1964 Super Dexta

I've just bought a 1964 Super Dexta to eventually restore. At the moment I am just going to run it around and use it to find its faults before restoration. I am having trouble getting the engine to turn over fast enough to start it. The person i bought it off started it with a very big battery what size battery should i have and what is the code? Also he started using ether (bad I know). One other thing it was smoking a little from the breather pipe on the right hand side of the block, is this bad. Not too worried if a full engine rebuild is need cause i did get it quite cheap. If I do need to rebuild the engine what parts are the most important to change?

Regards
Ross

The ether will have broken the piston rings, hence hard to start because of low compression and fumes from the breather.

You will at least need pistons, rings and big end bearings. Realy though, the full engine kits are quite cheap. It depends on your budget but I would give the engine a full re-build, espicialy as you say you bought the tractor cheap.

At the moment we are re-building a Super Major and Super Dexta engine, the Dexta also being a ether addict.

Steven B

The Dexta engine on the other hand will break piston rings and even pistons due to the high combustion pressures caused by ether. If the engine becomes hard to start because of other issues, for example it needs new injectors, then fix the injectors. Once it gets a wiff of ether it will be like a crack addict. Fix the injectors and you still need that ether because you have destroyed the internals.

Bottom line ether and Dextas do not mix.

Cheers

Steven B