What are some things that would cause oil to puke into the air cleaner on a ‘94 JD 445

N2 Tractors said:

I believe he wanted to repower it with a new engine. But did not want to drive to Nevada to get the engine. He is going to be getting a slightly bigger used diesel tractor with a loader on it from some one he knows. He does not seem too mechanically savy IMO but that's just my observation. He was able to get the motor in and out. So he know how to turn a wrench for the most part but I’m thinking he might not have a grasp of all the inner working of the internal combustion engine or knowledge and ability to do the research for causes of the problem. Very nice guy by the way. I’m in no way attemping to knock him and his abilities. I could not help but feel bad for him on the loss of his investment.

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Mechanically inclined or not, it’s crazy that he would leave his $3k engine exposed to the elements like that.

denverguy said:

Ah, the rest of the story. The compression differential all makes sense now - likely sticking rings in that cylinder.

You're probably headed for a teardown but you won't hurt anything by putting some hours on and seeing if it improves.

And based on the info you provided, I personally don't see a point in doing a leak-down test.

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I’m under the impression the rust won’t just go away and will always be there and will eventually lead to an early pre mature problem. As much as I don’t want to do a tear down, I think it is probably best. I’ll have to get a parts list together for gaskets seals, rings, piston etc before making a final decision on if I’ll get it running again w/o doing a tear down.

Won’t rust cause gauling in the cylinder.

N2 Tractors said:

I’m under the impression the rust won’t just go away and will always be there and will eventually lead to an early pre mature problem. As much as I don’t want to do a tear down, I think it is probably best. I’ll have to get a parts list together for gaskets seals, rings, piston etc before making a final decision on if I’ll get it running again w/o doing a tear down.

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All depends on what you want out of it. Some folks are happy with good enough, it might get there with some run time, but probably not.

N2 Tractors said:

Won’t rust cause gauling in the cylinder.

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IMHO, the damage is already done. If it was sitting wet for some time, you might be looking at another overbore assuming you can get pistons in the needed size.

Good luck

Same N2 as on Welding web?

What you do is up to you. However, the engine is out of the tractor right now and outside of the water in the cylinder, it should be pretty fresh. If you clean up the rust, it sounds like you have a nearly new engine.
It would suck to install the motor and find an issue later and have to pull it out to fix...
Again, the FD620 is a very easy engine to rebuild.

rickyracer583 said:

What you do is up to you. However, the engine is out of the tractor right now and outside of the water in the cylinder, it should be pretty fresh. If you clean up the rust, it sounds like you have a nearly new engine.
It would suck to install the motor and find an issue later and have to pull it out to fix...
Again, the FD620 is a very easy engine to rebuild.

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I missed that the engine had been pulled - I agree, tear it down and get it over with.

I agree that you don't need a leak down test to tell you your engine needs a rebuild of some sort.

For those that are interested, this article is pretty good about how a leak down tester works:

There are cheap ones for around $30, better ones at $100-200. I got an OTC one for around $100. I didn't trust it at first, because it said my engine (with 400+ hours on it) was like new. So, I had to test all my engines. I did find one (with over 600 hours on it) that showed some leakage. Note that on all of them, I could hear air leaking, so just hooking up an air hose to a sparkplug hole is not going to tell you much you don't already know.

Back to the point of this thread. You have enough information to know you need to open up the engine to figure out all the parts you need to replace, or live with the spitting up. I lived with it for months on mine before I did something.

rickyracer583 said:

If you are going to put compressed air into the cylinders, I'd suggest you put a regulator in the line and start near zero psi and slowly work up, listening for any air leaking from the exhaust (leaking exhaust valve) carburetor (leaking intake valve) or crankcase ventilation valve (leaking piston rings) checked at the hose #1 on the parts breakdown picture you posted. I'd put the piston at the bottom of it's stroke so the compressed air doesn't push it down there for you.

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I think you have to have the piston at top dead center, on the compression stroke, to have both valves tightly closed. You won't have much of a test if one of the valves is open.

Agreed with having a regulator in the line.

Spent the day getting some oil at Walmart, Valvoline 5w-20 and 5w-30 $5/5qt container. I ended up with 1x 5qt of 5w-30 and 4x 5qt of 5w-20 2 $5 each is 25 qts at $25 I think one of my later brothers cars uses 5W-20 so I should have plenty of oil to figure out if I can get it to stop burning oil. spent the rest of the day clearing out space in the shed so I'll be able to brake the engine apart and rebuild it properly out of the weather. Still need to pressure wash it but it's been raining here so not about to go playing with the pressure washer in the rain.

Progress is being made.

Thank you all for the tips and advice.

Got the JD all inclusive TM1517 service manual and took a glance at it late last nite for a bit. Looks like it will help a bit but won’t give all the details needed.

Trying to figure out what the part number is for the engine wire harness is as well as the fuel line from filter to fuel rail. There is a set of hard plastic fuel lines on eBay but I’m not sure if the parts changed after 70001- as my tractor is -70000

Ok I broke the half pulley to the flywheel that spins the radiator fan trying to remove the flywheel. It’s made of cast iron and it cracked from how I was using it. So I ended up making a plate with 3 bolt holes and a big center hole for my OEM flywheel puller.

Then I placed an order for a air cleaner housing, hard plastic fuel supply lines, half pulley I broke and the melted plastic flywheel shroud.

Also heard some knocking while rotating the engine by hand today. It sounds like the left rod but I’ll know more once I get the engine pressure washed and broken down for diagnostics.

Pics of homemade flywheel puller plate:

Mike514 said:

In your video you asked about the upgraded valve covers. Yes, you can buy OEM versions of these for both left and right side. Plastic was the original cover and as you can see, didn't hold up.

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Thank you,

I have since located an aftermarket rocker/valve cover on eBay for $20. Not sure it’ll be any good though.

Wow. In post #8 you stated that the engine was rebuilt "shortly" before the problems arose. The pictures in post #34 tell a different story with what appears to be a couple of thousand hours of debris buildup behind the flywheel. I can't see the date on the invoices for the engine work but those pictures don't match a recent rebuild.

Well with in a 100 to 200 hour window from rebuild. I’ll have to look at the date on the rebuild ticket, no hour meter was recorded as engine was not in tractor. Then in 2018 shortly after the rebuild when it had 7xx hours it went back for problems and valves needed to be adjusted. So imo it’s not likely the owner put over a 100 hours in a year or so just mowing and tilling his small property. Possible but imo not likely. The tractor atm has less than 900 hours. So I’m assuming it only has a couple hundred hours on the rebuild. Have yet to hook up a battery and see if the hour meter is actually working. The previous owner stated the hour meter works. With the hours recorded on the last couple or service tickets leads me to believe the meter was at least working at the time of the fire when the tractor became disabled

A leakdown test is preferred over a compression test. A compression test gives a very brief test of compression components. A leak down test gives you an indication of what parts may be bad,
At TDC apply pressure to the cylinder Be sure crank is "locked". Listen for a leak. Exhaust, intake (remove air cleaner and listen at the carburetor inlet) remove oil fill and listen, If appears excessive remove valve cover and listen especially at the joint of the block and head.
If you remove push rods or rocker arms AND reduce pressure you can rotate the crank and see if any leakage into the crankcase increase or decreases. But beware it does not take much pressure to turn the crankshaft with force!. Or with the valve train removed the piston can be tested at BDC to start testing.