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It’s time to put some oil into the tractor’s engine.

It’s nearly time to put some oil into the tractor’s engine. 12 pints for a diesel engine sump, 3/4 pint for the Air Cleaner Bowl, and some oil for the reservour in the C.A.V. pump

So what oil do I put in the tractor? I know this is always a great topic for debate on any forum or discussion on tractors,  so here goes.

In the TEF-20 Instruction Manual that was originally supplied with the tractor there is a table showing types of engine oil to use and manufacturers and their products.

The key to the chart is temperature.  The temperature of the ambient air where you live in my case the UK or The British Isles. For the UK the recommendation is to have S.A.E 20 oil in the winter (0°C-10°C) and a S.A.E. 30 grade oil in the summer (10°C-30°C).  When the tractor was new oil was only available with these single grades or temperature ranges. This means to get the best result you should change the oil between winter and summer as the outside air temperature changes.

 Then someone had the bright idea of combining the two grades of oil into one called a multi grade oil. This gives you the opposite to what you’d expect. It gives you an oil which is thinner in the winter at startup when the oil should be colder and more viscous or sticky and a thicker oil in the summer at startup when the oil should be thinner as it is hotter outside. How does the oil achieve this? Additives in the oil mean it can be used over a range of temperatures. The hotter it gets the thicker it gets. This goes against normal principles that oil gets thinner the hotter it gets.

So I bought  20W-50 Multi grade oil. It has a 20 SAE value in the Winter and up to 50 SAE value in the summer.

I have also added this oil to the CAV diesel pump as recommended.

So now I’ve got the oil into the engine how am I going to get it to circulate around the engine before I start it up is another issue.