Re: Farmall H Kerosene Question

Posted by LenNH on April 16, 2009 at 08:50:53 from (71.235.191.159):

In Reply to: Farmall H Kerosene Question posted by Chris S. on April 13, 2009 at 15:45:58:

I agree with Gary about those "wonderful times." I once tried kerosene in a 10-20, back when kerosene was cheaper than gas (it's not anymore, if you can find it). You have to make sure there's no kerosene in the carb (that's why there's a little drain cock in the side of kerosene carbs). Turn on gas. Start engine normally. Warm up. Use shutter as necessary (heat gauge will show right temp on the letter-series, I think; on the 10-20, you just looked for steam coming out around the bolt in the radiator cap). The oldest IHC tractors had a curtain instead of a shutter, with hooks to go in holes in the radiator housing. Shut off gas. Turn on kerosene. Get to work right away to keep the motor hot. If you had to stop, to rest, visit the bushes,or adjust something, you had to pull up the shutter to keep the engine hot. If the engine idles for long, it will spit and sputter until it gets hot again. To turn off engine, you could either shut off the kerosene and let the engine stop for lack of fuel, or you could do that and then turn on the gas so you could restart. Cold start on kerosene is either impossible or very difficult (I only tried this just once, and that was enough; I don't have enough experience to comment much on this).I didn't know anybody in the 40s who ran kerosene in 10-20s, F-20s, F-12s or F-14s. It was just too much trouble. Of course, an engine with low-compression (about 4 to 1) for kerosene won't put out as much power on gas as an engine with a higher compression (6 to 1 or maybe more), but then many of those old birds had such big engines that it didn't seem to matter. The kerosene manifolds on many tractors had some provision for switching from "hot" to "cold." I seem to remember that some of the 10-20 or 15-30 series had a kind of valve that you had to unbolt and turn around if you wanted to burn gasoline exclusively, but I can't swear to this. The F-series had a lever that moved a valve (it always froze up if it wasn't moved once in a while). I think the letter series had a lever ON the manifold that had to be moved by loosening a large setscrew and moving the lever. Haven't seen these old girls in quite a few years now, so maybe somebody else can comment if I'm wrong on the letter series arrangement. Kerosene condensed in the cylinders and diluted the oil. The instruction books tell you to drain the oil down to the lowest petcock on the crankcase every so many hours and then refill. I always hated those petcocks, and they usually got twisted off eventually because somebody would take a wrench to them to tighten. When the little knob got twisted off, you ended up using a pipe wrench (no "Vise-Grips" back in the 40s, that I remember, anyway) to check your oil.

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