Smoke And Fire in Tractor

[Bigwoods]

I was blowing snow with my Massey Ferguson 135 and everything was going well until smoke filled the home made cab and I bailed as fast as I could. I shut off the gas and made sure there were no flames. The problems was that wires melted under the dash from a short of old wires that rubbed on the frame.

I guess this is not real uncommon on the old tractors as wiring get old and brittle.

I replaced the wires and matched the gauge. I soldered and used heat shrink and cleaned up the mess. wires had burned several inches from the source and I searched to find all the burned wires.

When finished, I was very pleased when it started right up. I let it idle about ten minutes to get to operating temp. When it burned I had left the snow blower in the drive so the first order of business was to retrieved that so we didn't have to drive around it.

Headed down the drive and gave it a bit more throttle to speed up and in about 15 seconds it burned the wires again.

I was sure I found all the bare wires.. Now I am wondering if the voltage regulator was damaged, causing the surge.. I just wanna get her running again, but made have to make it a summer project.. Any ideas?

[Wolffarmer]

Have you checked where the throttle rod/cable moves? See if it is wearing on a wire. I would doubt the Alt/gen is causing this problem without boiling the battery dry or maybe even causing it explode.

Failing that trade it for a green tractor

Ok, I am a John Deere person but right now my only tractors are a Massy 1085 and a 1940 International M

Randy

[rockinrobin]

If you can unhook the wires at both ends you can check them for a short with an ohm meter. Then you can use the volt option on the volt/ohm meter to check the voltage output. Just hook it to any circuit and start the engine. I am assuming it has a generater if it is old. If the field wire is grounded on a generater system it will put out unlimited voltage regulated only by the rpm of the generater. We do not work on airplanes that have generators much any more, but the first thing we do to trouble shoot an inoperable generater is unhook the field wire off the generater, and hook up a test lead to that terminal and ground it. If it charges then we go on to the regulator. Volt/ohm meters are very reasonable now days at any tool store. A properly working charging system will put out around 13.8 to 14.1 volts. An alternator will do that at idle. A generator has to be up to operating rpm. Hope this helps a bit. Ronnie

[Bigwoods]

Thanks for the advice. It does have an alternator. We check and could not find wire touching the throttle. The consensus is to replace the alternator with a GM unit with a built in regulator and replace the burned wires. So I am ready to pick up the alternator and wondered if anyone had a recommendation as to what unit to buy. I see some of the early ones were about 63 amps. Some cost a lot more than others.. What should I look for? Can't do it for a few day. Heading for -20 degrees tonight.