well, it's not as bad as I thought. :cool2:
when it laid over and started to rev I turned the ignition off within seconds, but it was too late, the revs just took off. so I started hoofin 'er for the nearest fire extinguisher which was about 600' away.
when I got the extinguisher I turned around and there was a cloud of smoke 50' high, and of course the sound of the engine just screaming for all it was worth.
I resigned myself to the fact that the motor was lost, but if I could get back fast enough I might be able to save the tractor from what I figured would be the inevitable fire.
near the end of it's run, the engine would die down and then rev up again for a minute then die down again, and so on... the whole affair took about 10 minutes.
what I think happened was that the engine was running on the oil in the crankcase rather than diesel fuel, thus all the smoke.
when I flopped the tractor back onto its wheels, the engine crankcase was almost empty... but there was no oil on the ground. go figure?
I topped up the crankcase, got a wrench to bleed the injectors, surprisingly enough it fired right up, but man did it run rough getting it back to the shop. I figured for sure the motor was gone.
I phoned the dealer where I bought the machine and asked to speak to one of the salesmen, thinking another machine might be my best bet.
I told him what had happened and he said a replacement engine would be between $6000.00 - $8000.00, but not to jump the gun, the damage might be less than I thought. he suggested the injectors would be full of motor oil and to get into a shop for inspection.
today I pulled the injectors out of it, and yes they were full of oil so I took them apart and cleaned them all up and gave it a full oil change with filter.
put everything back together and it runs almost as good as before, with the exception that it looks like one injector may have been damaged in the fiasco. it appears to leak compression back out into the fuel system when the piston comes up in the middle cylinder.
so, with the occasional hickup the tractor runs very close to what it did before at approx 400hrs.
the temp gauge appears to have stopped working for some reason but I'll tend to that later, for now it's one new injector and hopefully she will be good as new.
looked into positive air shutoff, $675.00 for 2 inch, think I'll try make my own, 2" ball valves are about $14.00.
