Dexta oil consumption

[koenr]

Hi all,

I wonder what your experiences are with Dexta oil consumption. What can be considered normal for a 60's generation engine?

My Dexta consumes about a liter on a day hard labour, say 6 hours pulling a 3m wide tedder with the temperature gauge on 175 and the RPM on 1800.

There is nothing coming out of the breather and I don't see/feel anything coming out of the oil fill cap if I open it with running engine. My neigbour suggested to replace the valve guides to make the oil consumption less. Is that a worth while option? The engine, as far as I know, never had an overhaul and has nearly 4000 hrs on the meter, for what that's worth of course.

[Aussie Frank]

Hi Koenr,

Personally I would ask the question, how many days hard work worth of oil can I buy for the cost of changing the valve guides. In my experience older engines will always use a little oil. Changing the valve guides may help, but then again it may not if the bores were glazed with the wrong oil and not enough hard work when new. The first thing I would change is the oil, the oil you are using may be too thin for an old engine. If the oil is the right grade it is your choice, but I would still be happy to put 1 litre of oil in for 6 hours of hard work, if as you say every thing else is OK.

Regards, Frank.

[koenr]

Thanks a lot for your view Frank. You are probably right. The smell bothers me more then the liter oil

I use SAE 20 HD in an ambient temperature of 25°C. The oil and filter is new. May be SAE 30 HD next time?

I did some reading on glazed bores - it was new to me. I always thought bores should be as smooth as possible.
They can be mis treated of course, anything could have happened to such an old engine. I don't work it always that hard, only in the hay season.


Dexta resting after a days work.

Finally found how to link pictures from Picasa - hopefully it stays there...

[Cvans]

I would definitely consider going to a heavier grade of oil. Straight 20w oil is going to be very thin at normal operating temperatures. Most diesels in the U.S. that I know about run 15-40 year around. I'm presently running that and have had to add no oil since the last oil change.

[koenr]

I wasn't aware that using a multigrade oil is ok.
Can't it cause seal leakage? Using the wrong oil really worries me.

[Bensdexta]

Some useful material here:
http://www.fordsontractorpages.nl/phpbb ... f=3&t=1012
http://www.fordsontractorpages.nl/phpbb ... rris#p6512

[Cvans]

Good information Ben. In one of the links they talk about oil pressure gauges and I happen to agree with their installation. Mine is running over 60lbs and uses no oil with the Shell Rotella 15-40 .

[Jerry Coles]

For a small outlay I obtained a 'T' adapter and an oil pressure guage and fitted it to the block on my Dexta so I could monitor the pressure on my new engine.
It worked a treat as the pressure came up before the engine fired up and held steady during running. It also showed that the pressure dropped of only when the engine had stopped so I guess the oil was still going around the bearings which must prolong their life.
IMHO
Jerry