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

N2 Tractors said:

Service limits per manual and quick measurements with digital mic. I’ll use snap bore gauges tomorrow to get more accurate readings.

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Looks to have been doomed from the moment it was over bored. The machine shop should have known it was wrong and the JD tech that assembled it should have caught it. Very poor workmanship.

Have you pulled the other head yet? Am curious it fubar'd as well.

Snap gauges will give a better readingbut yes, I would be concerned at this point.

I am guessing that the machine just wasn’t well cared for.

If you end up needed a block let me know. I rolled a 445 into the shop this week that I started the tear down process on. I still have lots of inspections to go through before I get to the engine (so I can’t say much yet).

denverguy said:

Looks to have been doomed from the moment it was over bored. The machine shop should have known it was wrong and the JD tech that assembled it should have caught it. Very poor workmanship.

Have you pulled the other head yet? Am curious it fubar'd as well.

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Yes I completely stripped it down and bought a harbor freight parts washer then a 5 gallon pale of parts washer fluid from Napa $$$ to be able to wash parts. I did the block, crank and pistons and removed the rings. Then took them to a shop today and a guy said the crank looks ok. Those pics above were from both cylinders earlier today. A short time after I left the machine shop I headed over to harbor freight to get those Quincy digital calipers. Those are the pics I took while doing a quick measurement in the parking lot. They are made in China calipers that claim a tolerance of .001 and they repeated for me in the parking lot so I decided to keep them

mrbeef said:

Snap gauges will give a better reading yes, I would be concerned at this point.

I am guessing that the machine just wasn’t well cared for.

If you end up needed a block let me know. I rolled a 445 into the shop this week that I started the tear down process on. I still have lots of inspections to go through before I get to the engine (so I can’t say much yet).

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PO said this machine was abused before he brought it home from one of his other properties where tenants used it to maintain the property. You know, one of those deals where they don’t own it so no real care involved is my suspicion there.

I will be looking for a good rebuildable block. Might could use some other parts as well. Already purchased several on eBay. I don’t have a list yet. Just been winging it so far.

I had to use some of my extra weights in the parts washer to increase the fluid level.










Guy at the machine shop mentioned the pistons looked like they were rocking in the cylinders by the score marks on the pistons. You can see it a bit in the pic just below.

Actually I did have to rinse and scrub the loose dirt off of the weights before putting them in the tank. Been thinking of a way to take that fluid out and of the tank, I’ll probably just use the pump to pump it back out into the container it came in.

That solvent smells like diesel and fish and something else I don’t know exactly but it does not smell good. Seems to work really good though with the exception of not removing the hard deposits from the valves. A friend mentioned I could use mineral spirits as the cleaning solution.

The one thing I don’t like about the harbor freight parts washer is the volume and psi of the pump. It pushes a lot of psi and in doing so causes it the splash a lot unless you hit the parts at the right angle and that’s is not always possible or at least can be difficult depending on the part being washed.

Ok I did the best I could to get as accurate measurements with tools on hand and knowledge on how to use them.

It looks like the the crank rod journal OD is just at the limit. My calipers have a .001 tolerance of +/- so the measurement can actually be just under or over the minimum size by .001 inch.

Piston pins were definitely good.

Pics of measurements:






Spec tolerance: