B8200HST Decompression Lever Stuck

[murky]

Well the diesel mechanic picked up my tractor last night to diagnose and fix.

Imagine my surprise when he called me this afternoon and told me it was done.

He says the problem was the fuel pump which he disassembled and cleaned. Apparently the liquid that squirted out of my glow plug hole must have been fuel.

He says the compression looks good and consistent, coolant looks clean and there isn't excessive blow by.

I started it up and it does blow white smoke until warm, but that clears up. It used to run rough for a little while and then kick into smooth but now it doesn't seem to run rough at the beginning. I've only had 15 minutes to mess with it so far.

So I'm only out $300 plus towing and I can get back to my valve adjustment and decompression adjustment.

Plus through this adventure I learned how to take my loader off and drove the tractor for the first time with no implement or loader attached.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

I know this is going to sound very bad, but...
I'm not believing your mechanic,, highly suspicious on it being that simple.
I've never heard of an Injection pump supplying so much fuel that it spits out of the pistons.
Flooding is normally caused by bad injectors not the pump, I say normally because anything is possible

Take off the radiator cap run it and look for bubbles in the radiator.
Also keep an eye on temps, oil level and radiator level.

It will be very nice for you if I'm completely wrong, And I hope I am wrong on this!

 

[murky]

Yeah, I was skeptical too.

Hopefully this weekend I'll have some time to mess with it.

I still plan to finish the valve adjustment and decompression adjustment. I'll take the glow plug out again and see if it still squirts.

On that note, I can't find where the TDC marks can be viewed on the bell housing. Any clues?

I figured it was obscured by the loader, but right now the loader is off so I can look again.

 

[murky]

I know this is going to sound very bad, but...
I'm not believing your mechanic,, highly suspicious on it being that simple.
I've never heard of an Injection pump supplying so much fuel that it spits out of the pistons.
Flooding is normally caused by bad injectors not the pump, I say normally because anything is possible

Take off the radiator cap run it and look for bubbles in the radiator.
Also keep an eye on temps, oil level and radiator level.

It will be very nice for you if I'm completely wrong, And I hope I am wrong on this!

You were right. I took out the glow plugs and it does the same thing as before. Amazing it runs like this.

Back where I started. I wish I had time to do this myself.

 

[murky]

If anybody is sill reading, the head was cracked in two places and it was pitted in the middle cylinder, the one that was getting coolant in it.

I got a rebuild head from grainfarmer.com. It took forever (6 weeks instead of the 1 he estimated). But it looked great when it arrived. Another option was enginepowersource.com but they want a $300 core charge and shipping wasn't cheap. If they could reuse the head they'd refund it, $75 back if they couldn't (barely covers shipping). But I didn't like the fact that they do crack repairs. I wanted a head that had never been cracked.

There was a third option, tractorpartsasap.com that was competitive in price but their picture didn't look as nice as the grainfarmer ones.

The tractor now starts instantly after heating with the glow plugs. It had never done that in the 3 years I owned it. I didn't even know it could/was supposed to.

I got the rebuilt head to the mechanic Tuesday night and he had it on and the tractor running Thursday night and he delivered it to my driveway on Friday (Independence day). $720 for labor and transport both ways (and storing for 6 weeks).

Now that I have the tractor back, I'm not sure the tach/hour meter cable is routed correctly. It gets very close to the fan pulley and gets pinched by the side panel the way it is routed now. The coolant is also not a high enough concentration so I'll probably drop and replace that. And the breather tube was missing (but I found it loose like on the seat or something).

I'm assuming he left the decompression lever how I had it. I set it so that everything was in place and moving freely but so that the lever wouldn't open the valves when pulled. I left it that way intending to do the valve adjustment (during which I found the coolant spurting in the middle cylinder) before adjusting the decompression screws since they'd be affected by the valve clearances.

So when I get a chance I'll adjust the decompression screws. It should be easy now, everything is clean and with fresh seals and moving freely and the valves should be in adjustment, I guess I can do a quick check while I'm in there.

 

[Tooljunkie]

Mine was sticky, it moved but wouldnt return, so i put penetrating oil on the shaft entering valve cover.pokes out the back too. A little spray and working the shaft a few times and is good.

 

[murky]

Yeah, that's probably the first thing people should try, especially if the lever had worked before at some point.

No amount of penetrating oil or jiggling would have gotten mine free because it was oriented in such a way that there was a mechanical obstruction.

 

[Tooljunkie]

When i read this the other day, i didnt realize it was three pages. Lol
I just did a head gastet on a d722. It was much easier than i expected, compared to the hundreds of gm and chrysler head gaskets i have replaced.

The cooling system was polluted with sludge from blowing compressed gases into cooling system. Ran it with simple green to clean it up. It sparkles inside now. Glad you are getting it sorted out.

 

[murky]

Update: I think it is finally complete. I'm a little slow ...

The tractor has been smoking quite a bit still and was especially bad after sitting and in the cold this past week.

Last night I parked it in the garage overnight and today I went in to check the valve clearance and decompression (wasn't sure if the mechanic adjusted the decompression lever after installing the rebuilt head and presumably adjusting the valves).

I finally found the plug in the bell housing that hides the timing marks on the flywheel. In spite of what the manual says, all 3 cylinders have marks for TDC and for injection. Having never done a valve adjustment, I was confused because the clearances were all greater than .020 and the spec is .0059-.0073".

Once I convinced myself that I wasn't mixing up metric and English or something else, the adjustment was very easy. The hardest part was getting the glow plugs in and out without removing the intake manifold. It probably would have been easier to just take the manifold off but I didn't want to mess with the seals.

Clearly I need a new mechanic since he apparently didn't adjust the valve clearance after installing a rebuilt head. It goes without saying that he didn't adjust the decompression screws. Thankfully I had the foresight to loosen them so they didn't contact even when the lever was pulled before giving my tractor.

Stumpy, I deviated from your advice in post #4. I set cylinder 1 to TDC before re-attaching the valve cover then did screws for cylinder 1 and 2 then rotated engine 360 and did cylinder 3. You said to turn the decompression screws 1 and 1/2 turns (I interpret that as 540 degrees) past touching, but that seemed like too much. It seemed like they were pressing the rocker even when the lever was in. I backed them off until I was sure I could pull the lever a little bit before the rocker started moving (made sure there was a small amount of play between the screw and rocker with decompression lever not pulled). That was maybe 1 full turn.

I put everything back together and started her up. Started immediately, a few seconds of white smoke then clean exhaust, the best I've seen since I've had the tractor.

After running a couple of minutes I pulled the decompression lever and the engine stopped immediately. First time I've ever seen that in action.

If I ever have a runaway engine I can pull that sucker now. I guess I don't need it for cold starting now that I have a rebuilt head and good valve clearance. I guess if I let the battery get really low it could help with starting.

Anyway, thanks again for the excellent help guys.

 

[murky]

Reading this thread was a nice stroll through memory lane. The tractor has done well by me the last 5 or 6 years. Only real problems have been with old tires and dumb stuff like that.

I decided to follow up and say that I had a chance to use the decompression lever in a useful way. The linkage to shut off fuel from the stop knob is sticky and it wouldn't shut off. Decompression lever did the trick.

Will have to get that freed up when the weather is nice.