2 Sure-fire tricks to get an Old Diesel Tractor (Backhoe) to Start in Freezing Temperatures

Ha awesome

If you look at my avatar, that's a 1957/58 Allis Chalmers D-17 with a Buda 262 diesel in it.  It's compression is so low it can't start when 'hot' without starting fluid.  That tractor has been started in the single digit temperatures with near frozen batteries in under 5 minutes with 3 tricks: A decent sized engine starter, starting fluid, and mapp gas.  You set the booster on a low setting and let it warm the batteries up a bit for a couple minutes.   Then spray in a couple shots of starting fluid, and turn on the mapp torch you have on the intake and crank. It fires over on the starting fluid but picks up power on the mapp gas then settles in on the diesel.  Don't know if it works for every tractor but starts mine every time, even in freezing temps.  The best system, however, is a block heater.  Keeps both oil and water heated up.

I agree with this starting method , but I must have missed the part where you used 'starting fluid ( ether ) to help start this old dog, Mike.
I suspect that this engine may be an 'British built' diesel, maybe a Nuffield or a Leyland or the like, and as such I can tell you that the use of starting fluid will, eventually, absolutely 'kill' this engine.
Now I realize too, that you didn't use much of that darned stuff, and that was good, but most, not all, British built diesel engines have a long stroke and therefore can't take the extreme pressure caused by the burning ( explosion) of staring fluids. This causes 'hellish' knock this knock is what will bend those connecting rods like a banana.
The heating of the base pan/oil is a very old trick, and from stories I have heard, was used even in the time of WW II when the Russian forces captured German soldiers and forced them into labor camps in Siberia. These soldiers had to start cold truck and tractor engines with the same idea, heat up the batteries and the oil. It nearly always worked so the story went.
So folks have said that they would let you work on their equipment, but they've missed the point of your video. Of course you are not likely to use this method on new engine, why would you.
But this does work, and has for years and years, heck, why were block heaters invented ?

Awwwww see tsk tsk attitude dear boy

I might be a hoe ,but every person on the face of the earth has a father and a mother, dumb ass

Have you ever tried a dip stick heater? I worked on heavy equipment for many years and used these heaters on many pieces of equipment to keep the engines warm. Plug the heater in and stick it in the dip stick tube the night before to keep the oil warm in the engine. The fire under the oil pan works but it certainly isn't very safe. I do recall that I had to get a good heater that got nice and hot, the cheaper ones didn't work all that great.

they make a electric blanket for batteries too. I know.......old video

i use an electric hair dryer in the air filter to heat the intake air

Thanks a lot for this idea, My Ford 3 cylinder diesel excavator has been stuck for 2 months in the field no start at all. I will try this today, again thanks.

You will cook the oil to the side of the pan doing this. when it breaks free it will take out your engine. you are better off with a block heater to the radiator. If you can not get it to electricity to run the block heater, than use a ( small flat ) pan of charcoal and use card board around the engine area to block any wind. this will allow the heat to spread outward and lessen the oil burning in the pan. your fire was way to hot and close to the pan.

Why don't you clean your dirty tractor , up ?

Gotta do what ya gotta do> My dad had stories from the early 1960's logging and skidding with older 3T 7's during extreme freezing cold winters. They learned to do same thing but always were on the watch for dirty belly pans that would collect wood and oil debris. Some days the Cats would run 24 / 7 because it was too cold to start if not. Ive had a small backhoe business for years...I remember telling my dad years ago when I got my first cab machine. It was 1994 JD310D w/4 in one bucket and stereo. This was in 1995. My dad was happy I didnt have to work like his generation did. I reminded him that we had cell phones, a laser and a heated cab with a thermos bottle holder...he was amazed...he was about 75 at the time.
I have heated even new machines with a kerosene space heater, the jet engine looking type...a small one running off an inverter for the fan and using 6inch stove pipe to bring hot air to oil pan. Some job sites didn't have electricity for block heaters.

ebay a new starter

20 F is not that cold.
Just use 5w40 oil and get your valves adjusted properly.
don't need to heat the oil,and ether is the worse you can do to your engine,it only will make things worse and worse.
A heat gun in the intake is way safer for the engine.

Old Long 4N1. 5N1 had the crane on top.

Everybody knows these two tricks. This is the trick that I thought you was gonna show us. Take a rag, soak it in gas, lightly ring it out and have somebody try to start it while you hold the gassy rag pushed up tight against the air inlet into the air box at the air filter. The gas fumes off of the rag Works just as good if not better than starting fluid.

I crank it for 20 min some nights not 20 sec

Back during the Alaska oil pipeline construction, this was done all the time. 55 gal drums were cut in half, and coals were put in it and put under the pan. Another thing is a friend who was a mechanic put his wrenches on the steel grate which covered the 55 gal drum so they wouldn't stick to his hands when using them.

Redneck blockheater...

YOU WON'T BE STARTING ANY OF MY EQUIPMENT!!