Farmall IHC B

Recently purchased a B Farmall tractor and I am planning on restoring it. It runs good but seems to have a lot of blow bye out the breather cap on the valve cover. Is this a valve issue or is it deeper then that. It has good oil pressure. Don't know the history of the tractor at all. All thoughts and help appreciated.

excessive blowby is usually a sign of worn rings a compression test will tell this my c is doing this it is not burning a lot of oil but it needs a ring job plan on a full overhaul but after hay season this is my rake tractor

Valves as a rule can only blow back through the carb or the exhaust. A REALLLLLY bad head gasket could blow by if it failed JUST right, but that would be rare and a lucky break. Most likely she'll need rings at the least on one cylinder or more.

Try a compression test. Test each cylinder. Ideally, the range from the cylinder with the highest compression to the lowest wont be a variance of more than 10%. If so, sozzle a couple of teas[poons into any cylinder that showl low, and see if it comes up. If it does, that will confirm that rings are the problem on that cylinder.

We had a discussion yesterday on here. Depending on which head and pitons you have, 80ish would be good compresion. 60ish you can live with. Any lower you're gonna need work. Soner or later is your choice.

If you've got good compression on all but one cylinder, you have the option of working on just that one, but it will wind up stronger than the others. There's also the problem, should you find the sleeve out of round, for instance, that you'll need a new sleeve and piston set. That CAN be a problem doing only one, especially if it's an original, as the newer pistons tend to have different rod offsets to the crank and have to be done in sets of four. and then, of course, there's always the argument of, as long as you've got the motor out, why not do all four, have the crank turned and give the old girl a new set of bearings and seals. No better time ...

That said, if you do have to open the motor up, the best case is that you will find all the sleeves to be within tolerance for being in round, in which case, you can have the ridges at the top reamed, hone them up and put in new rings to fit, which (to me, anyway) would be a pretty satisfying job.

Check it out and let us know what you find.

Just cured a smoky A with 2 oil changes.Most tractors suffer from neglect never get their oil changed.One pint of MMO was added to fresh oil.Tractor was used for raking hay ,cultivating.Tractor burned oil.An oil change next spring and the smoking stopped.This tractor showed good compression because oil was pumping past the rings.You can be fooled by a compression test on stuck rings.