1948 Farmall h starting issues

[pokitisme]

Well because I'm using my phone and I've never been good at using quotes in forums LOL I'll answer everybody's question. A charger I am using is up on my YouTube channel it's the same type of charger I've been using for the past couple years from Walmart it's a 200 amp charger. It has a 2 to 6 volt Trickle Charge. It has a 40 amp boost charge which apparently is 40 amps the entire time. And it has a 200 amp boost charge for starting your car and believe me this thing works wonders. When I purchased the tractor I have no experience with tractors at all other than touching my cousin's for Jubilee one time before he went white trash and sold it. The battery for the tractor I have not been able to top that thing off and I've had it hooked up to the trickle charge for 12 hours at a time while at work. I believe it's a combination of issues with my tractor as other people have pointed out white smoke is not good but I don't think the white smoke is due to a radiator leak or gasket breach or anything like that I know definitely I do not have a carburetor tuned to any correct activity at all. As I damaged one of the rubber gaskets and I still have it on there it was the rubber gasket leading to the Copper tube that has the three or four holes in it where you screw the outer brass screw that's pointy into it. LOL as you can see my experience there. But like I said I have this charger up on YouTube and it does work and does a damn good job I routinely leave it setting plugged into electricity out in the rain or snow or whatever. It is a work horse. You might be right about me damaging the battery leaving it on charge for so long but that's the thing on this charger you put it on the charging and that's also the name chain Button as well so it will charge it up until it's charged and then it will maintain it but I always suggest flipping it off and flipping it back to maintain because I've noticed that you could still lose battery power while it's on maintain. I also have a YouTube video showing what the starting and idling charge of the battery should be on the Farmall H tractor. Again thank you guys for all of your advice you have been helpful and has led me into different areas and open my mind about different things

[pokitisme]

Well just to update things. Sorry I did a experiment yesterday I hooked up my Walmart Shoemaker 200 amp charger to the battery on the Farmall h. At first I tried starting it without the charger and it would not start I didn't hooked up the charger and put it on 200-amp please it would not start. I believe it's now a battery issue. after it started I let it run a bit then I turned it off. I did some other stuff for about 40 minutes came back out and tried to start it again with the battery charger still hooked up to it on the trickle charge. It would not start I put it back over on the 200 amp and it started right up. I believe I have a bad battery. Now here's the thing it was still attempting to kick the starter over all of this time and the positive terminal was very very hot. I think the battery needs to have a certain amount of juice in it in order for that kick over I did not test that with a voltage meter but I do have a video up on YouTube showing the amount that would turn it over.

[Dale Finch]

If your terminal was very hot, I suggest you check the cable and the cable ends. You may find a fair amount of corrosion hidden under them, or the cable itself could be corroded. Heat indicates some heavy electrical resistance...equate that to a hose with something plugging it up. Yes, if you increase the pressure high enough (= crank up amperage) you might eventually get some water to pass through (i.e. 200amps = start). But you risk bursting the hose (burning up the cable).

[Urbish]

If your terminal was very hot, I suggest you check the cable and the cable ends. You may find a fair amount of corrosion hidden under them, or the cable itself could be corroded. Heat indicates some heavy electrical resistance...equate that to a hose with something plugging it up. Yes, if you increase the pressure high enough (= crank up amperage) you might eventually get some water to pass through (i.e. 200amps = start). But you risk bursting the hose (burning up the cable).

I think you're dealing with a whole bunch of little issues that compound and confound. Welcome to the world of working on antique tractors! If you need some additional therapy, go buy just about any book by Roger Welsch (humor author) as he chronicles his trials and tribulations associated with tractor restoration.

I recommend you remove the battery from the tractor and clean the terminals and posts with a slurry of baking soda & water. Use a tooth brush or buy a battery terminal cleaner brush (very handy, available at auto parts stores worldwide!). Make sure that you rinse ALL of the baking soda slurry away with clean water before reassembling.

While you have the battery off, carefully remove the electrolyte caps (eye and hand protection recommended) and see if all cells are full of electrolyte. Charging at high current for more than a couple of minutes will boil away the water. If they are low, add distilled water to each cell until the level is 1/4-1/2" below full. If you have one of those pesky so-called "maintenance free" batteries, you will not be able to remove the caps. Move on to the step below.

If you don't want to do a bunch of screwing around, you could go and get yourself a new battery as I'm guessing the one you have may already be damaged. I recommend either installing the green/red felt terminal protector rings or spraying the terminals with a corrosion protecting after reinstalling.

Jim

[pokitisme]

well again I think you guys so much for the information there and yes the tractor bug has bitten me just like a firearm bug bit me years ago LOL. So I got a few pictures here and I'll tell you about them

https://ibb.co/i2tzT6
https://ibb.co/dGrxFm

If you look on the right side of the picture that right most connection I found was loose. It appears that it's loose enough to allow the starter to crank but not kick it over I have experimented around with it today and yesterday. And it does seem to come loose from time to time which is really confusing to me since if you're working on a car and the battery terminals are loose it wont crank at all Mighty weird. Being a noob at tractors I have discovered quickly that just because it has a pretty paint job doesn't mean it's pretty all over LOL. But I'll tell you what when it does start it runs very well at least to my assessment 5th gear pulls like a mother you know what.

[Jim Becker]

The raggedy crunched up wire end pinched into that connection isn't helping it stay tight. Clean up everything on that lug, put a proper terminal end on the wire, tighten it up once and it should stay put.

[pokitisme]

The raggedy crunched up wire end pinched into that connection isn't helping it stay tight. Clean up everything on that lug, put a proper terminal end on the wire, tighten it up once and it should stay put.

Again thank you guys so much to a tractor noob. I have no experience and tractors and even less experience with cars lol. But I am learning on the Fly. Perhaps you guys could take a look at my transmission fluid post as well and give me some pointers on that. My main purpose for asking all of these questions is I will eventually put videos up on YouTube talking about these scenarios like I said I have my own YouTube page and I'm not doing it for money especially since YouTube demonetized every single video I have. But I do put informational videos up there just because I like to help people with issues