to my place looking for a tractor to put a deal together on a newer baler and like always he had no used tractors and he had to stoop so low to come and buy one off of me . Yep you guessed it it was a 706 wide ft. three point gasser the ones that NO BODY would buy. And the next day up at the little country restaurant he came and sat down with me and thanked me for helping him make the sale and make a little on the tractor . Told him that he should look at it this way for each I H tractor i sell in his back yard i just gave him a new parts customer.

I can keep up just fine. The man has stated time and time
again that he cannot buy suitable gas for his tractors. I
merely asked if he had considered propane. I don't think it
was a ridiculous question.

Not a thing wrong with the rebuild being done right BUT you increased compression with bore and decking, you improved breathing with cc and ports ( IMO Farmall heads all need this; poor flow characteristics). You increased CI about 10%, allowed it to breathe more efficiently and ONLY fattened the carb a little. One of the advantages of adjustable load screw (big hole in jet and tapered needle) was adust on dyno til she smokes a bit then back off. Doesn't need to be dyno that grinder would be fine. Leaded gas was easy cream colored stack and you were ok.

When we raced we always had a selection of jets for the Holley, cooler in AM time trials and hot by PM eliminations required different stagger and jet sizes. I'm still thinking you had a run lean problem more than fuel type, to many years of running E10 with no problems on hard working machines 830 Cases and F Gleaners.

All we did was turn and early 706 into a late model . Just about the same as most 560 gassers were updated to the 706 pistons and yep compression is upped . Yes by taking .007 off the top Upped by taking off the head upped compression . YEp i know this .

Yep , i still have my Holley box that went to the strip from back in 64 as i had three two bbls on my 61 ford . Lots of jets of all sizes gskts. power valves several base units float bowls Floates . Been stagger jetting since back then . Even have left over stuff out of the 4300 sires autolite that was run on some of the ford engines . Even played with running alkihol thru a holley . even played with turbos way before most ever thought about putting them on a car or gas tractor engine and yep made lots of spare parts.

You can never have to many spare parts ;^) I just have to find a cheaper way to get spares, breaking things only leaves a few good ones sometimes none.

I think if you took a metal detector and went about half way down the east lane of Quaker City Drag strip you would more then likely find some SPARE parts from a 390 Ford that literally gernaded leaving only pieces of the block where the motor mounts were and the new style three piece heads. It was OH WOW back to the drawing board .Also was needed a new hood some hammer work to the fender wells . Then there was the clutch that came apart up on US 62 just west of Canfield that left big deep holes in the road sheared the steering shaft removed the master cylinder from the fire wall and left huge bumps in the floor pans and another new hood. Back then the best we could get was NASCAR Steel bellhousing that was not quiet BULLET proof.