Why you should decarbonize
 

Carbon in the combustion chamber is not like charcoal. It is not flaky. It's more like slag from a coal furnace. It's hard and can almost look like bronze. Here is a piston that for all intense and purpose's would be just fine if carbon had not gotten it. The cylinder wall is as clean as a baby's bottom. The exhaust valve could probably still be used. But it too had carbon build up keeping it from seating.

Hey RPalmer, how often do you think we should check on that???
On the 70 the carbon was nasty,and took a good long time to get off/clean and was a pain!! On the 123 the head was prety clean,havent checked on the O yet!!

Thanks for the help
Jason

The service manual says every 500 hours with unleaded fuel. For me that would work out to be something like 1 hr/wk x 52 wks/yr =52 hours a year or about every 10 years. But I think I'm going to start popping heads on every tractor I get.

how?
 

What's the best way to clean the head? Good ol American elbow grease?

Chris

I have always found oven cleaner with some fine steel wool to work the best. Elbow grease helps too:HeeHee:

I did not take any pictures.. hands full of crud and cough up in the moment, but there was a wall of build up that went from the bock to almost the top of the inside of the head that was keeping the exhaust from flowing out. So it was a nice surprise to find that that was basically the smoking problem.

I had a couple of other nice surprises also. This tractor looks ruff. (album #2 100). I got out the garden hose to try and blast off some of the dirt, grease and grass before working on it. I found brand new clutch parts, and a new steering column. This might work out better than I planned.