Starting a D2 5U

are you disengaging the pinion cluch lever when you try to restart and also releasing the diesel compression lever

Your pinion clutch may be adjusted a bit tighter than necessary or the oil may be thicker than needed, or both.

Anyway, if you want to pursue it, you can flush the clutch compartment with diesel and drain, then refill with ATF. The adjustment can be fairly loose and still turn the diesel fine.

You can also open the small cover over the pinion on the clutch housing and punch one of the spring loaded latches to release the pinion.

Thanks guys. I'll try positioning the clutch to disengage the diesel but not so far that it acts as a brake on the pony. Upon reading, I'm not sure why I didn't think of that on my own. 😕

Current temp is 14 F, and warmup is taking me much longer than a minute. I think I'm on the 10-15 minutes of warmup with compression to get her started. Any reason why I shouldn't be using starting fluid on her? (no glow plugs to destroy) I really don't want to run the pony longer than needed as it has an oil leak while running and I don't want to deal with that until warmer weather.

Yes you can use a little snort of ether after it,s warmed up some and still won,t fire. Just take the can with the engine turning over and give it a couple short snorts in the air cleaner intake and it should fire then. Don,t keep giving it ether if it doesn,t fire right off as you could put it to sleep (lock it up) and the engine won,t turn over at least till you release the compression and turn over some after you wait a few minutes or less.There has been so much negative talk about ether but you have to know how to use it and then no trouble. Here in my area when coal strippings was big and the operators had to use it all the time on the really cold mornings and as an engine mechanic at the Cat dealer I rebuilt lots of their engines at the shop and never saw even one that showed any effects from using ether. Cat even had an ether aid on new tractors years ago so if it was so bad they sure wouldn,t have put them on the new engines.Again just use ether after you have turned the diesel over for awhile with compression on and if it doesn,t fire up when you pull the throttle on give it the ether snort.

How many levers does your tractor have?

Ah, how to count levers? I have a decompression lever, a main diesel throttle with detent, the pony clutch/brake lever, and the pinion lever. Then we get into levers you aren't interesting in like steering...

Mine does not have a lever at the diesel governor like I see in the operators manual.

that happened to me one day.I started the poney up,but as soon as i ingaged the diesel the poney ran out of power.
The problem was that the transmission was in neutral,but the clutch was engaged.The thick oil in the transmission was too much for the pony to turn over.Alway's make sure clutch is not ingaged.
JUST A THOUGHT COMPRESSOR

I'll be adding disengage main clutch to my startup procedure then. I've been leaving the clutch engaged with the transmission in neutral.
The cat started pretty well this morning. I'd guess I was in the 10 minutes total from untarping to ready to plow. I have it in an unheated shop, tarped with a space heater underneath. Thanks for the reply.