Ford 3000 cutting out.

lastcowboy32

Well-known Member
I took on this old ford 3000, because the price was right. It runs great when it runs, but it's intermittent. When I looked at it, we ran it for an hour or so. Oil pressure was excellent. It ran cool and quiet. Then it gave away it's quirk. It just sort of randomly stalled. At that point, we tried starting back up and it would just sputter. Pop....pop...pop...no throttle response.

The price was too good, so I had it trucked home a couple of days later.

At home, it started up first time and ran smoothly for about two minutes.

It then stalled out. Subsequent restarts yielded the behavior as before...just barely idling. Choke doesn't help, no throttle response...just pop...coast...pop...coast...pop...coast.

So...fuel or spark...right?

I read that the 3000 has a "primer pump" for fuel....so I can't just drop the plug out of the carb and measure the fuel flow by gravity.

Instead, I figured that I would have to test fuel flow while cranking???

So...I charged the battery overnight and left some gumout and dry gas in the tank to stew.

First thing this morning, I had my wife start it. It did the old pop....coast...pop...coast routine. While it was spitting and sputtering, I unthreaded the plug from the carb (with a catch-basin underneath)...the fuel was pouring out constant stream as big as the hole for the plug...so I thought.....coil?

TSC has 12V coils for under forty bucks.

I picked one up, along with a variable ignition tester from AdvanceAuto.

Back home, the old coil would only produce spark in the ignition tester here and there during cranking (I plugged the coil wire into the tester directly.)

I installed the new coil. In that process, I noticed cracks in the coil negative wire from the distributor. I replaced the wire and installed the new coil. I then tested the new coil with the ignition tester...no spark at all. WTF?

I took off the coil wire high voltage output wire. I couldn't measure continuity from one end to the other. So...being curious...I tore it apart...it was some kind of weird graphite conductors???? I got a little continuity end to end by clipping the ends and measuring the black "conductors" directly.

I had a general purpose coil/plug wire kit in the garage...I rigged up a new coil wire from the kit and plugged it into the distributor.

Vroom vroom! Problem solved, right?

But...wait a minute....it sputtered to a stop again after a couple of minutes. The choke won't save it when it sputters.

Now, I can consistently start it and run it for a few minutes. Until it sputters to a stop...sometimes punctuated by a loud, underwear retaining backfire.

Was my fuel flow test inconclusive? Might I still have a flow problem?

My brother-in-law is fuel, fuel, fuel....and that's fine...but why was it blasting fuel out of the carb plug this morning and why has a little finagling with the coil/coil wire seemed to help.

By the way...no manual...yet...On my ignition tester, how far should a healthy ford 3000 spark jump? I can turn the screw to adjust the gap. I can maybe get 1/8 inch??

Any other fuel flow test I can try?

Any other suggestions?

Here is a picture for gawking while you ponder...
38358.jpg
 
Points could be dirty and cause that or a bad condenser.
You need to test you spark the good old fashion way. You need good blue/white spark that will jump a 1/4 inch gap at all the plug wires and the center wire of the cap.
As for it being a fuel problem rig up a gas tank that is gravity feed w9th the gas turned off at the tank so you do not pump fuel out of the tank while trying to see if it will run with an aux type of tank. Seen more then one tractor wit ha bit of junk in a tank and while running the suction sucks that junk into the gas outlet and clogs it enough to cause problem like your having.
 

just because it can get gasoline to the carb . . . doesn't mean it can get gasoline through the carb. May have something floating around in there plugging a jet.
 
Wow.. so much wrong in this post.

i wish you had posted some questions before opening your wallet up.

1, a near 40$ coil.. wow.. hope it washes dishes and provides other services too. you can get suitable 6v and 12v coils from napa for well under 20$

2, I see you bought a coil without even mentioning checking the points.

3, I see you jumped right to buying a 12v coil without checking to see if you really needed a 12v coil, or if you really needed a 6v coil. Yeah.. it's a 12v machine.. but ford used a ball of resistor wire and a 6v coil on them!

4, it had a resistor/supressor set of wires on the distribuitor.
Post back some details.
 
(quoted from post at 07:03:55 07/25/16) Wow.. so much wrong in this post.

i wish you had posted some questions before opening your wallet up.

1, a near 40$ coil.. wow.. hope it washes dishes and provides other services too. you can get suitable 6v and 12v coils from napa for well under 20$

2, I see you bought a coil without even mentioning checking the points.

3, I see you jumped right to buying a 12v coil without checking to see if you really needed a 12v coil, or if you really needed a 6v coil. Yeah.. it's a 12v machine.. but ford used a ball of resistor wire and a 6v coil on them!

4, it had a resistor/supressor set of wires on the distribuitor.
Post back some details.


SoundGuy... of course there are a lot of things wrong ... I'm thrashing a little...admittedly.

So let me see if I can help you help me:

1. We did check the points. Didn't look too bad. Gave them a little rubdown to clean them. Didn't make anything better or worse. This was before I started messing with fuel and coil and such.

2. 12V coil vs 6V coil is completely my mistake. I made an assumption. Come to think of it, the old coil had some verbage about needing a "resistor" with it. Are all 3000's equipped with 6V coils? If not, how can I tell which one it is? I still have the old coil.

As far as replacing the coil....I bought the new one at TSC during a Sunday morning trip downtown. NAPA isn't open then. Saving 20 bucks at NAPA vs saving another trip downtown??? Sort of a wash to me. But I will remember that. I get my oil filters at NAPA for the tractors already.

I tested the original coil with the ignition tester, before I took the new one out of the box, and the spark wouldn't even jump 1/8 inch....that's when I decided to try the new one.

The new one gave me no spark with the ignition tester...until I replaced the coil high voltage wire. Then I got about a 1/8" blue/white spark. Still not as long as the 1/4" that Old mentioned.



It's all growing pains to me. This tractor is the perfect size for what I want to do. The opportunity came by surprise, so it's not like I have parts manuals and such all lined up.

I'm going to make a few mistakes, but I'll learn. I'm keeping this machine and I'll get familiar with it over the years.

All of the "majors"....no heating, oil pressure, hydraulic integrity (hitch stays up when it's shut off) are there.

Even if I have to replace every wire in the wiring harness, plugs, plug wires, points, rotor, cap, coil....carb kit...even a little 44 dollar fuel primer pump. What's all that add up to? Couple hundred bucks?

Thanks for your help. I'm going to need some here initially.
 
The parts section here on YT only lists the 12V coil (for only 8 bucks and change!!!!) TSC must have a very handsome profit margin on that.

It also lists a newer distributor with "mechanical advance" touted as superior to the original.

I noticed what looked like a (gasp) vacuum line on my 3000 (I like saying that. Has a nice ring to it.).

Are there any quirks to this, what I assume to be, vacuum advance system for the distributor?

I did do the obvious, which was to check the integrity of the tube and ensure it wasn't obstructed.

One of the other comments above...with regard to the tractor working fine with a bad fuel pump...as long as the tank was full.

I wonder. The guy that I bought it from said that it "ran out of gas" easily. As in, when the tank still had quite a bit of fuel in it. Of course, the gauge is non-operative, so he couldn't quantify that.

I, myself, only put a few gallons in it when I got it home for testing purposes. I didn't want to put 15 gallons of gas into a tractor with a mystery stalling problem...only to need to drain 15 gallons of gas from the tank an hour later.

I'm wondering if there is some truth to that, and that maybe my little primer pump is "marginal"? Sure there's gas flowing to the carb, but maybe it's mostly gravity and it isn't pressurized quite up to par..unless the tank is really full???
 
I already told you they came with a 6v coil and ball of resistor wire. What any particular tractor has now is up for grabs after 50ys of private ownership. Look at the coil and wiring to determine.

As to your spark issue, remember the wiring and key switch upstream are in the circuit and if bad connections, can cause problems.
 
So, looking through the parts here on YT for clues.

This machine definitely has the 12V solenoid.

It's equipped with a vacuum advance distributor.

The mounting bracket for the alternator looks like an aftermarket, and looks exactly like the bracket that comes with the 12V conversion kit.

The alternator looks like the one with the 12V conversion kit.

My proofmeter cable is laying loose in the battery tray, and for the life of me, I can't find where it connects (I'm sure that this has nothing to do with stalling) Is this evidence that there was a 12V conversion done to the tractor? I was looking at the parts for sale here on YT, and it appears that the original "generators" can be purchased with and without "tach drive"....is this why I can't find my proofmeter connection? It disappeared during a 12V conversion?
 

...OK...from looking even more at "generator" and "alternator" choices...

It looks like there was an original "Lucas" 12V generator, and it could have been updated with a newer 12V "alternator"...

Or there was an original "Lucas" 6V generator, and it could have been replaced with a 12V "alternator" during a conversion

So...it could look like it's had a conversion...when it just got a newer style 12V alternator/generator.


The coil that I just took off is 12V. I'm wondering if that's a mistake. Maybe it should have been a 6V all along, and someone botched it. Would it even run with the wrong coil?


SoundGuy...to your statement about the wiring. I've learned at least a little from yours and BruceVA's statements in the 8N forum about keyswitches. I have a short wire with gator clips on it in my electrical toolbox. If a tractor has sketchy ignition, I jumper the keyswitch first.

That didn't help in this case, and the switch checked out with proper continuity in both open (infinite resistance) and closed (zero resistance) situations.

But...the wiring in general looks like crap. Everything has cracking insulation, the plug wires are all dryed out and borderline checking. They don't seem to have a good hold on their distributor posts anymore.

A tune up kit would be a small investment. So would a carb kit.

I'm mostly now just trying to figure out what's been reworked, changed or maybe even mistakenly changed over the years.

I want to avoid following someone else's mistake.
 
It's equipped with a vacuum advance distributor.

The original distributor on a 3000 had two advance mechanisms. One was centrifugal/mechanical that used springs and weights, which is located below the breaker plate in the base of the distributor. The second advance was the vacuum advance.

The mounting bracket for the alternator looks like an aftermarket, and looks exactly like the bracket that comes with the 12V conversion kit.

The alternator looks like the one with the 12V conversion kit.

My proofmeter cable is laying loose in the battery tray, and for the life of me, I can't find where it connects (I'm sure that this has nothing to do with stalling) Is this evidence that there was a 12V conversion done to the tractor? I was looking at the parts for sale here on YT, and it appears that the original "generators" can be purchased with and without "tach drive"....is this why I can't find my proofmeter connection? It disappeared during a 12V conversion?

The 3000 came from the factory as a 12 volt system with a generator and an external voltage regulator. It might have been converted to an alternator, but it was not converted to 12 volts, as it was 12 volts to begin with. The proofmeter (tach & hour meter) was driven by a gear box on the rear of the generator and if the alternator does not have a tach drive then the proofmeter does not have anything to hook to to drive it unless it was also converted to use the oil pump style drive that the later x400 series used.
 
(quoted from post at 12:04:34 07/25/16) it never had a lucas 6v generator...

After looking through the possibilities, I would agree. Seems that it must have had the Lucas 12V Generator with the proofmeter (tach) drive built into the back of it.

My guess is that, at some point, someone put a regular alternator on it (still 12V) but no proofmeter drive. I'm not sure why. YT has the original 12V Lucas Generator for something like 75 bucks. The alternator almost couldn't be any cheaper than that.

I don't think that this is my problem or part of it...but I do wonder if some kind of "will fit" alternator needs an external diode, or if the existing "regulator"...or what YT calls the "control box" mounted up by the battery has any tweaks required to run with an alternator.

Right now, I think that's a long term thing to wonder about. I just priced a tune up kit, carb kit, fuel pump, fuel tank valve tap (the valve is broken off of mine...can't shut off fuel at the tank) and such.

As long as I get the right number off of the Holley carb, I can get the right carb kit. I think that I have the original distributor...so the original tune up kit should work for that.

The fuel pump is easily identified to pick the right one.

The coil is still a question for me...as to whether I should buy a 6V coil...or if I can make this 12V coil work...

I don't see any "external coil resistor" like you mentioned in the YT parts list.

At eight bucks per coil from YT...that's not a big deal either...I can burn one out troubleshooting if I have to.

For what I bought it for, I don't mind shotgunning a few of these items that look like crap on the tractor to ensure that they'll run reliably in the future.
 
My guess is that, at some point, someone put a regular alternator on it (still 12V) but no proofmeter drive. I'm not sure why. YT has the original 12V Lucas Generator for something like 75 bucks. The alternator almost couldn't be any cheaper than that.

I don't think that this is my problem or part of it...but I do wonder if some kind of "will fit" alternator needs an external diode, or if the existing "regulator"...or what YT calls the "control box" mounted up by the battery has any tweaks required to run with an alternator.

A Delco 10si alternator is the most common alternator used for these conversions, and can be had for around $50.00 or less, plus the 10si has an internal regulator and does not require the original external voltage regulator, and the regulator was the component in the original system that had the most problems. It is possible that yours was converted using an alternator that requires an external regulator, but if your battery is maintaining enough charge to repeatedly start the tractor, then I doubt any of the charging circuit is related to the poor running, as it would fail to spin the starter strong enough to start the engine long before it would not have enough juice to produce adequate spark to run the engine once it was started.
 
(quoted from post at 13:24:57 07/25/16)
My guess is that, at some point, someone put a regular alternator on it (still 12V) but no proofmeter drive. I'm not sure why. YT has the original 12V Lucas Generator for something like 75 bucks. The alternator almost couldn't be any cheaper than that.

I don't think that this is my problem or part of it...but I do wonder if some kind of "will fit" alternator needs an external diode, or if the existing "regulator"...or what YT calls the "control box" mounted up by the battery has any tweaks required to run with an alternator.

A Delco 10si alternator is the most common alternator used for these conversions, and can be had for around $50.00 or less, plus the 10si has an internal regulator and does not require the original external voltage regulator, and the regulator was the component in the original system that had the most problems. It is possible that yours was converted using an alternator that requires an external regulator, but if your battery is maintaining enough charge to repeatedly start the tractor, then I doubt any of the charging circuit is related to the poor running, as it would fail to spin the starter strong enough to start the engine long before it would not have enough juice to produce adequate spark to run the engine once it was started.

Interesting. I'll have to check the wiring around the original regulator to see if it's been taken out of the circuit. There are a few dead-ended wires laying in the battery tray around the regulator (or what YT calls the "control box".)

If so...then I shouldn't have to troubleshoot that so much, as I should look more at the alternator itself to provide proper regulation.

And yes...I'm pretty certain that this doesn't affect my current stalling issue...but I need to know what I'm dealing with going forward.
 

By the way...no manual...yet...On my ignition tester, how far should a healthy ford 3000 spark jump? I can turn the screw to adjust the gap. I can maybe get 1/8 inch??

Pix of spark tester instruction sheet...

http://forums.yesterdaystractors.com/viewtopic.php?t=1170719&highlight=tester

Spark is suspect it must jump a gap of 17 to 20 no less :wink:
On one that worked me over a bit the dist rotor was damaged its EZ to damage them because of the location of the dist. I was looking at the tractor for a bud did not know I was going to fix the owners tractor for free :(

It was in bright sunlight I had spark at a plug wire I then moved on to fuel. The owner had a can of brake clean I induced it heavily with it no help. Hummm.

I went back to spark and tested at the coil wire I could see a improvement in spark Hummm.

I bit the bullet and removed the cap noting stood out so took the coil wire and held it to the center of the rotor to test for a shorted rotor :SHOCK: the center metal tab on the rotor was M.I.A.

A new rotor was the fix



Check spark at a plug wire if weak remove the coil wire at the cap and test for spark they both should jump 20 on the tester if it does not at a plug wire and does at the coil wire the problem is the rotor are cap.

Resolve the spark issue FIRST.
 

Nice post.

I read your link. My ignition tester is the exact same one as pictured. Would my Ford 3000 need to reach that same red line (the 2/0 mark) as you recommended in the post?

Also, thank you for the explanation of why a test spark should jump a gap bigger than the plug gap when testing in open air.

Had that same discussion with my brother-in-law and father-in-law when I was testing spark on this tractor. They were wondering why I thought it needed to jump any further than the spark plug gap.
 
Just helped a guy with a 3cyl 2000, turned out the new roto was tight enough to feel like it was located on the shaft but it wasn't. I was getting a nice spark from the coil wire but nothing out of the cap. Suspecting Hobo's missing rotor contact, I pulled the cap and it all looked good. Finally got so frustrated I tore back into it and found the button wasn't seated in it's notch on the shaft.

Ran smooth an perfect after that.
 

I'm glad that you had a happy ending.

Mine is a little ways off. I was able to use Hobo's post as a guide to get my spark strength at the coil output up to the 2/0 mark on my tractor.

It just isn't consistent. I don't mean consistently strong...I mean..the sparks disappear for long periods of time...even if I move my ignition tester to very small, almost miniscule gaps.

But when they do appear, for those little bursts, they jump the 2/0 gap. And this is at my coil output.

So something is intermittent even before I get to the rotor/cap/points/plug wires

Although....thinking....don't the points still need to properly open/close in the distributor to even produce the spark at the coil output?...

Maybe I've been blinded by coil coil coil in my head.

Glad your problem is solved and grateful for maybe shaking loose an idea about my own situation.
 
Have you checked the distributor shaft itself to make sure that there's no lateral play? Have you pulled the breaker plate to make sure there's nothing loose and rattling around down in the base of the distributor like the springs or weights for the mechanical advance?
 
If you have a dwell meter, hook it up and turn engine over and make sure dwell stays steady. If it jumps around, dist. bushings need replaced.
 

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