# 2N question... I know a real hay maker



## The saint (Oct 4, 2015)

First off I am looking for answers on some ford forums as well bit thought the brain trust here might have some ideas. I was running my sherdeder today with my all powerful 2N got about 1Ac done and it started to act like it was running out of fuel... If I take out the PTO and back the throttle to about half it will run fine but if you put any load it starves again I am thinking that there is a restriction in one of the fuel filters. You have any better ideas?


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## glasswrongsize (Sep 15, 2015)

Fuel...filter or float valve would be my first check. If there is a drain on the bowl of the carb, pull the plug and you should have a good flow of fuel. If you have a good flow, the coil getting hot and breaking down.

73, Mark


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## The saint (Oct 4, 2015)

Hope it just a dirty filter... Can't for the life of me figure out why a 70 year old coil might be near the end of its life.


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## r82230 (Mar 1, 2016)

The saint said:


> Hope it just a dirty filter... Can't for the life of me figure out why a 70 year old coil might be near the end of its life.


Yea, to bad Ford's warranty was for only 50 years, guess Old Henry was to cheap to go for 100 year warranty. :lol:

Larry


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## Gearclash (Nov 25, 2010)

glasswrongsize said:


> Fuel...filter or float valve would be my first check. If there is a drain on the bowl of the carb, pull the plug and you should have a good flow of fuel. If you have a good flow, the coil getting hot and breaking down.
> 
> 73, Mark


I've seen a bad wire from the coil to the cap do this also. Idle fine, and stall as soon as there was any opening of throttle.


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## Farmerbrown2 (Sep 25, 2018)

Our Farmall C did this while hilling potatoes the other day cleaned bowl and screen in carb . When that didn't work I was so mad I hit the carb a couple of time and it started working fine. Our government has the fuel so screwed up soon nothing will run and we will have to go back to horses.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

farmerbrown said:


> Our Farmall C did this while hilling potatoes the other day cleaned bowl and screen in carb . When that didn't work I was so mad I hit the carb a couple of time and it started working fine. Our government has the fuel so screwed up soon nothing will run and we will have to go back to horses.


Agree... worst thing that ever happened for gas-powered equipment was all this friggin' ethanol fuel.

Remember most of the old stuff was designed to run on gas containing tetra ethyl lead as well... and that's been illegal a long time. Plus, gas just isn't as "good" as it was in the old days.

True story-- Grandpa put in his last grain sorghum crop in like 82. Dad was working full time at the nuke plant by then, so Grandpa did the whole crop himself, including the combining. Now, Grandpa wasn't much of a mechanic-- he let Dad do all the wrenching on the equipment, and with him working 50-60 hours a week at the nuke plant, that wasn't happening. Anyway, Grandpa harvested the crop, but had "a problem with the combine he couldn't fix" and most of the glumes (little "hulls" on the outside of sorghum kernels that attach them to the grain head of the plant, which are usually blown out the back of the combine off the cleaning shoe) ended up in the grain tank, and he took some hard docks on the grain due to excess trash. He had decided that grain sorghum was too cheap and he'd only plant cotton from then on, and so the combine went in the barn and that was that. Dad fired it up like once a year for a couple years and drove it around a little, but finally quit messing with it and left it in the barn-- for about 10-12 years, before I decided we needed to start rotating in some grain to solve some problems. Dad told me the combine had some "issue" that Grandpa griped about the fall before he died, but Dad had never fixed it. SO, I decided I'd better fire the machine up and get it out of the barn and go over it with a fine tooth comb to fix whatever problems it might have (chewed wires, bad fuel pump/carb, alternator, etc). My brother and I went to town and bought about 10 gallons of gas in cans and took it to the barn. I took a couple five gallon pails to empty out the fuel tank, since I figured gas that had sat that long was probably rotten. I unscrewed the plug out of the bottom of the tank, and shoved a bucket under the gasoline draining out of the tank, which splattered on my arm. It burned like acid! And the smell-- that stuff was POTENT! As I was draining it out, I noticed the sun shining into the barn shining through the stream of gasoline, which was shimmering every color of the rainbow, bright and strong as the day it was pumped in there (by me when I was a little kid-- my job every morning was pumping 50 gallons of gas out of the barrel in the back of the truck into the combine with one of those stupid old hand pumps... which I HATED!) Considering the "clear as water" limp-wristed corn alcohol gasoline I just bought and how WEAK it smelled compared to this leaded gas, I screwed the plug back in, dumped it back in the top of the tank, and primed the fuel system of the combine, and lo and behold, she fired up on about the third try! Course, I had to harvest with the modern 'rotgut' gasoline, but still... modern rotgut gas is shot after 4 months in the can-- this stuff had been in the tank for TWELVE YEARS and was better than fresh-bought gas!

Back when we had to pull cotton pickers out of the barn, we always had to prime the fuel systems, put the battery in, and then climb up on them and fire them up. Always had to triple-check for paper wasp nests (yellow jackets here) which can make a nest bigger than a football covered with THOUSANDS of wasps ready to attack. We USED to just use the squirt can full of gas that we used to prime the fuel system to kill them-- see a nest, stand back and spray it with the squirt can a half-dozen or dozen times and they'd all fall off dead. When the leaded gas went bye-bye I switched to Bengal wasp-n-hornet spray, which worked GREAT! But, one time, I didn't have any and had to get a machine out and found a nest by the engine, and tried the squirt can trick with some of this modern corn alcohol gas... might as well have been spraying ice water on them... just p!ssed them off... Had to go to town and get a can of Bengal spray to knock them down... Neighbor told me the same thing-- he used to toss a coffee cup of gas onto a nest and it'd kill them with the old gas-- tried it with new alcohol gas and it just made em mad...

Later! OL J R


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## The saint (Oct 4, 2015)

No doubt that corn is for food not my equipment... No hard feelings to the guys who grow it. I worked for a farmer who grew sod (lawn grass) and every year got money from the govmt for not growing wheat. Now why would they pay a guy who has not grow wheat in 15, years? Let the market work if wheat is too cheap fewer guys will grow it if corn is a cash cow guys will grow it and then the price will come down. Let the guys figure out how to manage the land and the crops and you will find a nice balance but to put my food in the gas tank is dumb. But if I can seel a product for a higher price for you to to something dumb with it that is your deal.


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## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

The saint said:


> No doubt that corn is for food not my equipment... No hard feelings to the guys who grow it. I worked for a farmer who grew sod (lawn grass) and every year got money from the govmt for not growing wheat. Now why would they pay a guy who has not grow wheat in 15, years? Let the market work if wheat is too cheap fewer guys will grow it if corn is a cash cow guys will grow it and then the price will come down. Let the guys figure out how to manage the land and the crops and you will find a nice balance but to put my food in the gas tank is dumb. But if I can seel a product for a higher price for you to to something dumb with it that is your deal.


Quit bringing common sense, logic, and a thought of hard work into the equation. That just doesn't fly in government work.

Any luck on the 'ol N?


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## Shetland Sheepdog (Mar 31, 2011)

Vapor lock??


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## rankrank1 (Mar 30, 2009)

a) Vapor lock due to extreme heat with gas tank directly above motor is a possiblility (if problem goes away when tractor cools then maybe. Could try carefully loosening gas cap to see if it relieves the vapor lock).

 Fuel filters? If it has a gomer pyle add on inline filter in it do away with that. All it needs is the factory sediment bulb. Add on filters cause nothing but issues on a gravity feed fuel system.

c) Tank may have a crud restriction in the tank. Easy to take the fuel line loose and blow backwards with air compressor blow nozzle up into the tank with compressed air to temporarily free that plug at the tank outlet.

d) The ignition condenser could be breaking down when hot (98 times out of a 100 this has been my problem)

e) Ignition Coil could be breaking down when hot (1 time in a 100 this has been my problem).

f) ignition switch itself failing (1 time out of 100 this has been my problem).

g) Dirty carb or float stuck in carb? Certainly a possibility but I have ever only run into this issue on stuff that has set for long periods of time and the gas went stale and turned to varnish. In other words on a tractor that has been running great and has been used frequently enough to keep fresh gas cycled through it and tractor has been running great then it goes to crap all at once - I doubt this as the source but not impossible.

Troubleshoot the free easy stuff first. The ignition switch can even be troubleshot with a length off wire twisted together to bypass the switch yet still be able to untwist to disconnect it. I am betting on the condenser but have you done anything with the points recently either? Those front mount distrib often gets neglected due to difficulty accessing them. That rub block on the points wears down the gap gets less and less to point it will not run right or at all. (point file to dress and regap to spec and good to go for free) Modern points are not built as good as they used to be either so they do require more frequent adjustment attention. Modern offshore built condensers fail at a really high rate and require more frequent replacement. I save all my old known to be good condensers as spares for troubleshooting. If you have some laying around and it will fit in the permitted real estate you can use it to trouble shoot your problem. If it cures the issue then go purchase the proper spec fit condenser. I have used a small chevy block v-8 condsener which is 12 volt many times in old 6 volt tractors to finish the job at hand. Condensers do not vary much in their spec range so they will work interchangly to troubleshoot anyway. if it fixes the problem then replace with proper condenser spec when time permits).


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## gerkendave (Jan 8, 2014)

My Allis WC was doing the exact same thing. Drain the tank and remove the sediment bowl assembly (the whole thing not just the bowl). Mine had so much small rust particles packed in the stem it could not flow well. My local farm supply store actually stocks a sediment bowl assembly with a fine screen that sticks up into the tank keeping bottom floaters from entering the fuel system. Works great now.


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## The saint (Oct 4, 2015)

I think I have narrowed the problem to the in tank filter... To bad I just filled the tank. Going to pull it tomorrow and see if I can get her back running. I need to finish this field before the weeds got to seed I have almost goten all the crap out with well timed mowing and a little spray. It is a lot cheeper to now than to pay the sprayer to come out.


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## The saint (Oct 4, 2015)

Did not truely fix the problem but blew a little air through the in tank filter and we are off to the races. This winter I will have to drain the tank and do the job right. Thanks for the help guys!


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## The saint (Oct 4, 2015)

In a mother line of questioning I would some day like to cut my own hay using this tractor. This put a person at a limitation due to HP and ground speed options. I feel that my only choice would be a motor powered baler or maybe like a old hayliner but just don't think that is best as ground speed is going to be a big limiter. But long before that I need to get the grass layed down it seams my only real options would be a drum mower or sickle. Any input?


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

Late to the party and not your issue, but I had this issue once and it was a failed bearing on the PTO shaft inside the housing. I just mention this because often times we think of load on the engine and thus the engine is not providing enough power for the PTO when it could also be the PTO dragging down a perfectly tuned engine.

Again...just letting others know of an issue I had once that was perplexing to find.


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## The saint (Oct 4, 2015)

Good point thanks


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## rankrank1 (Mar 30, 2009)

You might be surprised on that fuel tank depending on the level of nastiness it has: I bought a Farmall h a few years ago that had a cruddy tank. Previous owner even told me he had to take the line loose and blow backwards up into the tank on occasion (as I mentioned in my first post in this thread). I had to do it twice myself. That said this ethonal gas we have now will surprise you on what it will clean up. My tank looks pretty good inside now and I have done nothing but burn the cheapest ethonal containing gas I can find in this ole Farmall h tractor. (There are many downsides to ethanol gas also but few people mention that there is an occasional good side when warranted).

On your 2N: A sickle mower is an ideal hay cutter for that machine and will work very well. (If your hydraulic 3 point hitch is decent enough condition then it would likely handle a very small drum mower too. Drum mowers can be sorta heavy though and the weight is cantilevered to one side too so it will simply depend on mower size and how good your hydraulics are).

For a baler: One of the old vintage New Holland or John Deere square balers with a Wisconsin engine would certainly work best. A New Holland 65 PTO powered comapact hayliner might work decent too, but not great (I bale with a 65 and have used it behind a Kubota tractor even smaller than an N but usually use the ole Farmall h or Farmall m nowadays). Others have run bigger PTO powered balers with N's successfully but I personally would not.


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## The saint (Oct 4, 2015)

Thanks I know a PTO can be done but I think I would feel better not having ground speed and PTO speed tied together on this tractor. I think tractor, baler, and owner would all be happier that way. Now I just need to fond a nice old sickle on a ditch bank to refurbish for cheep.


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