update on C with water in oil

Had the pan off, maybe the front sleeve was leaking. Frost plugs in the head have clean oil setting in them. Put in clean oil, drilled hole in thermostat. Put a can of Mendtite stop leak in. Ran tractor around the woods for half hour and no water in oil this morning. Got my fingers crossed.
Has a flutter at idle and upper idle has an occasional miss fire. You guys that have put pertronix or hot coils on, would this help clean up and smooth running?
Thanks for your responses on my previous post.

Occasional flutter or misfire at high idle?  Like... how much, and for how long?


Aftermarket high-performance components don't 'fix' a problem that exists elsewhere, and obviously,  your coil is working fine.  Are you using stock ignition?

If your tractor has the Delco distributor, and you haven't already given it a thorough rebuild, it's most likely that your distributor cam is probably well worn, advance mechanism probably either sloppy, stuck, or binding... the distributor shaft bushing's probably worn, points spring soft, contacts pitted and burned, rotor old, and distributor cap dirty, cracked, or carbon-tracked inside...

...and with all that, it's still running pretty well.

I've frequently found oil in the bottom of the pan of many engines.  My '82 Ford inline six was ALWAYS mikly in the spring... I changed it every 2500 miles most times, but in March I always changed it, and the PCV valve, and the filter, and it was still always mikly, because my drive to work was two miles, and to school was another four, and then three miles to my second job, then four miles home.  It never really got warmed up, so it always wound up with condensation.  I changed jobs and moved, and after that, I was driving 17 miles every day, and it was spotless at 3500 miles.

If you had lots of water in the pan before, and not loosing coolant, it would probably be either condensation or some spot where weather and rain found a way in gradually.

One of the issues that I had with that 300 six, though, was misfires, and I was constantly replacing distributor caps, at least, 'till I changed to the 17 mile commute.  Reason I was getting misfire, is because I had condensation inside that distributor... it was always cruddy in there 'till I got to driving farther, and that problem vanished too.

If your engine had water in the pan, it's not unlikely that condensation would wind up in the diz as well.

But if it were my engine, and it'd been in an unknown state of maintenance before, I'd pull the head, scrub it clean, check the valves, mebbie knock in a new set of guides, clean the valves good, and give 'em a visit with the lapstick, then reset the lash... and pull the distributor for a full rebuild, new bushing, cap, rotor, and a Pertronix.

If you've already done that, then probably just have some moisture in the fuel.  Run the P!$$ out of it, give it a job to do, make it work... they were born to work.