Spark plug question

I was using my 3020JD the other week to grind feed when it started to smoke out the exhaust & breather bad. It shut itself down by the time I got to it. When I got it home (won't start & had to push it home) & checked out I found that the ground part of the spark plug is gone & the electrode is mostly gone. Today I was talking to a neighbor & he had the same thing happen to his IH 544 except he had it happen to #1 cyl & mine was #4.
Does anyone have an idea of what is going on? I have never seen the bottom of a spark plug missing like this yet.

I had one happen only once , The plug was a little loose in the head , so I figured it was a ground problem by not being tight . put a new plug in it and went back to work . Good luck !

Was it "fogging" oil out the exhaust and the breather?

Preignition cuts metal like a torch. I'd sure run a compression test on that hole, as you might have a sliced piston.

Allan

Not from a bad ground,plugs melt from too much heat.They cant transfer the heat to the cylinder head.

Low octane fuel, too lean of mixture, oil consumption and too high heat range plugs contribute to detonation.
Time to perform a compression test.

How did ONE bad spark plug cause it to "shut down"?

Hi Bob,

If he had 'er up against the governor and pulling real hard, vacuum is gonna be low anyhoo.

Then "if" he should happen to loose the suck on one hole, I could see where it would just flat kill it.

Dunno,

Allan

Well I am not the local Deere GURU but i see the low octane fuel has now jumped colors . I can tell ya that you were using 87 octane gas and that is way to low on a gas tractor that is trying to be used in the manner that it was intend to be used . As for your friend's 544 that is what happened to his as he had a piston start to super heat and started to gulled to the sleeve or wall , you had the same thing happen . Now as to any damage done to the inside of the engine well with out pulling the head i can not say for sure but there is a good chance that you did . I have perched about this on the I H board till i am blue in the face as the tractors of the late 50'- the last of the gassers they were ALL made to run on nothing less then 90 octane and I H's were made to run on nothing less then 93 . Now from what i have learned from a Chemist and i am by no means as smart as the guy that did the fuel testing when we had a new engine with a little over 30 hours melt down and when i opened up that engine and my knowledge of engines i could tell that she got HOT and real fast to start to melt the top of the piston. or in this case Pistons as it got all 6 . So with what you are telling me that she was breathing heavy out the breather then there is a real good chance that you hurt her big time . And like i tryed to explain it last week that yea 93 octane gas is 20 cents a gallon more at the pump the total cost per 200 gallon over the 87 is a lousy 40 bucks and it will take a lot of 40 bucks to fix what went wrong to just try and save a few cents. You will never see this heat on the temp. gauge as it takes a long time to soke into the coolant to show up on the gauge, Case in point here look how long it takes for the water to warm up but just try and put your hand on the exhaust manifold 30 second after ya start a gas tractor .

"3020D" I always thought the "D" stood for Diesel. What's wrong with this picture?

After putting my glasses on I see what's wrong with the picture. Silly Me. (;>))

Had 2 dealers tell me (do not run anything under 89 and most should be 93 as the newer 87 stuff has to much junk in it that it is destroying the engines).

It was not smoking oil out the breather but was that sick smelling metal on metal smoke. I'm sure it is hurt bad as it won't put more than 30 psi on the comp tester. (just that cyl, rest are 120-135)
I'm going to put it off to the side until I have time to pull the head.

I am begining to wonder about the gas I got last fall. My barrel was empty & I ordered a fill up (300 gals). I filled one tractor out of that & then it got cold & my filter on the tank froze & split open. I had just drained the tank completely & put a new filter on. I had never frozen a gas filter before this.
I am noticing that the other tractors seem to be running warmer on the temp gauge lately also.

It's the other way around- bad plug did not cause the shut-down- excess heat (from detonation) did, and melted the bottom of the plug in the process. Probably going to need new piston and sleeve, at least in that hole, but best to replace them all while you got it apart.