Gray matter: It’s a John Deere thing

The following day the weather was perfect and the Old Black Truck, still recovering from major surgery, performed quite well. Somewhere enroute, though, I decided to invert my schedule. I ducked down Virginia 803 to Singhass Road and through Opequon (aka Frog Eye), as this would be a more direct route to my newly chosen destination.

Moving along Cedar Creek Grade, I saw the first hay of the season being mown. “Here we go...,” I thought. All the while, I kept running the new patient’s symptoms through my mind hoping for recognition from my past experience or that of my colleagues: John Deere 2555 — overheating, nasty looking gray stuff in the radiator.

Arriving at the address according to the directions I had been given, I found myself on a long ridge top lane through very well-kept pasture and lawns. The house on a rise in the distance proclaimed a measure of wealth, as did the neatly kept and stylish barns and stables. A black Mercedes approached. An attractive dark haired woman wearing sunglasses drove — Alita, the farm manager and my contact.

I know that I’ve mentioned this before but, in the Shenandoah Horse Country, one is always in the presence of beautiful women. They are often found roaming freely amid the stables and paddocks wreaking their havoc on visiting tradesmen. So far, the distraction they cause has been responsible for misplaced tools, forgotten gaskets and redundant parts runs. It is a hazard for which there is no law or control and the horse country tradesman must cautiously plod along as best he can. Moreover, these women can be intimidating to some men partly because they can all operate huge tractors and expertly back up enormous livestock trailers. Many men (secretly) can’t. “Fox,” I muttered instinctively to myself.

She led me to the tractor, which reposed in a shed attached to the stable. The tractor’s hood had already been removed. There was indeed nasty gray stuff in the clear plastic overflow container. I drained a small sample of oil from the engine looking for antifreeze. Left undisturbed antifreeze leaked into the oil, being heavier than the oil, will always sink to the bottom. Nothing there; that’s a good thing.

I next suspected the oil cooler, which also forms the filter base on these tractors. I called Bruce Loy, parts department manager at Carlyle and Anderson, the John Deere dealer in Virginia. The sales history of this particular part would indicate whether it is prone to failure. The sales history on John Deere oil coolers; zero. Next on the suspect list, the ever dreaded cracked engine block. However, there was one major flaw in this theory. A cracked engine block always results in antifreeze in the oil, not vice versa — again, time to call the experts.

I called Hunter Straw, a mechanic at Carlyle and Anderson’s Winchester branch. He would just be breaking for lunch at that moment. I asked if there was anything peculiar to these engines that might cause a cracked block to manifest itself in this way. He said that there wasn’t, but there was another uniquely John Deere characteristic that may be the cause of the problem.

Let’s take a trip to the private 1950s farm museum, my Loudoun County base of operations near Middleburg, Va., for a minute. There we find the 1949 Farmall C with a belly mower turning the vast lawns into putting greens. Looking down the length of the hood, we see the radiator cap out front, next, the crankcase breather which also serves as the oil filler cap. The air intake and upright exhaust pipe are about even with the oil filler but off to the side. Last, and closest to the operator is the fuel tank cap. The nearby Farmalls A, B, 100 and 140 are all set up with the same configuration

Over in the Farmall Cub corral, we see this configuration altered slightly with the oil filler also serving as the hole for the dipstick low on the motor. Over by the larger Farmall M’s and H’s we see much the same configuration as the Cub with the oil filler/crankcase breather on the right side of the engine. Oil level is checked with 2 petcocks on the side of the oil pan — a remnant of the days of “distillate” fuel.

So we’ve established that, with some slight deviations, the order of the filler caps that occupy the length of a tractor hood are as follows front to back: radiator, oil filler, fuel. Not so fast. Let’s stop off near Berryville and hop on Jeff Headly’s vintage John Deere 2020. See that red cap way out yonder? It must be red to warn us that it’s the radiator cap and it might be hot.

Nope. On this tractor, the fuel tank is ahead of the radiator. Really. No kidding. Jeff says that the original cap was green but was lost in the field. The replacement cap is red which to all but the color blind is supposed to declare “fuel here.” Next is the radiator cap which is green, though, on some older models is red to warn us of a possible scalding. This cap is the black plastic cap of the radiator filler on this 2555.

Now, if we go back into the early 2cylinder “puttputt” era of John Deere, we find the fillers arranged much like the Farmalls. Hunter said that you’re likely to find the various fluids in any of the 3 reservoirs with gasoline in the radiator the most popular. Add to this confusion an influx of immigrant farm workers with little or no experience with machinery, and we have a leetle bit of a problem. We thus concluded that one of the farm’s immigrant workers had dumped a couple of quarts of motor oil into the radiator.

I removed the thermostat housing — more thick, nasty gray stuff. Digging deeper, the bottom radiator hose next came off. The stuff fell out in clumps. To drain the stuff from the block and cylinder head, I unscrewed the drain plug on the side of the engine block — the stuff oozed out of the halfinch diameter hole. Alita and I stood watching this flow waiting for it to stop, but it seemed like it never would. It was like watching — I hope you’ll pardon this illustration — a goose on laxative.

She had errands to run and I decided to head back up the road to Golightly Bottom Farm to finish the work on the old Ford Major and get shot at. (The tractor sits behind the backstop of Isaac Walton Park’s shooting range.) Upon our return, we found that the flow had slowed to a trickle. Using a garden hose with considerable pressure and volume, we ran water through the cooling system until it ran clear. I removed the bottom radiator hose and pumped more water through. We started the tractor with both hoses off and let the water pump sling what nasty gray glop it may have been hiding.

We filled the cooling system with water and she was to then work the tractor in order to generate some heat and melt the remaining gray stuff. (A diesel engine doesn’t generate a lot of heat at idle because it’s running primarily on air.) She is then supposed to let the engine cool and open the “goose poop”’ engine block drain.

I hope this works, but we may wind up pulling the radiator and having Dickie’s Radiator Shop cook it out. I’m sure he’ll have stories to tell of other similar mishaps. For now, this repair is still a work in progress. In the long run, I hope that everything works out satisfactorily. Alita, that attractive, stout and capable Irish/Italian farm manager is pleasant enough to work with, but the last thing I need right now is a “bit o’ Irish bluster” or a visit from Cousin Rocco. I added the John Deere 2555 to the list on the October page of my calendar of tractors that will need antifreeze before winter.

First published May 28, 2014