MF 35 oil bath air filter question

papa T

New User
OK, still learning something every day. Not familiar with the oil bath air filter process. My old 35 is not running well...wants to choke down like it"s not getting enough air. Took off air intake assembly and found oil bath. Wire mesh inside is saturated and gunky. Is this the way it"s supposed to be? Do I need to clean it? Replace assembly. Don"t know how to set up the oil bath. Emptied the bowl before I knew what it was. Any help appreciated.
 
I have a 1957, to-35 and it has a oil bath air filter.

I cleaned the air filter in this manner:
I took the air filter off the tractor,
secured a 5 gal plastic bucket,
placed filter in the bucket and filled bucket with kerosene until the filter mesh was covered.

let the filter stand in the kerosene over night,

with fresh kerosene, I washed the filter in and out of the kerosene,

do this over and over, changing the kerosene bath until after multi dips of the filter in the fresh kerosene, the kerosene remains clean.

then let the filter air dry, drip dry for another 24 hrs.

placed it back on the tractor, tractor never missed a beat, should have cleaned the filter many years ago.

this is how I did it, not the only way, but it worked.

above all things, do not, do not try to take that wire mesh out of the filter, have heard it is very difficult, to impossible to get it back into the filter housing.

good luck and let us know how I works out for you.


safety note: use kerosene, not gasoline, if you do not get all the cleaner out of the filter, you do not want to suck gas fumes into the intake.

I use 30 weight oil in the oil bath cup
 
Thanks for the good instructions. I'm in the cleaning process and it was surely needed. I've also removed the carb to just have a look. Pretty sure it needs a kit, but I've never done one. Any advice you want to pass along will be helpful I'm sure. I do have a pretty good leak on the motor side of the carb, such that I can't leave the gas on when not running. Brief description of what happens while running. Starts with choke and will idle with no load. But I have to turn the gas outflow knob below the little filter bowl almost all the way off to continue running or it starts shutting down and dies. I'm assuming it is flooding it with too much fuel. Under a load it is even more likely to shut down, so that lately it's not running good enough to use. Well, any advice would be appreciated. Thanks again for the help.
 
I use non ethanol gas in my tractor.

it does sound like you need a carb rebuild. I would not go cheap on the carb kit. Get one from Napa or dealership.

Must clean carb well before rebuilt.

May want to add a inline fuel filter between cutoff valve and carb.

Good luck,
 

Mine was gunked up badly when I got it, full of grass seeds and crap. After a good soaking and wash with kero, I set it on fire to burn off all the organic matter stuck in the wire mesh. Then just bang out all the ash, give it another kero wash and its been good since. (Make sure you remove the o-ring before setting it alight!)
 
Did the short term of cleaning and refitting oil bath filter and some cleaning of carb without going inside. I know I"ll need to put a kit on the carb soon but wasn"t ready to do that just yet. Put it all back together and it runs better. At least well enough to get my place cleared away for Winter. Thanks for the good help. I"ll probably be back on here when I tackle the carb. :) Thanks again.
 

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