A antifreeze in oil

[Tb20]

I just dropped the oil in my new to me A and there was quite a bit of antifreeze in the oil. I don’t know the history on this ol tractor but when I first brought it home I did a comp test on all the cylinder and they all very close in range and all over 100lbs. I’m going to guess it’s the sleeve seals but that’s just a guess. Has anyone ever pressurized an A and pulled the pan to check for sleeve seals? Does that seem like a reasonable way to test them? What else could it be?

[Jim Becker]

You are likely correct. Never tried pressurizing the water jacket to see if the big o-rings leak. Since it isn't a pressure system, you will need to work up some tooling to pressurize it. Don't go crazy with much pressure or figure out a way to keep the radiator out of the test. You may not even need any pressure to see a leak.

[Tb20]

This tractor sat for what I’m guessing to be a very long time before i got to it. Would it be possible that the seal may re-seal after some runtime on the motor? I’m not going to be using this thing but maybe a dozen times a year to pull a small firewood cart through the timber. Cart is small so I won’t be able to overload the tractor so it won’t get worked hard. Don’t know if I want to bother pulling it down rite away or maybe continue the oil change and check it this fall and see how much antifreeze is in the water at that time.

[Jim Becker]

The seal is a rubber o-ring. I would (without much experience to back it up) think the failure is likely to be a vertical crack in the o-ring itself. That would not heal itself. I would not run the engine with anti-freeze leaking into the oil pan. Antifreeze will chew things up quickly if it gets into the bearings.

If you really want to run it this way (or at least try it out to see how fast it leaks) I would do this:
1) drain the antifreeze.
2) when you want to run it, fill with plain water.
3) after using it, drain the water.
4) before using it again, crack the drain plug and let any water out.

If step 4 yields a very small amount of water each day, you can probably use it with no problems. If there is a lot of water, the oil pump could start to pick it up, which would be seriously bad.

I have ever done it, but people have talked of simply pulling each piston/sleeve, replacing the o-ring and putting the sleeve back in. It will probably work OK if none of the sleeves refuse to come out.

[Tb20]

Ok thanks for the advice the water trick might be the answer at this time anyways