Heres the thing, the tractor was bought for less than 10K at auction, but the transmission was wasted. So we took it to stockton, they have a case repair shop right next to John deere. Anyway it took them 6 weeks but they put it back together, so basically everything has been looked over, and redone.

But, my uncle gave us a phone call and he checked it out, seems that the hydro oil was low, it took 5 gallons of it. It looked full when I checked it, had no dipstick though. ANyway, going there tomorrow and I'll let you guys know if its still sluggish below 1500, and put a spray behind it and see if it smokes on load to. BTW, if it does smoke when a load is put on it, then does that mean the turbos wasted aswell? What symptoms would let me know its wasted?

 

Easy way to check it out is to just put a boost gauge to it. A regular old $10 water pressure gauge will work just fine, use a grease gun hose from the manifold to the gauge to get it out where you can read it, it will screw right into the manifold.
Port is in a different place than it is on your 24 valve.

 

Great Idea, Bill...I never even thought of that, but we've used it on combines when the customers have complained about low power.

Chris

 

Update:

Went to the ranch today, and the extra 5 gallons of hydro oil really did the trick, feels really strong. Put a roto tiller behind it and it almost felt as if it wasnt even present when running through the peaches. Anyway thanks for all the help guys, really appreciate it, this forum rocks.

 

Enjoy that tractor. Remember to clean the plastic tranny breather filter at the top of the tranny fill plate. Its not very big, but it can shut you down.

 

First and always... FILTERS! Air, fuel, & all screens. Make sure there's no water in the system while you're at it.

Next... Your comments about the turbo: It may not be exactly what you think. Rather than what we're used to on our truck engines, you may have an "atmospheric turbo". Such units are designed to supply air to the engine at sea level pressure only. Thus, your engine will perform as rated at just about any altitude. This is something I learned from our 580SK.

Black smoke indicates an overfuel condition. I'm guessing a lack of air, not a real overfuel. Check your air intake and the pressurized lines between the turbo and the manifold. One of the rubber boots may well be leaking.

The turbo... Make sure the environment is clean and disconnect the turbo discharge line. Do a visual inspection of the turbo (wear safety glasses). If it spools up freely and doesn't bind on shut-down, then it's fairly safe to consider the turbo a non-problem.

Oil... Is the engine using oil? I'd expect white smoke rather than black, but a cylinder with low compression will make the engine a real dog and the unburned or partially burned fuel will show up as black soot.

The Cummins is a solid engine and not really prone to many problems. Odds are that yours is not an internal problem. Do the simple stuff first and eliminate the cheap things before you get more serious. I'm betting on the $100 or less fix.