Vintage Tractor Engineer » Engines

Restored FE35 4 Cylinder Starting In Cold Weather

Vintage Tractor Engineer — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:09:19 +0000

We often get emails and photos from customers who have restored their tractors (and it’s great to see how people have got on).

Andrew (who incidently has a quaint little holliday cottage in Whitby) has sent us a video of his grey and red FE35 starting up from cold in winter time…

Andrew thought the video may help people decide if it would be worth spending all the time, effort and expense on reconditioning their engine. I’ll let you decide the answer to that one (but Vintage Tractor Engineer is certain the answer is yes!).

VTE knows that Andrew had a bit of trouble getting the injection pump timing correct and had to go back and make some adjustments, but perserverence eventually paid off and that starting performance is a credit to Andrew, his hard work and attention to detail.

Gunter’s FE35

Gunter has also been hard at work restoring his grey and gold FE35 and has uploaded some photos. Impressive stuff!

MF35 Overheating and Stalling

Vintage Tractor Engineer — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:33:52 +0000

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.

How To Fit Core Plugs, MF35

Vintage Tractor Engineer — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 07:50:47 +0000

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.

MF 835 Injection Pump

Vintage Tractor Engineer — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 14:39:25 +0000

Here at Vintage Tractor Engineer we are used to working with the UK built Ferguson tractors. However, when it comes to some of the US built machines we start to get a bit lost as to which model is the UK equivalent and are they exactly the same or just very similar with small differences.

Then we get emails about the French built tractors and we get lost altogether!

MF835

We had a gentleman who needed information about the injection pump on his MF835. Apparently the pump is a Lavalette Brevete.

We’ve now been given the link to a French site that has information on these pumps…

http://vieilles.soupapes.free.fr/index.php

Unfortunately Vintage Tractor Engineer’s French is about as much use as engine that’s done 15,000 hours and never had its oil changed! Anyway, apparently the information is on that website somewhere.

If you need to translate anything then Google Translate seems to work quite well.

Ring Gaps, MF35 23C Engine

Vintage Tractor Engineer — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:05:59 +0000

The ring gaps are an important thing to look at when assessing an engine for serviceability. Excessive ring gaps will cause reduced compression, impair starting and running performances.

What is the ring gap?

The ring gap is the gap between the end of the rings. This is measured with feeler gauges.

Tractor and engine manufacturers will provide tools to place the ring inside and then the ring gap can be measured. The majority of tractor restorers will not have access to these tools as they are unlikely to be in production for older tractors. The next best alternative is to place the ring into the bottom (unworn) portion of the bore (liner) and measure it there. The bottom of the liner will not have had the piston contacting it and because it is unworn it will have the cross hatched honing marks clearly visible.

We can see the unworn portion on this liner. The photo doesn’t show it well, but the cross hatching is visible.

What are the ring gap tolerances?

For original Ferguson/MF rings and liners…

Top ring gap 9 to 17 thou

Second and third ring gaps 9 to 14 thou

Duaflex oil scraper 18 to 37 thou (alternative oil scraper is 10 to 15 thou)

If you are measuring a genuine MF liner then the bore of the liner should be 3.3130 to 3.3145 ins. The reason for the size difference in the original liners is that at that time they were unable to manufacture the liners accurately. After manufacture they would measure them and then measure and match pistons to them in a pair.

New rings out of specification

We have had a few people email us to say that they have got new pistons, rings and liners and that they have measured them before fitting and found that they are out of spec.

These have all been manufactured by a non-genuine parts supply company and unfortunately some of these companies seem not to be able to manufacture parts to the necessary accuracy.

Typically the following ring gaps have been measured from these parts suppliers…

Top ring gap 23 thou

Second and third ring gaps 18 thou

Oil ring 15 thou

What to do?

Firstly measure either your tool or (more likely) the liner you are using to measure the ring gap in. Check it is within spec. If it is within spec and you are experiencing ring gaps which are too large then compression is likely to be compromised.

Ideally these ‘new’ components should be rejected and replacement parts sourced from another manufacturer.

Daryle has emailed to offer this tip…

Excellent advice on Liners, if I may offer a tip, is to keep your liners standing. Laying them on their side will often distort them.

Thanks Daryle, much appreciated – Steve and Ian.