I realize it's kind of silly but I've always wanted a Lull or some type of telehandler but Lulls have always been my favorite since they could be had with 2 stroke power. Since I don't have any real need or business case for one I certainly cannot afford a nice one. About 3 weeks ago I bought this 1986 Lull 644-tt-34 Highlander 2 the owner said didn't run because the injection pump was bad. He said it blew a head gasket and after they replaced it the injection pump went out and it never ran again. I wasn't too concerned because even though it was a John Deere 4239D and not a Detroit I can pretty much figure anything out. I got it home and then the following weekend me and my buddy dug into it. He rebuilt the injection pump at his place over the week and we set out to install it and get it running. Turns out this old Lull had a few surprises up it's sleeve. After a bunch of fuel issues and struggling we did get it to run... kinda. It would black smoke like mad and not make any rpm. foot to the wood it'd barely get idle. After a whole lot of messing around I put an oil pressure gauge on it and discovered nothing... like zero. Engine is fighting itself. Luckily we got it to run long enough to slide the carriage forward to pluck this deere out of it's hole. I'm going to leave this here for now... I'm at my limit on pictures for one message... More soon.
By the CAV pump is either Perkins or old Ford Industrial engine. Should be a easy fix to find a used drop in engine if they toasted this one. Edit, Finally saw exhaust over pump, quite correct Deere, Sorry.
This was after the entire night was spent attempting to get it running. Warning: language. Once we got the little Deere over on the shop floor I pulled the pan to see what we could see. Turns out the damn thing spun the mains. And I mean spun them... like to the point you can bolt the caps on and turn the bearing with your finger. Zoom in on the pic, the bearing wore about a 1/8" into the caps. Safe to say it had been run a bit with the bad head gasket. So at this point I've got a bad crank and block which I wasn't really prepared to deal with. I wasn't too worried about putting kits in the deere or anything like that. I got to searching around in the morning for a used engine and those little deere turds are expensive!!! Way over budget for this project. Luckily I have a pretty decent hoard of Detroits here in the weeds. Hmmmmmm
Nice metallic paint!!! Sorry bud, had to say it. Most likely had a bad head gasket and they ran it eating coolant, chucked the gasket as it ate itself sadly. 4/71 would be a SCREAMER for this!!
3 cylinder will make a serious Whistle!!
Isn't that machine too far forward on that trailer? I would have put it the other way around. And more towards rear.
Well it didn't run and was in a really ****** location for loading so we pushed it up on the trailer however we could make it work. Towed great and the truck wasn't squatting much.
So first things first... I bought this engine a year ago for a core with the story that it was blowing oil out the exhaust and after swapping blowers a few times the previous owner gave up and bought a new engine... let's see if she runs. At first it wouldn't chooch so I slapped in some new injectors and bingo. So now that I've got a runner the next step is actually getting it to go where that little deere was. The key to all that is bolting up to the Funk 4000 transmission and getting the flexplate and converter to bolt to the 353. Luckily all this **** is pretty standard stuff. SAE #4 housing, which I've actually got for the Detroit. I've been tripping over it for the last 10 years, it was off the first Detroit I ever bought and I kept telling myself I'd need it some day. Today is a good day to be a hoarder Here's a few pictures of the deere flywheel and flexplate Here is a picture of the Detroit flywheel That outer depth is a problem. After doing some measuring and research the inner bolt pattern is of the same SAE pattern and depth as that of the deere. We just need to get the outer ring to match. This was great news and means that with a slight bit of machine work i have a viable option for repower without any kind of oddball one off stuff and most importantly I don't have to worry about the converter depth. The hard part is done for me. Thanks SAE!!! As is usually the case with me the story only gets better from here. I sent my flywheel to a real good friend of mine who is one of the best machinists I've ever met. In the mean time I decided I should swap over that flywheel housing...... that'll be in the next post.
We have a WINNER!!
Should be a Flat Flywheel available for that 53 similar to the Deere.
In order to change that flywheel housing on the 353 I had to pull the oil pan and some bolts from the governor and blower. Upon removing the oil pan I found this. Yes, that's a thrust bearing and like 80% of a dipstick. lol I also found the blower totally full of oil and this oddball peice of metal in the airbox. I decided it was probably a good idea to pull a main.
The mains did NOT look good, and the crank had already been turned .010..... Someone had also recently been in there because the kits were newer, but the cam and one of the lifters was totally wiped. I swear it should be illegal for loggers to own wrenches. I figured at this point there's no way I'm using this engine, unless it was getting a crank so I started calling around trying to find one.
The good news in all this was that my buddy had finished the flywheel modifications and now I just needed to bring it to get rebalanced. The little round thing in the second picture we had to machine also. It slides into the center of the crank where the pilot bearing would normally be and the other end supports the nub on the end of the converter taking the stress off the flexplate. The center bore of the flywheel is much larger on the deere than it was on the detroit so we had to machine it down. Lengths were all the same. I went there to pick it up and as a bonus he sold me a 353N out of an air compressor he had sitting around a few years. He was going to put it in a pickup project but said that since I needed it he would sell it to me. This engine also had a few other benefits to it, like the exhaust, governor, and blower were on the correct sides of the engine that would match the machine. So now I could proceed with configuring this engine with the correct flywheel housing and governor for the machine. I had to change the governor because a compressor uses a constant rpm type governor like on a tractor (we call these variable speed governors in the Detroit world) and I needed a limiting speed governor like a truck would have. Luckily I have many of these in stock.
Well lets dig in. I don't know if you could tell from the last pic but this engine does need some slight re configuring. The oil pan needs to be flipped around so the sump is at the front and as I mentioned I needed to change the governor and the flywheel housing. Here's a pic of the absolute war zone in the shop. The flywheel housing needed to be modified also, there is no room in the Lull chassis for the feet so they had to go. Here is a picture of the sump on the motor and how much I had to take out of it. Here's the motor all assembled and back on the floor.
This ol girl can't go to the prom dressed like a ****in caterpillar, that's how they come apart. The new flywheel and converter support are installed, it also got a new rear main seal. I even had the correct factory Detroit bracketry kicking around to make the original deere alternator fit. I even had a nice used shutdown cable kicking around in the hoard. I installed that in the cab of the lull and ran it where i thought it needed to be. It didn't have one before because the deere used a fuel shutoff solenoid.
Here she is, ready to dance, waiting for her ride to show up..... in reality we were waiting on my buddy to show up with his service truck as that's how we were going to pick and swing it. All swung into place... The only JLG parts I bought for this entire adventure were new front rubber mounts. Here you can see the old mounting location is just to the sides of the Detroit's front mount. The following picture shows the engine actually bolted up to the trans just waiting for us to get that mount done. Here's a picture of what our new front mount looked like. We cut up the factory deere front mounts and welded them onto the Detroit one. Not going anywhere!
How cheap was this cheapest lull?
Well just because it was the cheapest one I've seen doesn't mean it was THAT cheap. I gave $2500 for it. I haven't seen one near that around here.
That's a good price. Hopefully nothing else wrong with it. Has to be one of the easiest engine compartments to work in, on a telehandler.
That an old Brockway Dump sitting next to the Telehandler? Your site is as bad as my own for Orphans!!
Sure is... check my youtube channel for more on that (Ol2Stroker there too). I rescued that from a local constructions companies yard. They hadn't used it in 12+ years and I bought it non running as is where is for $1600. After an afternoon swapping some stuck injectors I drove it out of their yard. Did a ton of work to it, it's road ready now. Rebuilt both rears, changed a spring hanger up front, all 10 wheels and tires, bunch of air system and electrical/lighting work. Cool truck, I need to swap in the 10 speed i have kicking around for it, this one pops out of 5th.
We ended up not using the factory cast iron exhaust elbow from manifold to muffler. Also luckily the guy I bought it from gave me the brand new muffler he had just bought for it (IT WAS $700!!!!!) so we fabbed up a new elbow out of some 2.5" stainless I had kicking around. Also of note, I changed the thermostat water outlet to one off my old 453t powered 78 F250 and like magic the factory upper radiator hose works. **** yea boys she's a runner. Other than the swap I had to replace one hydraulic hose for the fork rotation and hammer the pin back in that supports the main boom lifting assist cylinder. Then we welded that pin in place because it had already been booger welded once which ****ed up the threads. Really really happy with it. I cleaned all the factory gauges and dashboard and had to replace the oil pressure sender so now everything works except the hour meter. I'm thinking of ordering a new one to commemorate it's new heart. Here's a quick video of my buddy ripping it around the yard a bit. I will have this entire process in video on my channel pretty soon but it's going to be a bit of editing there's a ton of footage. So far the only hickup is the trans leaks oil pretty good from the weephole at the bottom rear of the bellhousing after you shut the machine off? I'm guessing we knocked the spring out of the converter seal when putting it together. NBD Fix it in spring... any of yall ever seen that?
Wow. You finished that project fast!
Any ideas on why this thing leaks out of the transmission bellhousing when you shut it off?
I would first check the case vent on the trans.
Good call, that was the first thing I did check.
Should be a Power Shift system? If is most likely outer seals are done at converter and gonna have to pull it off the 53.. Will be very eerily similar to the transmissions in HUNDREDS of old machines. Rockford Clutch built most of them. You are most likely seeing converter drainback oil dribbling out. Minnpar is your friend as to pieces. https://www.minnpar.com/manuals.aspx They handle a lot of Age Orphans.
Yea 3spd powershift, and that makes sense. If that's the seal I'm thinking of it wouldn't surprise me if we knocked the spring out of it going back in with the motor. It wanted to fight us for a bit and was kind of like feeling around in the dark without the front mounts in place to guide us. Thanks for that minnpar link i hadn't seen that place yet. I have most of the manuals for this machine, I found the service manual here but this came with a binder and had the operators manual and a factory parts manual since I got it from the original owners. Looks like a P22656 or in JLG land a 10722656.
Nicely done ol2stroker!!
Thanks man!!! I've finally got the videos up. The install and conclusion video will be posted Friday 8am. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDzmIrcbpFL-A6A2sgIotAk0Cjlt-cG_E
you really fell in it, an engine that was toooootally trashed and then you climbed on out of it.
Nice job. You made my day when I found this post and found out you were transplanting a 3-53 in it. Perfect size for that old timer. Built to work with a minimum of care, and designed to keep you awake at work all at the same time.
No kidding. I was a deckhand on a little 8" dredge with a 8V92T, about 4' behind me. Earplugs plus earmuffs plus hearing damage.