184 Burning Engine Oil

[tucker86]

Don’t forget to washout the breather cap in kerosene let it soak to get the crusted oil out of it so it can breathe again.

I grew up serving the old cars that had washable breathers.

Good thought BigBill, I have not done this yet and will do so in the morning. I am planning to run it tomorrow afternoon assuming the weather cooperates.

[BigBill]

Soak the breather in kerosene then air blow it from the center out. Don’t hit it with too much air pressure. I wrap a rag around it when I hit it with air Incase chunks of crusted oil comes out.

[Gary Dotson]

The 184 has a pleated paper air cleaner element, if it's crusty, replace it!

[tucker86]

The 184 has a pleated paper air cleaner element, if it's crusty, replace it!

I replaced the air filter with a new one back in May of this year so this is good to go.

[tucker86]

Alright, I cleaned the breather this morning as BigBill suggested and added the SeaFoam to the crankcase and fuel per his procedure. I mowed a little under 2 acres with the tractor at 90% - 95% throttle. It seemed to run pretty typical at first with a lot of smoke out of the breather and some of the typical smoke from the exhaust. After probably 20 minutes or so, I noticed the exhaust was smelling noticeably cleaner than before and I was not noticing any smoke in the exhaust. As I was nearing finishing mowing, it was seeming that there was less smoke from the breather as well. After letting the motor cool down for a couple hours, I checked the oil level and it did still use a noticeable amount. I am hopeful there continues to be some improvement as I burn through the remainder of the tank of fuel with the SeaFoam.

[Glen]

Glen, how did the rislone work out. We used Mobil upper lube and rislone for years. In the gas station.

Hi,
I didn't look at this post lately, I guess.
The Rislone works pretty good, it is a little slow, but over time it does work and reduce smoking.

If the rings are wornout, then it doesn't help much.

Don M. said, on page 2 of this post, to use Seafoam for 2 oil changes.
The Cub 184 operator's manual says change the oil every 100 hours of use, and the oil filter every 200 hours of use.
Below is the page from the manual.

http://farmallcub.com/rudi_cub/www.clea ... age-30.jpg

[tucker86]

I ran the compression test today and found the following:

Cylinder #1: 100 psi (-23.1%)
Cylinder #2: 110 psi (-15.4%)
Cylinder #3: 115 psi (-11.5%)
Cylinder #4: 100 psi (-23.1%)

I am not really sure how good these results would be considered to be. It is down from design specification, however, would these readings be considered to be ok, marginal, or poor for the C60 engine? One thing that is noteworthy was I had put in new spark plugs approximately 15 hours ago of operation. The spark plug for cylinder 1, 3, and 4 all looked very clean still. The spark plug for Cylinder 2 was dark and looked like it had oil residue on it.

Here are a couple photos of my brand new set of spark plugs after about 15-20 hours of operation, they are in sequential order with Cylinder #1 on the left and Cylinder #4 on the right. To me it looks like Cylinder #2 is where my oil consumption is coming from which is oddly enough one of the cylinders with better compression, where the other plugs look pretty good. Glen mentioned the oil rings can get stuck on these motors. Does this seem to help confirm this theory? I am still hopeful the Seafoam treatment may help.

[BigBill]

Another good test for seafoam.

[Eugene]

More SeaFoam.

Might swap the #2 spark plug with another cylinder after 4 or 5 hours running time.

A hotter plug wouldn't hurt in the #2 cylinder.

[Gary Dotson]

Sometimes a cylinder that is burning oil will show higher compression than expected. Oil passing the oil rings will tend to seal the compression rings and giving artificially high readings. The effect is very much like conducting the wet test that is often spoke of here.

[Jim Becker]

Sometimes a cylinder that is burning oil will show higher compression than expected. . . .

It is also likely to have more deposits inside the combustion chamber that contribute to higher compression.

[BigBill]

Next the idle rpm will pick up.

[tucker86]

More SeaFoam.

Might swap the #2 spark plug with another cylinder after 4 or 5 hours running time.

A hotter plug wouldn't hurt in the #2 cylinder.

I have my original set of plugs in currently figuring the Seafoam may foul them a bit (no point in fouling out a brand new set of plugs). The plugs in the pictures never saw any Seafoam.

I'll keep an eye on #2 and swap when begins to get fouled. I will make it a point to take a look after I mow this weekend. My old set and the new set are both Autolite 3116 plugs which I believe are equivalent to the standard plugs. Now I only wish the grass was growing a little faster so I can continue with the Seafoam treatment . . .

[BigBill]

Keep us posted.

[tucker86]

Keep us posted.

The weather did not cooperate this weekend so I was not able to get out an mow, no new updates on the engine oil consumption. I will be leaving in a little bit and will be working out of town for the rest of the week so I probably won't have a chance to run it again until this weekend. It was not a complete loss this weekend, I did manage to get the oil filter and hydraulic oil changed for the transmission / hydraulic system. It looked like that was long overdue. I still have the final drives to get done.