Our John Deere B's will not run.

We have a two John deere B's. One is a 1952 origianally equiped with the Wico XB distributor and the other is a 1949 origianally equiped with a magneto but now has a Delco distributor.

I will start with the 1952. It was running perfectly. It was driven on a ten mile drive with no trouble. Then kind of suddenly, power started to lag it ran rough, and finally it will only idle, firing randomly and about half the time only on one cylinder. We rebuilt the carb, replaced the wico with a brand new delco, and checked the aircleaner/intake passages. No difference. We have good flow of gas to the carb. All wiring is good. We then checked the compression and found that the valves were leaking and we only got about 50 (60 max) psi compression on both cylinders. I thought that maybe it just needed a ring and valve job untill the 1949 stated doing the exact same thing. It has had a new wiring harness (one wire alternator 12 volt) and a tune up. The compression on the 1949 is a little low, about 100 psi, and it does blow some smoke. Also there is a hole in the exaust manifold. On both they were running fine and the quit without us making any changes. the 1949 ran fine after we put the wiring harness on it. My gut feeling is that they are not getting gas properly, but I have no evidence to back this up, everything seems clear. We even tried switching the carbs just to see if we could learn anything. No luck.

Me and my Father are baffled. Can you help?

Ben
 
I think so. If you stand on the right side of the tractor and look all the way across to the other side to left cylinder exaust port you can see it. I am certain that it is not good, but I do not think it affects the intake. Also it ran before, my feeling is that it is not the problem but I could be wrong. What are your thoughts?
 
(quoted from post at 16:05:43 06/06/13) brand new gas.

Pull the line to the carb after the fuel filter and stick it in a can of good gas and try it.

To have two machines fall at the same time I'd be looking for water and the damage it causes. This new crappy gas with the ethanol in it seems to act like a sponge and draw moisture. Then once the water's there it'll plug filters and screw up jets etc...

Used to be you wanted to keep your tanks full especially if you left them sit a long time. Now I think you're better off running the fuel out of things. sure do want to use and replace and not let it sit a long time anyway.
 
Bad new gas?
One time I was at a mom and pop grocery/gas station. The pumps pumped real slow. Lady next to me, her car wouldn"t start after getting gas. My truck went about 10 yards and died. 3-5 other people"s vehicles all stalled out after getting gas. Turns out, the truck had just delivered "new" gas. Long story short, at some other station, the owner didn"t pay for his gas so the company went back and confiscated his gas. He knew they were coming so he contaminated his gas, and the company pumped it back out, put it in their tanker truck and delivered new bad gast to other stations.
So sometimes, that new gas could be bad!
 
You have to drain the fuel tanks on your B's, so do this... get an old 100% cotton flannel shirt with no holes. Must be flannel and must be 100% cotton. Drape the shirt over a clean bucket and drain the fuel through the shirt into the bucket. If it has water in it then the gas will end up in the bucket and the water will end up in the shirt. Don't ask me why, but the gas goes through the flannel and the water will not. End result is good gas with no water.
 
its not the gas. The 1952 started doing this quite a while ago and we have been trying to fix it for a while so different gas has been used. We dont use ethinol in the tractors at all.
 

The 1949 started doing this just last week so they did not start doing this at the same time. The symptoms are exactly the same though. In fact the only diference I know of is that the 1949 has a compression of about 100psi while the 1952 is about 50-55. I seems like it probably is somthing sort of simple but we cant find anything wrong.
 
Try plugged fuel line, or plugged intake to the fuel bowl. I've had flakes of rust intermittantly block flow and act as you say.
 
(quoted from post at 10:18:20 06/06/13) Try plugged fuel line, or plugged intake to the fuel bowl. I've had flakes of rust intermittantly block flow and act as you say.

Cheked blocked fuel lines, we did that first.
 
I am certain that it is not a bad gas issue. When the 1952 first started doing this we ended up draining the gas and using it in other machines.
 
take your cutting torch/ propane torch, what ever you have available - turn on the fuel-do not light!!! run torch tip around intake manifold, the fuel from the torch will be pulled in the crack and allow the tractor to run better - I did this with a 425 garden tractor - it had been to three shops when I got to work on it. tractor would idle good, but at full throttle it would back fire, pop and buck - ran raw acetylene around the intake manifold and the tractor ran really good when I hit a specific area -removed the intake manifold and 1 inch of intake manifold gasket was missing allowing too much air in to the air/fuel mixture.

Ken
 

Since you say you have battery ignition on both, I would think it would not be Moisture inside the Caps..
On a Mag, I have had that problem countless times..

NEW Sparkplugs would be one of my 1st moves (Autolite#3116)..

Mud-Dauber nests plugging the upper air inlet stack can cause them to SMOKE BAD under a load..!!
I use a cut off garden hose up through the air cleaner (Water ON)..(oil cup off)..to clean them out..shove it all the way to the TOP..

Moisture on the plug wires or plugs can be a problem, too.

I would not worry about getting a good Compression test, until you get it running, so the cylinder walls are properly lubricated.

Have you CLEANED the ignition Points..??

Not likely both have had Condensers fail...

I have a Condenser tester that I use that is mighty nice to have...

Ron.
 
If you had water in the gas it would show up in the sediment bowl.

Condensers today aren't what they used to be. A condenser going bad can make a two banger act like it's running lean. The spark weakens and the only way the tractor will run is at low throttle where the weak spark won't blow out. Today's new condensers can be bad right out of the box. Seems to me like the two bangers have more trouble with condensers or maybe it's just because I'm around them a lot.

Don't believe the anti-ethanol crap. I've run it exclusively for 30 years in everything but the chainsaw (manufacturer warns not to use it) and I've had zero problems. All of my neighbors run ethanol and none of them complains about it. By the way, ethanol does NOT magically suck water out of the air and deposit it in the fuel. I just started up a tractor with multi-year old 10% ethanol in the tank and it started right up. The gas smells fine, which did surprise me. Jim
 
Classic weak ignition symptoms. The 50psi compression is
twice what it needs to run perfectly. Not a problem. Points
condenser wires plugs cap- in that order. Good luck :)
 

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Back
Top