Re: 1430 stalling saga continues...
Iono,
You have my total sympathy. Right about now you must be feeling like your worst fears have been realized about buying a Power-Trac. Hang in there. I think all of us will agree that Power-Trac should never deliver a brand new tractor that will not run. However, as the folks with the Robin engines can confirm, it does happen. I don’t think its acceptable and they better pay a little more attention to Quality Control or they will not be able to grow their business.
That said (off my chest), the real question is what to do now. What should you ask from Power-Trac in order to make this right? I don’t know what Power-Trac will do but I do know what I would do if it were my business. At the least, I would send you a box of fuel, hydraulic, and even air filters. I would also offer to replace the fuel tank if it would help alleviate your concerns. In the most extreme case, I would offer to replace the tractor if it hasn’t been used. I may ask you to pay part of the freight thought if I felt this problem wasn’t really a “big deal” (more on that below).
That said, my guess is that the best you will get out of Power-Trac is some additional filters. Power-Trac will likely claim (perhaps even correctly) that the design specifications allow for contamination of the fuel and hydraulic tanks. I know that in the past when some folks have heard strange hydraulic noises, Power-Trac has identified the cause as welding slag in the hydraulic filter left over from the manufacturing process. I believe Power-Trac considers this normal. The same is probably true with the fuel tank. Of course we can agreed that there should not be so much junk in these tanks that the fluid flow in restricted. You may have an extreme case. I would send the pictures to Terry. I would also ask Terry if it is “normal” to have a moderate (although yours is extreme) amount of contamination in the fuel tank after manufacturing. All metal fuel tanks that aren’t galvanized will rust at some point. Therefore, I suspect the Power-Trac engineers may expect some fuel tank contamination. It would be interesting to know for future reference.
What to do now? Regardless of what you work out with Power-Trac, and assuming that swapping the tractor is not a viable option, I would take the fuel tank off, drain it, and see if I could clean it out. As noted above, this probably isn’t necessary but I would feel better just to do it. Then I would go down to TSC and buy one of those old bowl filters like was/are used on Ford 8N’s and the like. I would install the bowl filter between the fuel tank and the regular fuel filter. The bowl filter has no fuel restriction and would serve as an excellent pre-filter. I would buy a strong magnet at Surplus Supply and attach it to the side of the pre-filter to grab all the small metal particles. Not only is this filter easy to clean, but you get the advantage of monitoring how much junk is coming out of your tank. I would also attach a few of these magnets to the side of the hydraulic tank, from inside the engine compartment, while I was at it.
And finally, after I did all this, I would use the tractor and try to forget about it. Despite the fact that this should not have happened, I think the chance that any lasting damage was done is very low. Did you ask the mechanic for his opinion on this question? I don’t know much about diesel injectors, but I suspect they are extremely sensitive to contamination. If anything got by the filter, I doubt the tractor would run. Maybe someone with diesel experience will weigh in one this question. Remember, these engines are designed to run in the most extreme conditions. I would be completely shocked if any damage was caused by the contaminated fuel tank.
Although very frustrating, it seems that a high percentage of Power-Trac’s need some “fine tuning” when they arrive. With a “normal” tractor, one would rely on a dealer network to catch and fix these issues. If you could have purchased the Power-Trac thru a normal dealer, I would bet he would have picked it up, claimed to have made a few minor adjustments (i.e., replaced the fuel filter) and you wouldn’t have known the difference. The dealer network of the big three actually “hides” a lot of manufacturing issues by catching the issues during dealer prep of the tractor, or by fixing them after the fact and claiming it was something minor. That’s where the dealer earns his 20%-30% margin (if he’s lucky these days). We don’t have to pay that margin on our Power-Trac’s, but we become intimately familiar with every mis-adjustment or manufacturing issue.
Remember, in the big perspective, this isn’t a big deal (easy for me to say I know). Hang there…it gets better from here.
