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Thursday I went to help a friend get his 45 diesel running. The pump was 180 degrees out of time on the Crankshaft, the pump drive gear was one tooth off, and the pump head was a full two revolutions of the pump drive shaft off. In addition the fuel shutoff cylinder was frozen and it couldn’t be shutoff without putting your hand over the air intake. The Governor spring was so tight that as soon as the throttle lever broke over center it went to full throttle. Also the return line and fuel inlet lines were reversed. And despite all that it would start with a whiff of ether and run poorly. We corrected all the above problems, and started to bleed everything. A friend was teasing us that we would need a can of ether to get it going and I told him no we wouldn’t. Once the two filters were bled and it turned over a few times it started on its own and one by one I tightened the line nuts to the injectors and it smoothed out and ran real nice and would idle down to a slow purr with that 230 buda sound. I was relieved that it all worked out and we both were just amazed at how well it ran. He’s had the Tractor for several years and it never ran right until now.

A big thanks to Tom Foss’ old AC webpage for a refresher on all the timing marks. I’ve studied that page many times and did so again the night before just so I could work from memory and not waste time going back to a manual or webpage.

Also thanks to Don Bradley for talking me through the whole procedure on our way back from the Missouri AC club winter meeting. He told me to not trust the timing marks but to pull the valve cover and make sure your at tdc on #1 cylinder. Turns out the guy who put it all back together painted the wrong marks and when we initially turned the crank to the fpi mark, the pump drive gear had been painted but was still one tooth off but #6 cylinder was on tdc, not #1.

All in all a fun day and we got it running well.

I just knew you get her going, We have tacked about the old Buda engines so much you are as up on them as most  mechanics out there. GOOD JOB!! and now you can come help me time all the old WD45's I have here that need rebuilt.

    Good job Michael.