Diagnose the cause of water in tractor oil

Aug 20, 2020

How to identify a blown head gasket

IN THE SHOP with Rachel

Water in your oil could be caused by a variety of things. A failure of the head gasket (commonly referred to as a blown head gasket) is the best-case scenario. While you have to tear the tractor down to the engine block to make this repair, the fix is straightforward and relatively inexpensive.

Unfortunately, water in the oil can also be a symptom of a far more serious problem, such as a cracked engine block, a cracked cylinder head, or a leaky sleeve. These problems can be difficult to track down and expensive to repair.

Below, I outline four signs of a blown head gasket.

The first sign is the evident through the use of a chemical test solution. Many brands are available but look for one that allows you to put a few drops of antifreeze in the solution to check for carbon. If carbon is present in your antifreeze, most likely, the problem is with the head gasket rather than a crack in the engine block or cylinder head.

The second sign is oil in the antifreeze. While not all blown head gaskets progress to this point before being noticed, some cases do.

The third sign is pressure at the radiator cap. Loosely set the cap over the radiator to see if the cap moves up and down while your tractor runs. (Don’t put your hand over the opening.) A cracked engine block, cylinder head or leaky sleeve wouldn’t send pressure out the radiator, but a blown head gasket would.

The final sign is coolant flowing down the engine block from the cylinder head area.

Once you consider these signs, you can decide on your course of action. I recommend that you ask someone from a professional machine shop to confirm your suspicions. Be sure to purchase a high-quality replacement head gasket and use a sealant when making the repair.

Rachel Gingell (left) checks the oil on a Farmall Cub with her little helper Isabella.

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators