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We’ve had a problem with our Massey Ferguson 8220 a little while back.

We use the 8220 on the farm for the heavy cultivation work.  This is a little off-topic for a vintage tractor site, but I thought the information may help someone.

There’s a photo of the 8220 if you wish to take a look.

The 8220 is 155hp but it was performing poorly in the field, struggling to travel at 4mph when ploughing with a 5 furrow vari-width Lemken plough set at approx 20″ furrows. I dropped the plough off and went for the MF8110 (140hp) and this tractor pulled the plough at 5.5mph. After much head scratching we eventually found the problem. It was a diaphgram in the injection pump. We replaced it and then hooked up the plough back onto the 8220, went back to the field and the tractor was travelling at 5.9mph with ease.

It must have only been outputting about 120hp with the split diaphragm, and now it is unstoppable! It wasn’t smoking or doing anything else, it was just short of power.
JCBDRIVER wrote in to say that he had experienced this problem as well when he was working on a 6290…

Hi, I have come across the fault you mention, but on the 6290 model. I have a service buletin that says to replace the diaphram with a modified version so MF knew about this problem and rectified it with a strengthened version, 8220 looks a smart tractor,looks like it has the heavy duty bar rear axle fitted, I’ve not had a right lot to do with the 8200 range,the dealer where I was working over here at Skipton sold mainly tractors from the smaller ranges,with it being more of a livestock area tractors of around 90 to 150 hp being the norm but i’ve worked on a few 8100’s, watch out for the brakes breaking up on the 81 , before long you fill the back end with filings and all the valves get blocked, & its a right nightmare trying to clean it all out. regards