The Fordson Tractor Pages Forum

Hi all,

Our Dexta is short on revs and it's been puzzling me for some time. Over the period of owning the tractor I've occasionally investigated various areas which may have been causing this, and I'm now almost certain that there is a restriction in the air intake.

My question is, should the air cleaner assembly have two gauze filter elements? When I drop the oil bath, there is one gauze filter in the bath itself, but there is another tucked up in the main body of the air cleaner.

The reason for my question is that the lower gauze filter is a servicable/replaceable item, yet I have never seen mention of the upper gauze filter in any documentation or in any parts catalogues. It strikes me as odd that one is replaceable and the other isn't...

Also, I couldn't remove the upper filter if I wanted to anyway, its either fixed in there or jammed. This suggests to me that it may have been forced up/in there by mistake.

I hope this makes sense to people.

Any help will be very much appreciated!

Sam

Hi Sam,

The setup you have is correct, one replaceable one and one that''s

tucked up in the main body of the air cleaner

The only way to clean the upper one without forcibly taking the main body apart is:

1) Soak in some diesel for a day or two and then boil it with some washing up liquid or something similar.
2) If it's really totally solid set fire to it.

You should check the butterfly stop on the air intake manifold, and the adjustment of the throttle linkage behind the air filter..

Hope this is helpful!

The upper gauze filter you have found is quite correct - it should be there. And no, sadly it's not removable!

If it's badly clogged, I suggest you unbolt the complete air cleaner cannister and soak the gauze.

There's a post on here somewhere about how to wash it (by Commander IIRC). I think something like dish washer powder will do it.

Beware of using anything inflammable like parafin/petrol as the fumes may persist after washing and result in inflammable vapour going into your engine, with interesting consequences, best avoided

If your Dexta is fitted with a pneumatically governed injection pump you can prove whether or not the air filter is causing the low revs by gently slackening the pipe union, of the sensing pipe which comes from the manifold, at the diaphragm housing . If the filter is resricting air flow and causing excessive vacumn in the manifold releasing the union will break the vacumn acting on the diaphragm and the engine revs should increase. Be ready to tighten the union up if the engine tries to race away.

Also ensure that the oil level in the filter bowl is not too high.

The gauze in the top of the filter cannot be removed and is difficult to clean propery even if boiled in washing machine detergent!

Gerald

Many thanks everyone.

I'll try the vacum test and continue from there.