Oil & Fuel Cold rookie mistake

[Billrog]

No need to drain any fuel just follow some of the good advice min and Gordan gave eg replace fuel filter for sure.

 

[Creamer]

Put a little tent around your tractor and put a heater in it. With the combination of warming outdoors and little extra heat you can ungel your fuel and run it normally and then cut your fuel with #1 or kerosene as recommended and life goes on. If time is on your side don't worry about it and use the weather to help you.

 

[Gitche Gumee Kid]

TY. Great prompt responses. Going to try new filter advice ----->tarp the unit and pick up that Buddy Heater ( forced air )
GGK

 

[Egon]

As stated: Tarp and heat till fuel is no longer gelled. Add fuel treatment and run tractor till all the gelling is gone. Then add proper fuel.
Note: additives containing alcohol are Hard on fuel pump.

 

[nyone]

No block heater? My ASV PT50 (2009) came with one.

Put a bottle of the red 911 fuel additive in.

Are you using the glow plugs to preheat?

Block heater wont turn the fuel in the lines or the tank back to liquid. Neither will 911. You will need to cover it and get heat on it...or get it in a heated garage.

 

[ovrszd]

I'm guessing that 30% of the money I spend on diesel treatment is wasted. But I don't have cold weather problems with my diesel equipment. Have made that mistake. It sucks. So I start treatment early. End treatment late.

 

[repete]

In our fire department station generators I would use a mixture of 30% #1 with 70% #2 as we did not get "winter fuel" on the west side of the Cascades because "it never gets that cold here".

Unfortunately it does on rare occasions get to 0F on this side and I was not about to go out in those temps and try to get a generator functioning. Ya, I lost some BTU (HP) out of the unit but that was negligible.

 

[ovrszd]

In our fire department station generators I would use a mixture of 30% #1 with 70% #2 as we did not get "winter fuel" on the west side of the Cascades because "it never gets that cold here".

Unfortunately it does on rare occasions get to 0F on this side and I was not about to go out in those temps and try to get a generator functioning. Ya, I lost some BTU (HP) out of the unit but that was negligible.

Fortunately I can treat my fuel and get by on straight #2. I notice considerable HP loss with a 50/50 blended fuel in the road grader. I don't work my tractors hard enough to notice.

 

[MinnesotaEric]

Block heater wont turn the fuel in the lines or the tank back to liquid. Neither will 911. You will need to cover it and get heat on it...or get it in a heated garage.

Pushback: it takes time to slug a filter if the fuel line isn't plugged, so 911 red bottle, combined with the right mix of 1/3rd diesel 1 or kerosene, combined with the right mixture of cold-weather diesel in a new fuel filter should be enough to start diluting the wax.

That said, because the fuel filter slugged, the high pressure pump should not be slugged so as soon as it gets some properly mixed fuel from the fuel filter, it too should start to work right as well.

You'd should only need to preheat the engine to be nice to it (I don't want to hear the crank and connecting rods, or piston slap for the first two minutes of running), or if it was so old the engine has lost compression and is weak, or it doesn't have glow plugs, or it is stupid cold outside.

 

[seville009]

Block heater wont turn the fuel in the lines or the tank back to liquid. Neither will 911. You will need to cover it and get heat on it...or get it in a heated garage.

Correct. The reason that I said that is because his fuel is probably not gelled. I am in the NE in subzero temps occasionally and my ASV PT-50 has never had the fuel gel.

I use the oem block heater, which is very useful in cold temps.

If I don’t use the block heater, it will start, but take a few seconds to “catch” and idle properly. Just let it run for about ten minutes to get everything warmed up.

I use summer diesel in the winter (from diesel cans filled during the summer for the ZTR); never had a gelling issue. I put some “Diesel Kleen” (or whatever it is) (silver bottle) in each of my diesel cans.

To sum up, he may not have a gelling issue. He needs to check.