No Spare Tractor?!?

Between us, the three closest neighbors and myself have TWELVE tractors to run only about 500 acres of land!

Of course, one is an 8N which has the fuel system rusted closed and so it doesn't really count.

Even so we all seem to be real good at BUYING tractors and very poor at SELLING them.

I will pull the oil pan and pressurize the cooling system to see which pistons are leaking.

Not sure what my next step will be. I usually do not like to use Barr's leak unless it's an emergency - I may have time to pull the head and replace the sleeve or o-ring that is leaking. But - If one sleeve/o-ring is bad it seems like the others can't be far behind, so if I'm going to do the work to fix one I should probably fix them all. Is this a safe bet?

I don't want to run it with coolant getting into the oil, but I did want to ask - worse case will I damage the bearings if I run it this way?

Maybe the best bet is to try Barr's leak and use the tractor, then schedule it for a rebuild over the summer once the plowing is done.

I'll post back with my results.

If the sleeve has been eroded completely through so that the coolant is coming through the sleeve wall, antifreeze will soon cause the piston to score. This can also happen when coolant gets picked up from the bottom of the sleeve with o-rings leaking. A scored piston can come apart and do major damage. I had one where a piece of piston skirt got between the rod and block and pushed a hole in the side of the block.