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Super 446 Build- Diesel Swap

5639 Views 93 Replies 12 Participants Last post by  Shtf45acp, 
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I will start slowly posting my Case 446 with diesel swap here which I'm going to call the Super 446. I'm currently half way through the build but I'll start from the beginning and post a little bit at a time until I'm at the current state of the build.

So a bit of background, I got into Case tractors this past summer. With the help of this forum my son and I 100% mechanically restored a 1988 446. That is our mowing tractor. We went over it top to bottom, and besides paint.... it is basically brand new like it was from the factory with the exception of a few mods like the TCV linkage and factory looking led headlights. It is a wonderful tractor and is quite amazing how nice it mows and how quiet it is while it mows.

So moving forward, this past summer I needed to remove a tree stump in my yard and my powerstroke F250 would not even budge it. So I rented a kubota BX23 with loader and backhoe. That little diesel tractor was absolutely amazing, but the $20k price tag was now. After the tree stump was removed, I no longer needed a loader or backhoe on my property but still wanted a diesel tractor.

In comes a excellent condition one owner 1982 446 that I drove 4 hours one way to Virginia from Pennsylvania to buy. It came with a plow and tiller. The gentleman who owned it said his father bought it brand new in 1982 and used it till he died in the mid 2000's. He himself never used it but it was in amazing condition and came with a book full of records and receipts for everything that was done. So definitely a good score.

So the plan is to completely redo the '82 446 and make it better at least in my opinion. I love to tinker and have the necessary skills and knowledge to do so. I know there will be naysayers but I honestly don't really care as it is my tractor and I already have a stock 446 to do things the Super 446 can't but it won't be many things. Please don't take this the wrong way, as this is a hobby and passion of mine always tinkering and making things better.

So here's the start of my 1982 Super 446.

I started with completely stripping it and cleaning everything. Nothing real special here but as I put it back together I started to replace little things that needed it and fixing little things as I went.





I put on some new Firestone tires all the way around. The fronts are the 16x6.50-8 tri-ribs from Miller tire. The rears are 8-16 Firestone Regency. I like these tires for the fact they aren't as steep of an angle on the bars and bite a good bit better in dirt. I do kind of wish I would have went with 9.5-16 but I still can down the road and put these on the '88 446.

I cleaned and the reamed the front spindles for a nice smooth turn. They were extremely gunked up with old grease. I also drilled out all the grease fittings and tapped them for 1/4-28 fittings. I also did the poor man's power steering on the front with parts from McMaster Carr.

The pivot pin was replaced on the front axle. I also did this on my '88 446, but on the Super 446 it still had some slack. I'm not sure if I want to try and fix that and how I'd go about it. Carefully slicing the frame from the bottom up and then pull it tight with some clamps, then rewelding it would probably fix the slop left but I'm not sure if it is even worth messing with.

What have some of you done to fix the excess slop on the front axle? It isn't much but with my OCD it bothers me.
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bobneumann said:
So as far as a shroud goes, I see what you mean now when you said your fan just about covers the radiator. That electric fan is built into a shroud. So as long as you have a small or no gap between that plastic shroud/housing and the face of the radiator, then you're getting full flow through your radiator equal to the area of that fan shroud.

So in your case, you could eke out a little bit more efficiency by adding a full rectangular shroud. But I'd be shocked if what you have doesn't work perfectly.

I was thinking this whole time you were just going to be running a fan off of the engines water pump or some such. With that electric fan integrated into that plastic shroud will do a great job.

And while I'm at it, everything else you've done to this point just looks top-notch. You're really doing a job to be proud of.

Bob
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Yeah I'm running an electric fan. I wanted the simplicity of a mechanical fan but I wasn't sure on space and then also like you said the cowl around it would be extremely weird because the fan is so much higher than the radiator core.

The plan right now is to have my sons votech class make a arduino controller for the fan. I want the fan to do more than just turn on and off at preset temperatures.

With a relay module that is PWM capable and then a arduino programmed will control the fan. It will come on at say 185° and run at say 50% rpm. Then slowly ramp up to say 75% rpm at 200° then full 100% at 210° or so. This is just an example for temperature settings as I'm not sure what I want them set at yet. I do know I want the fan to vary rpm depending on temperature.

Also taking this one step further, I want the arduino to also operate off the hydraulic oil temperature as well. The problem with this is a engine running will just keep getting hotter and hotter and hotter. It really doesn't have to correlate to load or working the engine although those both will effect the temperature.

The hydraulic system is pretty much load/work dependent. With the engine idling or say mowing grass, the oil will mostly run the same temperature to a certain extent. However if you're plowing or say tilling or using the rear pto, basically working the hydraulic system it will then keep getting hotter and hotter.

To do this it could be done one of two ways.

One would be run another fan and arduino. This would be the simplest way but I don't have the space to run two fans with out major modifications.

The second way would be to program the arduino to control both. It would take readings from two different temperature sensors. One in the hydraulic system and one in the coolant system. So which ever reaches the set temperature first the fan would run.

Now the only problem with doing it this way is it could negatively effect the engine temperature by running to cool if the hydraulic system needs cooling first. The hydraulic system doesn't really matter, the cooler the better. However running the diesel to cool can effect performance. How much is really unknown. You might not even notice it.

I will say last year the thermostat failed in my '06 powerstoke towing my camper around this time of year. It failed open so there was no control of the engine coolant temperature. Normally towing my camper (9500 lbs) in the summer it runs around 210° up to 230° pulling mountains in PA. After the thermostat failed, the truck was only running around 140° and it hugely impacted performance. It was a dog, and I don't believe running efficiently burning all the fuel. So I don't know lol.

So that is the downfall of cooling both systems at once.

There is also a third option however I'm not sure I want to venture down this path as it is quite expensive and could possibly not work correctly.

A heat transfer setup..... so basically it would be a large tube and inside that large tube would be a bunch of little tubes that the hydraulic oil would run through in its own circuit. Then in the large tube, there would be engine coolant. This would separate both systems however there are two potentially huge problems with this.

First from all of my research, it seems the temperature of the Case hydraulic system runs around 200° or so when really working these tractors. So if running a heat transfer setup..... will it even cool the hydraulic oil enough if the engine runs around 180° to 200°? I could see this being a benefit in the winter but a problem in the summer. What is the temperature difference of hydraulic oil going in and coming out of the oil cooler? I haven't tested this yet so I don't honestly know if it would be enough cooling to do it.

The second problem is it could very well overtax the small radiator I have.

A lot of unknowns to try. Most heat transfer coolers run several hundred bucks. It would also be a lot of work to try making one.
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DDudeinar said:
I ended up doing the same service to the fuel system on my Kubota diesel and the injectors I got were cheap-o Fleabay ones and I ended with 2 of 3 working and the third one wept a small bit of diesel when it ran. I ended up paying about $120 for 4 injectors at the end of it all so they aren't too bad, they're super simple as they're just the fuel nozzle with what is essentially a pressure operated check valve. Only picky thing on the injectors on mine is the two halves of the injectors determines their pop off pressure so if they're assembled wrong they won't work right. If you plan on rebuilding them I would 100% get the nozzle tester, they aren't to expensive and save you a ton of headache in the long run. Looks like you got a gem of a motor though, should be plenty sturdy after you get it going!
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Yeah I haven't looked into it to much yet but I have ordered a tester. Gonna give it a whirl. I know my injectors pressure is set with shims. I don't know if the two halves have to be set a certain way or not yet.

I have for a few places that sell remaned injectors anywhere from $75 to $200 each and some have core charges as well. John Deere uses these same injectors and pressure settings on a dozen or more machines. I would hope John Deere injectors are genuine yanmar but who honestly knows.
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Shtf45acp said:
Yeah I haven't looked into it to much yet but I have ordered a tester. Gonna give it a whirl. I know my injectors pressure is set with shims. I don't know if the two halves have to be set a certain way or not yet.

I have for a few places that sell remaned injectors anywhere from $75 to $200 each and some have core charges as well. John Deere uses these same injectors and pressure settings on a dozen or more machines. I would hope John Deere injectors are genuine yanmar but who honestly knows.
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So I apparently missed a word or two in that post... how tight together the two halves of the injectors are determines the pop off pressure, I assume it's pre-loading the spring in the check valve within them so it releases at a given pressure which is determined by the torque applied to the top half on the injector when installing it to the bottom half. Your shims probably work the same way as mine just uses a copper crush washer instead.

I read your controller deal for the cooling system and as it seems like a neat idea what you need to look at is if the motor for the fan can handle what you're wanting to do, not all motors like PWM control unfortunately. Also, the tube and shell heat exchanger for the hydraulic system would be good but would have to be quite large as the hydraulic fluid is moving pretty fast and would either need to be slowed down through the cooler or the cooler would have to be extremely long to compensate and provide any reasonable efficiency. I prefer Engineer's Edge or Engineer's Toolbox for some calculation help on things like that. (Engineering Page > Heat Exchangers, thermal calculators and information) Heat transfer and fluid and thermal systems like that are very picky and require some serious design consideration to be properly effective. For me I'd rather upsize the stock radiator or just use the stock radiator as your fan will be pulling way more CFM than the stock mechanical fan which will increase the cooling capacity. If you run some nice Rotella synthetic oil in the hydro system you'd be dangerously close to or will be melting the aluminum fins on the cooler before the oil starts to break down.
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DDudeinar said:
So I apparently missed a word or two in that post... how tight together the two halves of the injectors are determines the pop off pressure, I assume it's pre-loading the spring in the check valve within them so it releases at a given pressure which is determined by the torque applied to the top half on the injector when installing it to the bottom half. Your shims probably work the same way as mine just uses a copper crush washer instead.

I read your controller deal for the cooling system and as it seems like a neat idea what you need to look at is if the motor for the fan can handle what you're wanting to do, not all motors like PWM control unfortunately. Also, the tube and shell heat exchanger for the hydraulic system would be good but would have to be quite large as the hydraulic fluid is moving pretty fast and would either need to be slowed down through the cooler or the cooler would have to be extremely long to compensate and provide any reasonable efficiency. I prefer Engineer's Edge or Engineer's Toolbox for some calculation help on things like that. (Engineering Page > Heat Exchangers, thermal calculators and information) Heat transfer and fluid and thermal systems like that are very picky and require some serious design consideration to be properly effective. For me I'd rather upsize the stock radiator or just use the stock radiator as your fan will be pulling way more CFM than the stock mechanical fan which will increase the cooling capacity. If you run some nice Rotella synthetic oil in the hydro system you'd be dangerously close to or will be melting the aluminum fins on the cooler before the oil starts to break down.
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Yeah I plan on running 5w40 t6 rotella in this 446. It's the same stuff I use in my 6.0 powerstroke. I'm probably gonna switch the '88 446 hydraulic oil to 5w40 t6 as well just to be covered for the winter. The Onan burns a bit of oil so I'll probably keep that regular 15w40 rotella.

As far as the cooling I'm just gonna stick to what I have now and see how it does. That's all I really can do till it is running.
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So as much as i like an elegant implementation, i think you might be overthinking fan control. I would venture that you would be totally fine with on/off. Let the actual thermostat do the 'metering' and have the fan just be on/off. The only thing that i would say is too simple of a switching circuit will have it click on and off repeatedly when near the set point. Something that actually turns it on and off at different temps would be better in that sense.

As far as the hydraulic cooling, I have NO fan on my Predator 212-repowered Case 444, and i have not 'overheated' the hydraulics. However, it is purely a push/pull machine and i don't do any PTO anything with it.

Is there any room between the front of the hydraulic cooler and the grille?
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Vigo said:
So as much as i like an elegant implementation, i think you might be overthinking fan control. I would venture that you would be totally fine with on/off. Let the actual thermostat do the 'metering' and have the fan just be on/off. The only thing that i would say is too simple of a switching circuit will have it click on and off repeatedly when near the set point. Something that actually turns it on and off at different temps would be better in that sense.

As far as the hydraulic cooling, I have NO fan on my Predator 212-repowered Case 444, and i have not 'overheated' the hydraulics. However, it is purely a push/pull machine and i don't do any PTO anything with it.

Is there any room between the front of the hydraulic cooler and the grille?
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I believe you may be correct to get started and see how it actually works. Sometimes the KISS method is best. And yes I'd use a fan controller to kick on and off but off would be lower than the on setting.

There is a little bit a room in front. Maybe an inch or so.
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Been pretty busy lately with work and the holidays I haven't had much time to work on the Super 446.

I did get a chance to design the motor mounts. I just need to get them cut and bent. Then I can start getting it set into place better or more semi permanent.






These will get stitch welded to the top of the frame. I'm hoping this will beef up the frame considerably as well.

My son is 3d printing the flywheel hub, shaft coupler and hydraulic pump. This will be great to bolt to the engine for final mock up before welding in place. I can't wait to show pictures of this once it is finished.

I finally cut the frame in the rear step up. You can see it in the two pictures above. It will need some finish grinding but this opened up the rest of the space I needed.

Once I get everything in position I can then design the new frame sideplates that will reinforce the entire frame front to rear. I'm hoping to incorporate the 3 point hitch into it as well. So hopefully some pretty cool stuff coming in the next few weeks!
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I also forgot I picked up a John Deere 332 bell housing cheap. It will definitely need some trimming but I'm hoping it will help mount the pump.

If not it will at least be a nice looking guard to keep my toes and boot laces out of the flywheel 🤣

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V
Very cool.

So is the bolt pattern on the side of the engine block some kind of standardized thing? Looks possibly identical to my small Kubotas. I'm an ASE Master but still a newbie to the industrial side of things where there are standardized things like bellhousing patterns, pump mounting patterns, etc.
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Vigo said:
Very cool.

So is the bolt pattern on the side of the engine block some kind of standardized thing? Looks possibly identical to my small Kubotas. I'm an ASE Master but still a newbie to the industrial side of things where there are standardized things like bellhousing patterns, pump mounting patterns, etc.
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I'm honestly not sure but I doubt it.
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bobneumann said:
The circular circumference is the important part about a shroud. When the fan is running inside that cylinder, the air is forced to flow axially, through the propeller. Without it, a fan is only about 70% effective. 30% of the air just "swirls around" the outside of the fan.

You want your fan to make the air "travel" not just stir it up in place. And you don't want the fan to pull any of its air from this side of the radiator, you want to suck outside air inward through the radiator vanes. So the shroud makes the fan itself more effective at making the air "travel", and it ensures that all the air has to come from out in front of the radior.

I may be overthinking it. It could well be that your diesel will run cool, and 70% axial flow will be fine. But if it does struggle, I wouldn't look to add a larger radiator, I'd look to add a fan shroud.

Bob
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A Spal fan is an electric fan that by nature of the mounting housing forms it's own shroud. Granted, it is more of a round shroud, thus leaves the corners of the radiator without fan coverage.

I see I am late to the party and posted before seeing the pictures. :)
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Shtf45acp said:
So been about a week since I have been able to do any major work on the Super 446.

I pretty much finished up the engine. The only things I have left to do is rebuild the injectors and adjust the valves plus do a compression test for a base line. I tore it apart to a short block just to check everything because it was sitting in a warehouse for several years after it was pulled from the sailboat. I'm glad I did..... there was a lot of sludge in the oil pan which I'm just going to assume it was from sitting. There were spots left on the cylinder walls from where the pistons sat in place. You can't feel them but you can see them.

Otherwise the inside of the engine is immaculate and really does look like it only has 500 hours on it like the hour meter said.

I did have to clean/rebuild the entire fuel system though. The diesel dried in place and the injection pump was stuck. I unfortunately broke the rack to move it into postion so I could remove it from the block. I took it all apart soaked everything in acetone, cleaned it all up and reassembled it according to the service manual. Doing this myself saved at least $500 from what a few shops quoted me. I never did any major diesel work before but it really isn't nothing major or anything to be scared of. Follow the manual and as long as you have a decent mechanic background you should be fine.

Unfortunately the injectors are stuck too. I have them apart, and cleaned.... gonna give it a whirl to put them back together once the injector tester gets here. I may have to replace the needle assembly in each, guess it depends if they'll hold pressure or not. Manual says they need to hold 1650 psi for 10 seconds with out leaking. They pop at 1700 psi. New needle assemblies are $94 each from John Deere but a new injector is $195. There are tons of options all over the internet and eBay but I'm pretty sure three injectors for $100..... yeah probably garbage.

Anyway the fan came today. The motor is in its final resting place and thankfully everything will fit and I can keep the hood in the oem location which is great. It won't look weird at all. The only cutting I'll have to do is where the frame gets taller in the rear where the Onan originally sat. The brake pedal is definitely gonna have to be reworked but I'd rather that than moving the hood around and looking weird.

Lots of room in there between the fan and pulleys. So far I'm extremely happy with how everything is fitting. I just need to design the mounting plates and get it tacked into place. Then I run the fuel lines and add a return line to the fuel tank. Then I can test fire it!




Click to expand...
I would put a couple little overs over where the fan overhangs the radiator so that it has to suck all air through the radiator and call it a day. The little corners of radiator not covered by the fan will not impact cooling that much.
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Not a whole lot to report since last time. Been extremely busy with the holidays and work.

I have redesigned the engine mounts. The new design ties in the frame all the way to almost the front. These will be really strong especially with the side frame plates I'll be doing.





I'm waiting on them to come back from the laser cutter so hopefully after Christmas.

The flywheel hub is being machined at my son's votech school so hopefully I'll have that soon too. Then I'll just need the coupler and the pump. I haven't quite decided on a pump yet but I'd like a good one. I'm thinking about a Haldex pump from northern hydraulic.

I did manage to finish up the engine pretty much. The only thing I need to do yet is rebuild the injectors. Honestly just reassemble them and test/set the pop off. They have already been cleaned.

I was also able to source some nice molded hoses to make the cooling system look factory! I was shocked I got them to fit so nicely. The bottom hose just needs a 1" 90° aluminum or stainless steel elbow.






Overall really happy with how things are going with this build.
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dundee222
Lazer cutter??? An decent angle grinder and/or bandsaw and you would have those knocked out in half an hour or so.
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S
Nope..... I'm spoiled and meticulous plus it's nice to have connections 😆
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dundee222
LOL I hear ya! I am meticulous too! But, at a least for the present, I'm blessed with the dexterity to cut or grind to a scribed line, if I need it to the thousandth, I'll clamp it on the mill. But,,, you have the all important, CONNECTIONS! I'm envious.
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Yeah I'm pretty picky especially after working in the industry for a long time. Being a machinist and welderhas it's perks.

Not saying I couldn't do it with a grinder. I just don't want to lol. I could perform brain surgery with a angle grinder lol.
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So messing around in the shop today I have redesigned the hydraulic pump hub to save some space and make it less complicated.

Remembering talking to boomer about his crankshaft on the Onan he ran had internal splines. So I thought that would be a even better way to not only be able to transfer power better but make the hub a lot more compact.






Since I haven't ordered a pump I can just get one with splines instead. There shouldn't be any misalignment at all and the splines will also allow for the slight movement in crankshaft endplay, which is .006".

All I'll need then is a bracket to come down from the top of the engine to the frame.
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Edankievitch
Very cool project. Almost looks like you have enough room up front for a power take. Can’t wait to see it running
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It's funny you say that, because I have been toying with the idea again but haven't said anything because I've been more focused on get the engine mounted and running.

I have the room, and if just if I would go with a electric clutch but keep the pulley close to the engine block.... it probably would work.

It would all come down to a electric clutch that is overall not to deep. It would also need to be able to lock up in the correct rotation. I believe if the pulley is kept close to the block it would need to be a ccw clutch. The only thing I'd need to do is make a stub shaft that would bolt to the front pulley.
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