Re: darn ether butten ** Farmall 544**

Posted by Hugh MacKay on January 24, 2005 at 19:20:53 from (64.228.11.167):

In Reply to: Re: darn ether butten ** Farmall 544** posted by scruffy on January 24, 2005 at 12:16:36:

Scruffy: Like you, I do not like ether as starting fluid. However I did keep it around just in case. My John Deere being a forestry skidder was often some distance from electricity. Some guys tried different options with diesel left in bush. There was the idea of using quick couplers on heater hoses of pickup, thus circulating pickup warm coolant to the proposed diesel candidate. These worked but you just transfered your engine problems from diesel to pickup. The cold coolant from diesel hitting pickup engine took its toll. Guys that used that regularly found themselves putting a new engine in pickup every season.

Then there were the guys that built fires under the diesel. Charcoal works the best, fill a cast iron fry pan with charcoal, put it under oil pan. I have done this, but you must make damn sure you have no fuel or oil leaks. I suggest users of this system not notify their insurance co.

Today there are some quite decent propane block heaters. They work well, and if I were still at this, I certainly would have one.

In the 1970s and 80s ether was the best option, sure we knew the pitfalls. The interesting part is my John Deere, which got a dose of ether most every day all winter, went 13,000 hours to it's first engine rebuild. I did get very close to 10,000 hours each on 3 Farmalls that rarely ever saw ether. They were always at farm and all had good working block heaters. I don't ever remember using ether on 656. 560 once when glow plugs were not functioning. I doubt if 1066 ever got ether more than a couple of times. Those tractors were rarely ever started in winter.

I quite frankly believe, ether if used sensibly, probably no worse than any cold start. I do know that a warm can of ether is far more effective than cold. We do know that without a block heater in cold weather 85% of engine wear occurs in first 10 minutes of operation. How much worse than that can proper use of ether be? I've seen guys use 2-3 cans per week of ether on one diesel. I don't think we ever used more than 2 cans per winter with that Deere system.

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