Troubleshooting.....

 8:51 am - Saturday - January 3rd - TWW - 38° F, humidity 72%, cloud cover 86%, wind 6 mph out of the east by southeast....heavy cloud cover today with a forecast high of 52° F.  The view this morning.....

....and on this date in 2019 TLE and I were in Inverness, FL visiting good friends Richard and Rhonda Entrekin (fellow Newell owners)....

....they took us to dinner at a cool pizza place (Twysted Vyne).  Rhonda, not seen in the picture, was taking the picture.

Around 10 am Friday we finally got some sun showers for the first time in a few days.  Up until then we were dealing wither rain, or over 80% cloud cover, neither of which is conducive to solar charging.  As I write Saturday morning we have around 86% cloud cover again, so "it is what it is" as my good friend Charles Wilson often opines.

When we were hauling that final load of rock and dirt out to the low spot in the entry driveway the Ford 420 suddenly quit running, and would not restart.  We had to use an entire bottle of ether (TLE handled that) to move the tractor off to the side of the driveway I suspected fuel starvation....perhaps a clogged fuel filter, or some blockage somewhere in the fuel system.  First thing Friday TLE and I went out there to troubleshoot the problem, and try to narrow down the possible issues.  The first part of the fuel system is gravity fed from the fuel tank to the diesel fuel filter (NAPA 3166), and is still gravity fed down to the injection pump, where the fuel is then put under pressure and fed to each of the three cylinders via metal fuel lines, which are probably copper.  I was able to verify that fuel is getting to the cylinders, however, the fuel flow is not fast enough to enable the engine to fire, and stay running. We can get it to start with ether, but there is not enough fuel flow to keep it running more than 5-10 seconds.

After 3 hours of trouble shooting we called it quits for the day.  It appears to me that fuel is flowing into the fuel filter assembly freely, so I contacted Charles to purchase a new NAPA diesel fuel filter so we can install that, and rule it in, or out as the issue.  If it is not the issue then we'll further check the fuel flow between the filter assembly and the injection pump.  We're hoping it's not the injection pump, as that could get expensive fast.

We spent the rest of the day reading, and staying warm in the Newell.  We're looking forward things drying out, and being able to get back to work getting things done.

Thanks for stopping by!