Vintage Tractor Engineer

Vintage Tractor Engineer always likes to hear from MF35 owners from across the world who kindly send in photographs of their tractors, especially when we get the serial number.  This helps build a catalogue of tractors that we can use to compare against our own machines – particulary helpfull when trying to do an authentic restoration.

Richard has sent in these photos of his tractor, along with a few details.

Further relevant information is available on decals and badges or a more general article on the MF35 tractor.

We’ve been having big problems with the Vintage Tractor Engineer Discussion Forums over the past several months.  Earlier in the year we couldn’t prevent spam registrations and then when we did stop the spam, the human users (in our case tractor owners/enthusiasts) couldn’t register either.

This resulted in the forums been only lightly used as no-one could join and add their questions and comments.

Hopefully It’s Good News

We think the problem is now repaired!

Thank you for your patience over the past months and thanks to the members who have kindly taken the time to email in when thy have experienced problems or seen spam comments.

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For anyone who hasn’t noticed, for a few months now it has been possible to subscribe to a topic/discussion – so you get a notification when someone replies to your question.

Lau from Denmark has done a complete engine rebuild of the 23C engine in his Massey Ferguson 35.  However, he is having some problems and has written in to see what could be the trouble.  He says…

Hi VTE.

I have followed the whole rebuild process acording to the fantastic DVD I bought (I also bought the Workshop Manual for the MF 35).

I have recently started up the engine for the very first time.  It was running absolutely fantastic.  But after approx 4-5 minutes the engine slowly stalls and decreases in revs and then completely stalls – almost at the same time the radiator starts “leaking” because of the boiling water in the block.

Everything inside is new – pistons, rings, liners, crankshaft is balanced with new bearings – the WHOLE lot.  What I am afraid of is that the tolerance between the piston through the rings to the liner is to narrow.  I have removed the head now and looked at the pistons and the inside of the liners and they look as they were new – no scratches no ressidue of any kind!  All the spare parts I have bought in the UK – also the Engine Overhaul Kit – 23C.

What would You recommend I do next?

Kind regards from Denmark
Mr Lau Jakobsen

I would think you have a cooling problem.

What will be happening (I suspect) is that the cooling system isn’t working
for some reason.  The aluminium pistons will be overheating and expanding
(more quickly than the iron block) and hence the expanded pistons will
become difficult to move along the bores.   This will create more friction
and even more heat making the engine even hotter and the problem even worse.

What could be wrong?

Either one of the pipes is blocked up or the thermostat is not allowing the
water to circulate or the water pump is not circulating the water or the
radiator blocked.  Other things to look for are gaskets fitted incorrectly
and blocking coolant pathways, or temporary covers (e.g. cloths or tape used to cover coolant pathways during the rebuild) that haven’t been removed. I would take a careful look at all the cooling system components.

The thermostat should begin to open at between 68 and 74 degrees C. It
should be fully open at 85 degrees C – which can be checked by placing in a
pan of water and heating up the water.

Will this have damaged anything?

Hopefully not. If the engine was just running at idling speed in the
workshop then I would suspect that nothing will have got damaged. Things tolook for are damaged piston rings and cylinder head (although you have been in and inspected these).

Hope that helps.

Let us know how you get on.

If anyone has any other theories or suggestions for Lau then please let us know in the comments below.

The Vintage Tractor Engineer.

This is a guest post from Alan Clark…

Here is a detailed explanation of the reason a Series Wound starter motor still rotates the same way regardless of battery polarity.

When Battery Polarity is reversed both Field and Armature currents are reversed [Because it is Series wound]-rotation direction remains the same.

If the Starter were to be dismantled and either the field or the armature connections reversed the Starter rotation would reverse

If you have any tractor related mechanical articles that would be useful to our community then please contact us.  It is good to pass on tractor knowledge.

In the UK we’ve had two consecutive cold winters and the frost has blown core plugs from some engines which haven’t either been drained of coolant or had sufficient antifreeze concentrations.  Owners who have had blown core plugs are lucky that this fail-safe has worked – they could have been dealing with a more serious (and expensive) cracked block.  This highlights the need to prepare your tractor for winter.

How To Fit Core Plugs

There are different designs of core plug for different engines.  The task is quite straight forward on the Perkins engines, as the plugs are simply hammered into position with a suitable drift and light hammering.

23C Engine

The design of the core plug and fitting method for the Standard 23C engine is somewhat different.

Here are the core plug fitting instructions…

On these engines the new core plugs are a convex shape (like a dish shape). You clean the hole out and put some sealant around the edge of the hole (something like ‘Instant Gasket’ or ‘Loctite Flange Sealant’).  The sealant isn’t technically necessary (as eventually any leak would seal with rust), but it is better for an immediate seal.

Next get the new core plug and place the lip of the plug into the hole (so if you imagine something such as a breakfast bowl, the bottom of the bowl needs to be facing towards you to the outside of the engine block) and then using a suitably shaped wide punch you hit the centre of the core plug until it starts to flatten out.  This expands the outer rim of the plug and makes a water tight seal.  The plug needs to be nearly flat, but NOT flat.  If you  get it to the point of been flat then it will loose its grip and it will just fall out.

It is sometimes possible to re-use an old core plug if you are able to re-form the dish shape prior to fitting the plug.