1963 Ford 2000 sputtering and cutting out

Long time Ford tractor guy here but I inherited my Dad's 1963 2000 tractor and it is giving me fits. My Dad is not much of a mechanic, so this poor tractor has been neglected a lot, and sat for years due to not running good. It was converted to 12v before my Dad got it. I first changed the oil, new plugs ponts and condensor, rebuild the carb 3 or 4 times trying to fix this stuttering issue. Governor is adjusted per the I&T manual. It now starts immediately even on low throttle with no choke. Compression is right at 115 across all cylinders, low but workable. It smokes bad out of the oil filler cap and valve cover vent but no white or black smoke out of the exhaust pipe. Soaking the cylinders with MMO for several days did not help this blowback.

When I drive it there is hesitation, sputtering, and sometimes the engine shuts off like you turned the key off but catches again before completely dying. Spark plugs are dry and sooty like I am running rich but carb is set to 1 1/4 turns out from seated and if I lean it out more it pops and runs rough. I bypassed the new keyed switch with no improvement. Starting to lean towards ignition now. The round 12v coil has a weird extra item mounted externally that looks like a condenser connected to it - not sure why this would be there or what it is (?) Should I remove this?

Any ideas?

Does... choking it a bit help? First thought is a carb that is plugged up from external_link gas. This makes it run lean... and when the governor opens up the carb, it momentarily gets all air and no fuel, so it coughs and or dies... Running at 1/4 to 1/2 choke will stop this... cARB PROBLEMS.. usually ARE the problem over 60% of the time...


Does it have a good spark? It takes good spark to fire under compression. The higher the compression, the more spark is needed... Is the gap set correctly? Have you put a timing light on it?? Is the condenser good? New condensers from china are usually bad more than they are good. Did you put in china points... If so, you will need to run a piece of paper through the closed points to clean off the corrosion each day, so they will make contact. Otherwise no or weak spark after a couple days of sitting. Go to napa and get an american set of points and condenser... blue streak, standard, nehoff or other american brand. Did you put china plugs in it?? They will not fire under compression. When testing the newer plugs on a sparkplug tester, I find between one out of four to two out of four will not fire at 120 lbs of compression.. SO you pretty much have to test 8 plugs to get 4 good ones... or switch to jap plugs for quality.
Is the ignition switch good and dropping resister good? so you have 12 volts to the + side of the coil at all times... and so on.

Before doing anything I'd do a fuel flow test. Did you replace or clean the screen in the tank at the shutoff?
It sounds like you are running rich and might have the float too high or something else causing the rich condition.

I agree with sounding like I am running rich. Float is set 1/4" above the gasket and when I did a fuel flow i ran a steady stream for about a gallon from the fuel line.

A couple weeks ago I had 9N giving me fits with a similar problem. Turned out to be a bad ignition switch that was only 2 years old. It fouled new plugs within 15 minutes. Try bypassing the switch with a jumper wire and see if that helps.

Mark