8N electrical problem

A problem I've run across ocasionally, and it exhibits symptoms such as your engine does, sometimes as the distrubitor wears and the blowby can push oily smoke up into the dist. cap and this slowly, while you're running the engine, coats the points with an oil coating. Of course when you clean and set the points that cures the problem.

You might want to take a look at the wear on the dist. bushings if the problem persists after trying all other things that should cure the problem and the engine continues to fail to run for an extended period.

Good luck.

Mike

Heres the deal, anytime yer burnin' yer points, yer condensor ain't workin'. Or its the incorrect value, like for a 6 cyl.

Condensors are made in batches and sometimes the manufacturer makes a bad batch. So go buy a replacement condensor somewhere else. If'n yer buyin' at Ford/New Holland, try NAPA, or AutoZone, or even regular Ford Automobile parts. There is more than one condensor manufacturer. Use this p/n 7RA-12300-C..... ..Dell

You may also want to check voltage readings. At various places, especially around the coil, battery and generator, regulator. You may be producing too much or not enough voltage. The coil gets its juice from the battery not the generator. You may have juice to crank and start but after a while the battery starts to fade if it isn't getting recharged. After it sits a bit it will work again. Weak batteries can do all sorts of weird things.

Why did you have to clean the points so often?

Either you have a problem there or the tractor was just cooling down while you did it so that it worked afterward (as in coil cooling).

Also don't give up on the gas issue. I found that I had a bad bulb assembly and that when I got low on fuel I couldn't get much gas even when opened to reserve. It would run but would stall under load, even just 4th gear. The problem seemed to get worse when it was hot. For the longest time I thought it was a bad coil, turned out it was just fuel level issue. The tractor would run fine standing still but when I moved and the fuel sloshed around it would sputter. I changed the bulb assembly and cleaned the fuel screens and it ran like a new machine. I'm convinced that a lot of issues on old machines have to do with fuel flow and poor carbs. Most of these machines went through some serious down time at some point in their life, and probably wern't cleaned up well afterward. Sorry to ramble!
Good luck!