Glow Plugs

[kevin the chicken]

Is there an easy way to test individual heater plugs on a tractor either in situ or off the engine. Just been given an international b250 in good nick but been told it is hard to start. The plugs are there but not wired in which won't help and the owner had been using easy start. Heathen. They should be wired in series so I guess if one has failed then the rest won't work so I would like to know if they are OK. They are only about a tenner each but I need to know how many I need if any. Spare money is far better spent on the kit!

[brumster]

I'd be guessing here, but I would have thought if you measured the resistance over them individually, they *should* all be roughly the same - and if you find one way out of whack that's your suspect? I'm assuming they're just dirty great heating elements inside

[Guest chris brown]

Take them out and check them across a battery. When fitted if 1 fails the rest should still work, I take it you still have the wireing in the tractor along with timer relay if not wire them direct to the battery via a push button switch capable of carring about 40 amps.

[kevin the chicken]

The switch is still there but I think the wires that link them are missing apart from the first one from the switch. The switch is linked to a sort of pepper pot thing on the dash through which you can see another heating element. I think I will just take them out and test them with a battery to see if they heat up

[Guest 2b cruising]

Care must be taken when removing them.

Lots of modern long and thin glow plugs often shear off because the are siezed in possition.

Poor penetrating oil on them daily for around a week and then attempt to remove them.

Apparently the transit engine boys rely on using coke coo to do this with great success.

If they shear off, it is a head off jobby to drill out the remains. Drilling out is not as easy as it sounds because if you go to far drilling out the threads, it's usually goodby head. Once the thread is out, the heater element remains can be punched out fron the combustion chambe to the outside of the head.

Not sure what the ohms reading should be across the terminals. However if terminal to earth shows no resistance, the plug is us.

The outer shielding usually disintegrates too.