A little back story first. I inherited my uncle's 1987 B8200 last winter. He purchased it new in April of 1987. The tractor has 855 hours on it. I had assumed my uncle kept up on all the maintenance on the machine all these years. This past spring, I was brush hogging with it I feel a little too fast. The engine bogged down and was bellowing black smoke and died. I immediately stopped using the tractor and parked it to cool off. Once cooled, I noticed the radiator was either really low or empty. Topping it off, I used it a bit around the property but just wouldn't run quite right. I parked it for a few months so gather my thoughts to see what may need to be done.
Fast forward to today. I decided to pull it out because I am going to restore the belly mower and put the tractor back into light service. It started up fairly okay, not as easy as before but ran up to full throttle. I drove it across the property to the shed and in that short trip, the rpm started to slow down and then started to smoke (not heavily). It appears to be white smoke which tells me it's a coolant issue in the engine. With the engine running, I did not see any visible smoke around the engine, pulled the oil filler cap, no white smoke but some vapor was noticed. Vapor was coming from a tube or pipe on the left side bottom of the engine. Coolant was dripping from the underneath of the engine towards the front. The engine was hot so I did not open the radiator to see how much coolant was lost. This evening I plan on looking into the radiator and then at the engine oil.
Based on my best description possible here, does this sound like a head gasket issue or will I be looking down the barrel of something more involved? I'm confident I can handle a head gasket replacement. If I need to dig into the head or get deeper into an overhaul, I'm not sure what I'll be able to do.
What are your guys thoughts? I tried to get a few pictures of the smoke from the stack.
Fast forward to today. I decided to pull it out because I am going to restore the belly mower and put the tractor back into light service. It started up fairly okay, not as easy as before but ran up to full throttle. I drove it across the property to the shed and in that short trip, the rpm started to slow down and then started to smoke (not heavily). It appears to be white smoke which tells me it's a coolant issue in the engine. With the engine running, I did not see any visible smoke around the engine, pulled the oil filler cap, no white smoke but some vapor was noticed. Vapor was coming from a tube or pipe on the left side bottom of the engine. Coolant was dripping from the underneath of the engine towards the front. The engine was hot so I did not open the radiator to see how much coolant was lost. This evening I plan on looking into the radiator and then at the engine oil.
Based on my best description possible here, does this sound like a head gasket issue or will I be looking down the barrel of something more involved? I'm confident I can handle a head gasket replacement. If I need to dig into the head or get deeper into an overhaul, I'm not sure what I'll be able to do.
What are your guys thoughts? I tried to get a few pictures of the smoke from the stack.
