View attachment 393356It's only taken me six months but after dismantling the fuel system in April to replace the worn out injectors on our Massey Ferguson 65...today was the day I finally got the damn thing started.
Along the way, both front tyres got replaced. Then I found the valve cover was leaking because a tightarse in the distant past decided that you could say $6 by using the old gasket and lots of RTV instead.
Then I decided to see if I could find another timing cover as the original one had holes in it due to a thrust washer falling off it...into the timing gear. Found another one. Realised that fitting it also required splitting the front axle assembly off the engine. And some pretty special o-rings. More parts!
While the front axle assembly was off, it became apparent it had significant wear issues. The centre pivot bushes were long gone and the cast pivots themselves weren't round anymore. New bushes and some welding and bring later... sufficient improvement. The axle spindle assemblies were also rooted - thrust bearings and bushes all destroyed...as were the spindles themselves. More new parts.
Finally got the whole lot back together...and it ran really poorly for a couple of minutes. Filled the shed with brown smoke and then utterly snuffed it. Couldn't get the injection pump to pump properly either on or off the tractor. In the end, I paid the price to rebuild it with a brand new pump head ($1,900...).
Got it back. Put it on. Bleed it out. Wouldn't go. Had a tantrum. Eventually calmed down enough to realise that it can't pump with air in the injector lines...bled them too. And it starts, revs quite well, much better than before. Lots of white smoke though (as one can see in the image)...there's still air in it. Went back over the lines with a gorillas approach to fasteners and now it doesn't smoke at idle. Give it some throttle and the smoke returns so it's sucking air in somewhere (I suspect the filter assemblies). However, it runs and runs with real potential...I can still fix it!!!