F 12 rolls again!

Time came to get back to it. Now there is spark sometimes & sometimes there is no spark. Found the cause of that! It was the wire entering the points box. It had broken off where it meets the brass TEE. Fixed that & have dandy spark but it still does not seem right when following the mounting instructions. Even common sense & flying by the seat o the pants it still seems wrong! Decided to compare how things looked in general with the mag on the F20 that ran fine over in the other shed.

FOUND IT! Points cams are in different positions even though the impusle couplings are in the same positions! Seems the little wire key that keys the points cam to the shaft had sheared and the cam was lagging the shaft nearly 20 degrees! Fixed that & now magically the installation instructions match with reality!

Four turns of the crank later it was running for the first time in 5 years! A few carb adjustments and it smoothed out pretty well. Without any load it seems to miss a bit at all speeds but stays in there right to the very last putt under load. Hoping it has something to do with the mighty smelly, dark colored gas it is burning! Re-starts with seldom a third turn of the crank. Usually the second.

Most of what I own is green but I enjoy working on all of 'em. Thought you guys might like the story! Sweet little (and SLOW) tractor!

Just got my F14 running again after a year of fooling with it off and on. It had been getting progressively harder and harder to start, finally getting to the point where it'd start only if you pulled it, and then run for less than a minute before flooding out.

Had a pinhole in the float, tried to repair it but couldn't manage to solder it, and wound up screwing it up completely.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran into a Summercator I speak to most every year (Old IH employee, drives a really cherry '61 Scout) and mentioned my troubles finding a float. He said he'd call around, and sure enough, he came up with one. Actually handed me an entire carb and said "Give back what you don't need, and your used parts".

The float was absolutely perfect, swapped it and the pivot pin into my carb, and VIOLA! She runs like a watch again, and generally starts first crank.

And I hear ya on the slow. I pulled a float with it in a parade one year, haven't been invited back...