Good Oil for Diesel Oliver tractor. Auto RX?

[Strjock81]

I have a 70's era Oliver 1655 with the 78 horse diesel (NA) motor in it. Runs great, but won't start without ether most of the time. Has been ran on thick conventional oils since new, but recently started on 5w-40 Rotella synthetic for cold starting since I start it every day to haul round bales to the cows.

I am looking for an additive/oil to provide maximum wear protection, cold startability, and try and get rid of the blue smoke. I am currently running gobs of additives thru the fuel system, and a 5% biodiesel blend. Plan on running UOA after 100 hours on this OIC.

This poor motor has been ran hot, ran hard cold, on on-farm stored fuel, etc for 30 years. I was thinking an Auto RX cycle (2 bottles, has an 8 qt capacity) or 2, althought that would get awful expensive. Plus the oil filter setup on this thing is stupid and the cartridges are hard to get ahold of. (sock type).

Any thoughts? Cost is indeed a factor.

 

[MAJA]

Auto-RX would seem to be the best alternative, and the cheapest, if you want to clean things up and try to help the blue smoke. Is it heavy blue smoke? Most of the older diesels do run with a slight blue smoke, just a nature of the beast. But I would definately try to limit the use of ether. The ether has a tendency to "wash off" and dry the cylinder walls, increasing wear over time. Its also potentially very damaging to pistons, piston rings or valves if the ether explodes at the wrong time. .
As far as helping to start without ether, there are a few things to check. Not knowing much about diesel Oliver tractors, but a little about diesel tractors in general, does it have glow plugs, and are they working correctly? Also, maybe one or some of your injectors are weak, or perhaps a weak injector pump. Some of the older diesel engines had a prime pump to pump diesel into the cylinders, to aid starting. Or weak compression, which again can be helped by an Auto RX application. Here is one link for oil filters online.

http://www.donovan.homedns.org/filters/cat_filter_sec.pdf

 

[Strjock81]

I appreciate the input.

No the blue smoke is not heavy, mostly just when idling. Get a good amount of black smoke under acceleration of the throttle that dissipates once tractor reaches engine speed. All in all in runs well for its age.

The RX seemed like the logical conclusion to me, only God knows what must be inside the engine of that thing.
Granted, ether is not the best solution, and this tractor does have an inoperative preheat system. It is operated by a pushbutton on the dash that clicks but does not seem to draw any amps or have any effect on starting. It may well have glow plugs, which would be easy to change, but to be honest I haven't investigated it. Injection system seems to be pretty solid, tractor is responsive, has no knocking/clatter, and does not seem to have any issues fuelwise. Does have good fuel filtration system on it.