I have a 2001 L35 with about 1100 hours on it. I purchased it a couple years ago, history unknown, I have done a bunch of repairs (mainly fixing hydraulic leaks), and have put about 200 hours on it.
Recently it has become challenging to start when in the 30s or 40s F. Granted the block may be colder from sitting overnight. I have a service manual and I can't find anything on what the glow plugs are supposed to read on an ohm meter. All my glow plugs read roughly 1.6 ohms. The glow plug controller seems to work properly as I don't have the light randomly turning on, when the tractor is hot it only lights for a second or less, and when the tractor is cold it lights for maybe 5 seconds.
To get the tractor started when cold, I now have to give it full throttle with the foot pedal, cycle the glow plugs, crank a few seconds, fail to start, and repeat the process a second, sometimes a third time. Once it catches I let off the throttle and while it may run rough for a second or two it then runs smoothly. On initial start it blows a cloud of smoke, mostly black, a little bit grey, but clears up within a second or two.
This is contrary to how it worked a year ago when generally it would start first try when it was in the 20s outside and didn't require any throttle past idle.
I do have some vapor coming out the CCV tube when it is running, I think it may be more when hot, but it is not enough that I smell oil while it is running. Oil level is stable, although I guess it's possible that oil and diesel are mixing at a rate to keep the oil level stable... I doubt this, but it is possible. I run 10W-30 oil as speced by the manual. The vapor may be greater than it was a couple years ago, I don't know and I don't have a compression tester. The exhaust doesn't smoke except as noted on startup and if a lug the engine doing loader work - in that case it will smoke black.
Valves have not been adjusted to my knowledge. That is one of the things on my todo list. It is important to me that this starts reliably when it is cold out. One of my next improvements will be to add a quick tach so I can utilize a pusher box to push snow. I will get a magnetic block heater, but I do not want this to be reliant on the block heater when cold.
Any advice is much appreciated.
Recently it has become challenging to start when in the 30s or 40s F. Granted the block may be colder from sitting overnight. I have a service manual and I can't find anything on what the glow plugs are supposed to read on an ohm meter. All my glow plugs read roughly 1.6 ohms. The glow plug controller seems to work properly as I don't have the light randomly turning on, when the tractor is hot it only lights for a second or less, and when the tractor is cold it lights for maybe 5 seconds.
To get the tractor started when cold, I now have to give it full throttle with the foot pedal, cycle the glow plugs, crank a few seconds, fail to start, and repeat the process a second, sometimes a third time. Once it catches I let off the throttle and while it may run rough for a second or two it then runs smoothly. On initial start it blows a cloud of smoke, mostly black, a little bit grey, but clears up within a second or two.
This is contrary to how it worked a year ago when generally it would start first try when it was in the 20s outside and didn't require any throttle past idle.
I do have some vapor coming out the CCV tube when it is running, I think it may be more when hot, but it is not enough that I smell oil while it is running. Oil level is stable, although I guess it's possible that oil and diesel are mixing at a rate to keep the oil level stable... I doubt this, but it is possible. I run 10W-30 oil as speced by the manual. The vapor may be greater than it was a couple years ago, I don't know and I don't have a compression tester. The exhaust doesn't smoke except as noted on startup and if a lug the engine doing loader work - in that case it will smoke black.
Valves have not been adjusted to my knowledge. That is one of the things on my todo list. It is important to me that this starts reliably when it is cold out. One of my next improvements will be to add a quick tach so I can utilize a pusher box to push snow. I will get a magnetic block heater, but I do not want this to be reliant on the block heater when cold.
Any advice is much appreciated.
