Re: Ether on a diesel engine

Posted by Hugh MacKay on January 16, 2007 at 16:35:55 from (64.228.11.148):

In Reply to: Re: Ether on a diesel engine posted by Chuck46 on January 16, 2007 at 15:44:34:

Chuck: On ocasion I had the opportunity to do custom skidding of feller buncher harvested trees with my Deere for a large company. they would have about 20 skidders working alongside 5 feller bunchers. That bunched wood was just one cable around it and go thus we ran two shifts and always started about 5am. Usually I sent operators but this one day I happened to be there myself. It was about -35F and the foreman in charge drove by in his pickup and advised that the company service truck had a 24 volt boster. He said, "Just in case that old John Deere wont start". He was quite a strong Cat or Detroit man. In the dark I grabed the ether can off my pickup defroster, poked it in the pocket of my heavy winter suit, walked into operator area of skidder between front and rear tires. Keeping it so he couldn't see what I was doing, got cap off ether injection, turned key. As I pushed starter button I brought ether can up with other hand, gave her a shot and away she went, had to give her couple more little shots to keep it running. That afternoon I overheard him telling some other guys my old John Deere started that morning without ether. They couldn't believe it. What fooled them was most guys threw the ether can in the tool box in front of the logging arch, and I never went near the tool box.

My operators went through that winter, never had a boost fom the 24 volt truck. The other guys at that location were always having trouble even with ether. Another little trick we did that winter, at Christmas I noticed breaks in battery cable covering, machine was about 8 years old on second set of batteries that were 3 years old. During the Christmas shutdown I installed all new battery cables right up to factory specs. You could notice the difference in cranking almost immediately. Interesting too, those batteries lasted 6.5 years. I always say it pays to clean up battery cable terminals long before they say NO. That machine that got started 5 days per week all winter, had a lot better battery life than my tractors, that were rarely started in winter.

Next time you have to use ether, just warm the can up, you'll not believe the difference. Don't get it too hot, they will explode. A couple of guys took my advice, put the ether can on camp stove and forgot about it. They burned the camp.

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