The Fordson Tractor Pages Forum

Hi all,

Just went to fire up the major for 1st time this year and no fuel to injectors.

Took side cover off and when turning over the springs/pistons arent even moving?

Rack slides freely, just no sign of movement when turning over (input shaft is turning ok)

Any initial thought welcome before i dig further. Had a quick search and nothing comes up.

Its this pump (previous thread of mine) viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8419&p=59001#p59001

Video: https://youtu.be/guMAVtUxHAc

Thanks

Your tappets might be stuck, get some diesel in there to loosen them up, usually it's the plungers that stick (not in your case). Your cambox is very dry and dirty, I would give it plenty of clean diesel, cleaning it is a delicate job, but you should be running once the tappets freed off.
Sandy

The joys of modern low sulphur diesel that doesn't lube the pump properly! Been reading alot about adding ATF or 2 stroke oil to a tank of fuel but there seems to be so much conflicting info. I do think it's worthwhile using an off the shelf addative that has lubricity improver in it, especially for tractors that aren't used regularly. With the old diesel you could leave a tractor for years, charge the battery and it would start, now it seems you don't start it for 2 months and the pump is stuck

Thanks, have given the insides a soak.

Are you thinking item 16 in this diagram is stuck?

https://spare.avspart.com/spare/new.holland/530e993183/

Yes, they should move up and down but i can see on the video they are stuck in the up position, as Sandy says it looks very dry in there. Leave them to soak for a day or so, then if they are still stuck use a piece of wood (thin hammer handle is ideal), and very gently try levering them down, but dont use enough force to bend the rack. If you still can't get them to move try spraying some penetrating oil on them for a few days and try again, hopefully you will be able to free them off but i have sen them so stuck I had to remove the pump and remove the cam to free them
John

Thanks, found a video of a working pump internals and makes sense now.
Will do as suggested as see if they want to start moving again!

They shouldn't be that stuck if has only been a few months, the Simms pump relied on diesel to lube all the internals but with modern diesel it's definitely worth removing the side plate a couple of times a year and giving each plunger a good squirt of engine oil, you can't overfill it (as long as the pig tail overflow isn't blocked!) At the risk of stating the obvious at least one of the plungers won't move down until you turn the engine over as the cam will be pushing on it

I agree, remove the side cover and pump clean engine oil from an oil can over the injection pump elements and keep pumping clean oil in which will displace the lighter diesel/oil mix in the pump cambox, keep pumping oil in until it is clean unmixed engine oil that flows from the pigtail leak off pipe. The minimec pump replaced the vacuum pump from April 1962 onwards and that pump had a drain off plug, level plug and a fill plug and a specific cambox oil change service schedule and there must have been a reason for that. On the Ferguson TEF 20 diesel tractor with the CAV vacuum pump, there is a specific service interval instruction to take off the side cover which is held by 2 screws and after opening the level tap on the side of the pump then to pump in clean engine oil until clean unmixed oil glows from the level tap then close the level tap and re-fix the side cover.

I know I keep banging on about modern diesel but it really isn't good enough for lubing these old pumps, and anyone who doesn't start oiling them regularly will end up with a nice bill for a refurb. I stripped the bottom end of one a while ago and the rollers on the bottom of 2 of the plungers had siezed and had flat spots on them. I had spare plungers but haven't got the kit to calibrate the pump so the chap ended up having to send it away to be set up, half a pint of engine oil a year would have been alot cheaper!

shepp wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 30, 2022 9:21 pm

The minimec pump replaced the vacuum pump from April 1962 onwards and that pump had a drain off plug, level plug and a fill plug and a specific cambox oil change service schedule and there must have been a reason for that.

I had always thought it was because of the mechanical governor having lots more moving parts.
Do ensure you try each cylinder at the right time (I recommend you start with no. 1 as then you know that the injector pump coupling timing mark should be less than 90 degrees behind the fixed mark), to avoid damage. I would avoid anything other than diesel for freeing up, then once you've got it running clean it out and fill with engine oil to help with lubrication. Do be absolutely sure there is no dirt in the pump before refitting the inspection cover.
Sandy

Got it running, was as suggested here, thanks for the advice, saved me some time!

Wasnt easy to get access to the top of the followers with anything to give them a tap, but managed it with a plastic drift, turning the engine over by hand and tapping each one until they eased.

Cleaned it all out and gave it a good does of fresh oil while running to lube them all back up.
Then flushed the bottom bearing housing through with fresh oil from above.

Glad you sorted it, just remember to give it a squirt of oil on the plungers before you park it up for the winter and all should be good
John

Always good to see Major's get back to work easily. I would suggest more than a little squirt, as it will improve lubrication when running.
Sandy

The point with the vacuum pump is that with the pigtail overflow pipe the original oil lubricant is being constantly diluted more and more by diesel leak off from the pump elements, so that eventually it becomes almost pure diesel, and there is no drain off plug in the cambox. The minimec pump has a drain off plug and a level plug not a leak off pipe, so that all the original oil lubricant is retained in the pump cambox together with any diesel leak off. The specified service procedure to drain the cambox and refill with fresh oil at specific intervals endures that the oil lubricant does not become too diluted with diesel. There are a few more moving parts in the minimec pump with the governor weights and mechanism, but the oil level to the level plug is not much different to the vacuum pump pigtail drain off so that the mechanism is not submerged in oil but is splash lubricated.

Another factor is that when these tractors were front line models in constant use the engine and hence the injection pump were regularly up to working temperature, so that there was much less chance of condensation occurring inside the pump body and hence less chance of corrosion of the internals. John's point about the quality of modern diesel may also be a relevant factor, today of course we have winter grade diesel and summer grade diesel so that there is no doubt that the wax levels of probably both grades of diesel have been significantly altered. In days past these engines when in constant use and properly serviced would easily do twelve to fifteen thousand hours or more, including the vacuum governed injection pumps which relied on diesel leak off to maintain a constant lubricant level of oil and diesel, and they did not give much trouble, so I think it is probably a combination of lack of daily use and possibly modern diesel quality and wax levels that leads to pump issues today. Regular removal of the side cover and oiling of the visible parts and flushing the cambox out with new engine oil should prevent these issues, and if there is any sign if condensation in the cambox leave the side cover off until it has cleared.

Totally agree about the lack of use and condensation being a problem, i have seen pumps on barn stored tractors full of rust. I was told by a retired simms engineer many years ago that the vacuum pumps were designed to have the cambox filled with oil every service with the plungers mainly relying on diesel to lube them, but as you say lack of use lets them dry out and then the condensation causes corrosion

Totally agree about lack of use, although Billy has never had trouble to spite having sat for a very long time when we first got here. Super Billy didn't have any trouble either after having sat outside for years before we got him.
Sandy

I think you have a better climate to avoid condensation than we do though, don't think they would be as good condition parked outside in the UK

Agree 100% John.
Sandy

Just an observation re diesel quality.
Back in the 1970s/80s a diesel car would have an oily stain under the filler. My VW is a pain to fill and regularly gets drips down the paint, yet by the time I get home the spill has gone. Noticeably in the last few weeks the supply has obviously been changed as a spill now is very much not evaporating and the old school stain has returned for the first time in years.

Thats a good point Rob, i have noticed that diesel seems to evaporate alot easier than it used to, hadn't given the recent change any thought but it would certainly be interesting to see what the difference is. Maybe Vlad was trying to destroy our engines so the world had to drive Ladas!

I don't think thicker diesel will affect a Major, as the BS1947:class A vintage was probably even thicker and that's what Ford used as a basis for the Major. Modern engines could suffer however.
Sandy

Very true Sandy, i think common rail electronic injection systems will suffer far more than an old machanical type

As I remarked previously, today we have summer grade diesel and winter grade diesel. After a certain date in the autumn suppliers will deliver only winter grade diesel, returning to summer grade sometime in early spring. The winter grade - whether red for farm use or white out of the pump - has reduced wax levels and may evaporate more easily so that in very cold winter temperatures the fuel lines and filters do not wax up as easily. It may be that at the current date suppliers have returned to supplying summer grade white and red diesel, hence the stain re-appearing near the filler cap on the car.

In the days when the Majors were front line tractors there was no distinction between summer and winter grade diesel, only one type was available and supplied and with full usual levels of wax. It would appear logical to me that diesel from years gone by had better lubricating properties with the higher wax levels. The wax level is probably not as critical with engines with rotary pumps such as the CAV DPA pump, or common rail engines with high pressure pumps as both types of pump are completely full of diesel and all moving parts are submerged in diesel, hence the chances of lack of lubrication are much less. You will find many of the HGV'S such as Volvo, Scania, DAF, Mercedes etc that have been on long distance trunking work come out of service and are replaced at 5 to 7 years old with often well over a million kilometres on the clock, sometimes 1.5 million, and still with their original engines and high pressure common rail pumps. But with an inline pump the lubrication challenge is similar to lubricating an engine, hence the need to somehow keep restoring the oil strength and consistency in the cambox.