Funny how life often follows your train of thought!!

I was just taking about cheaper parts yesterday. Then today a customer that has been talking about overhauling his JD 4440 called me over to get it to start. He stated that it had been getting harder to start for the last few months. The tractor has 12,500 hour on it but the owner is 84 years old and only uses it 30-50 hr a year now. Mostly just mowing pastures and helping haul corn in. His complaint was that it uses oil. If he runs it all day it will use a quart or two of oil. I told him that unless he was going to use it more or other problems came about, that it would not ever pay for him to spend the money to overhaul it.

So I go over and he had the battery charger on the tractor. It was spinning over fine. There was plenty of white smoke at crank speed. So we had fuel and crank speed. So I pulled the air filters out. They where!!!!! FRAM!!! they only had 50 hours on them and they did not look very bad either. Told the owner to hit the key with no filters in it. The tractor started right up. I went home and got new JD air filters. Installed them and the tractor started fine.

Ask the old fellow how long he had been using Fram filters in it??? He told me about two years because they where way cheaper than JD filters. I asked him if he remembered what he had given for the Fram filters. He said he did because he had written the prices on the boxes(He had another set there). The Fram filters where $46.30 for the pair. The JD filters where $54.07 for the pair. So his "big" saving was $7.77. He told me he had not even priced the JD filters because everyone told him JD parts where too high any more so he bought the Frams at TSC.

I then asked him how long ago the tractor started to be hard to start. You guessed it. About the time he put the Fram air filters in it.

Even better he called me just after dark. He had used the tractor all day. It had not used hardly any oil today either. That I am not sure will hold up because I can't think of why the filters would have caused oil usage on a turboed engine.

So his saving was less than ZERO after he paid me for my service call. Plus he may have overhauled a tractor that he did not really have to because of the filters.

So explain to me the saving gained by using cheap/inferior parts??????

I have always bought my filters from the dealers,and try to change them out on a regular basis. But boy you sure have got me thinking about how importaned air supply is to a diesel tractor. Would it be a good idea to take out primary filter off and blow it out with the air hose every now and then between changes?? Bruce

I ran a New Holland TM 165 with a 10 foot mower on front and two 10s on the rear, the diesel was well tweaked and the tractor was fit for the job but it was using 70 gallons from 7.00am to 3.00pm, the bowser had to go everywhere with me to top up. It also would boil or at least put on the high temp buzzer about 3 times a day and that was even if I brushed down the grille every hour and we blew out the rads every night. I noticed the TM140 had a grill on top of the bonnet/hood for the intercooler so I made a template and cut a hole in the 165 with a jigsaw and fitted some mesh.. What a difference! It never run hot but even cutting the same heavy crops it would now go to 8.00pm without extra diesel. YES they do need all the air they can get.
Sam

Easy to blow a hole in an air filter with compressed air. If you've been doing that, put a light bulb inside the filter and see if you have any holes or thin spots.

>Even better he called me just after dark. He had used the tractor all day. It had not used hardly any oil today either. That I am not sure will hold up because I can't think of why the filters would have caused oil usage on a turboed engine.


maybe the oil seals in the turbo are a little loose, and with plugged filters it sucks the return oil into the compressor housing?

If the engine can't get air thru the intake, it will try to suck it up past the rings.

On the intake stroke, there is zero pressure against the rings to seal. Hence the oil sucking. :>)

Allan

It used to be called "Penny wise Pound foolish"
bargin filters are the most expensive item anyone can buy.

Great information I guess thats why on a single cylinder engine a new air filter will stop it from smoking alot of times

It was not a tractor, but when I owned my FedEx Home Delivery diesel truck, I first started using a local shop for oil changes. Had them change the air and fuel filter EVERY time! They objected, at first, told them it was cheap insurance! It was a freightliner, finally figured out that the dealer would do the service for $40 more, AND had a two column sheet of points they would check every time-so let them do it from then on!

Allan you are correct on a naturally aspirated engine but this one is turbo-ed. So it would have positive pressure on the rings all of the time.

Like I said I am not sure if that oil saving will continue.

It would depend on the age of the tractor. The newer ones suck the dirt out of the air stream before it gets to the filter. If I do blow a filter out I turn the air pressure down to 50-60 PSI so not to damage the filter.

JD I think Allen is right. Even with a turbo if the filters are restricting air flow enough to make the engine hard to start then at low RPM or idle the turbo may not be pressurizing the system. Saw that in the desert with the older M60A3 tanks with the Continental 1970 V12 twin turbo air cooled diesel. When in defensive positions we had to run the engine at idle often to keep the batteries up while running the fire control system and thermal sights. Tanks with older filters would use oil. Go on the offense and running at 1600-2100 RPM's oil consumption would go down. Put new filters in and most would stop using oil. Back in that day most often an engine would never get more than 5,000 miles on it before rebuild because that was the rebuild interval for the whole tank.

The Fram filters had tighter media and are stopping more of the dirt. Problem starting certainly shows it doesn't have holes/tears in the media; a very good thing. Might have to buy more filters but it is better for the engine. Many years ago we did a lot of tests on Fram oil filters and they didn't meet our requirement to last a double oil change before "plugging". Again filter media too tight. If that 4440 doesn't have a precleaner (removes approx 90% of the dirt) I would install one and use the Fram filters to insure maximum engine life.

It does not work that way. The Fram filters will cost you 5% or more of your peak horse power and will cause higher fuel consumption.

I had a customer, when I was at a dealer years ago. He had a JD 4455 that he was using right at the horse power limit of the tractor. One fall he brought the tractor in saying it all of a sudden would not pull his disk chisel like it should. He had lost a gear and 1/2 mph in speed. We dynoed the tractor before we did anything. It would peak out at 138 horse power. I pulled the filters out and he had put in new Fram filters. They did not have four hours on them. I put JD filters in and dynoed it again. 149 horse power. He went and raised cain with the parts place that sold him the Fram filters. He brought two new Fram filters back with him. We put them in the tractor and checked the horse power again. 142 hp. Put the JD ones back in and it was back at 148-149.

I know it is not much of a difference but it was enough to cost him a gear.

Remember, on a turboed engone the intake side is under more of a vacuum than in a naturally aspirated engine. On top of that the seals in a turbo are ring type seals, not lip type. With those two things in play together, the pressurized oil behind the ring seal can easily get sucked into the intake side of the turbo. With the oil going in on that side a little at a time it gets sucked into and burned by the engine. Becuse of the small amount being burned it all gets burned so you don't see any appreciable amount of smoke, so you don't realize there is any problem.

Too, higher than normal intake vacuum levels cause excessive thrust loads on the turbo's thrust bearings. Based on what I have been told, those higher thrust loads it can cause a slight drop in the turbo's RPM, and a definately cause excessive wear that shortens the life of the turbo.

Between the possibility of lower turbo speeds, caused by high thrust loads, and the resulting lower speeds pushing less air into the engine, the definate fact that a more restricitive media already causes a lower amount of air flow, and the addition of raw oil being sucked into the combustion chamber, all of that together will definately make one not run up to it's expected HP rating. Never seen one where it was bad enough for the engine not to start, but you learn something new every day......

First thing out of peoples mouths is "if it's John Deere it must be too high priced".I get so tired of the John Deere hatred we seehere onthis
forum. Many years ago I was told that if you couldn't afford the tires, don't buy a Cadillac.

FRAM == The orange can of doom!

here are my thoughts ( I run JD equipment) JD lowers prices on things where there is competition and raises them on parts only they make. I get sticker shock when I go in to buy baler parts from JD. I learn to multiple by 3 and that's no joke. I paid over $300 for my 336 PTO slip clutch yoke( just the yoke). Plus, when you look at new balers, you see parts that have been changed, for no other reason than to make them different. It's done on purpose to a 'captive' audience.

(quoted from post at 11:21:38 06/23/12)

use the Fram filters to insure maximum engine life.

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