~~Every time I use Dad’s old tractor, I am confronted with one thing or another that has the indelible fingerprint of our father….. one of the three point hitch arms is held on with the correct type of standard farm lynch pin…. the other is held on with a bent over 9/16” bolt. The list goes on….. I smile, every time. Dang, that guy knew how to improvise.
There has been a somewhat leaky fuel line on the thing, and I made the mistake of touching it a few days ago…. at which point it disintegrated. At least the end that fragmented was at the ‘high’ end of the line, and I could keep from flowing all of the fuel in the tank onto the ground while I had to run to town to find a piece of fuel line that would fit. I know this piece of line had been replaced at some point in the last 30 years, because the hose clamps used to attach it were not of the same type as on the OEM connections.
Managed to replace the line, and took a few minutes to hose all of the dust off the motor, and that led to spraying the grass seed, etc. out of the radiator fins. Less than 70% of them would flow water, so I took a nylon zip tie, and poked all of the slots between the cooling fins to remove the deibrus. Every 20 minutes or so, I would take the garden hose and check to see how much more of the radiator would flow water front to back…. after an hour, I must now have nearly 95% of the fins working as designed…....
Now that we have the fuel line fixed, and the radiator cleaned out, it’s time to do some mowing. except the battery is now flat.
How could that be? I replaced the battery 2 years ago! That led me to looking at the fan belt…... here’s the alternator, all the way to the end of it’s adjustment, the inside edge of the belt looks like rats died from gnawing on it sometime in the 1980’s, everything’s rusty…. the fan and alternator both would spin with pressure of one finger on them, without the belt moving. Did I mention this is a diesel, and it only uses the electricity to heat the glow plugs, and start the motor? No wonder there were no working light bulbs when I got this thing!
Had to go to town today anyway, to get ready for the interview tomorrow, so we picked up a new belt from NAPA. the looked it up in their ancient tractor catalog, and pulled the correct heavy duty belt out of whatever storage it was in.
Took it home, and took off the guards blocking access to the pulley locations….. (took the time to flatten said guards, and return them to the OEM shape, and used the correct nuts bolts etc to remount them) Had to snake the belt into place, and couldn’t get it on all three pulleys at the same time. Even with the alternator fully compressed, I could not get the new belt to migrate into the grove on the crank pulley, until I applied a squirt of Murphy’s oil soap for lubricant. Between that and a pry bar for the ‘proper application of leverage’ it all came together….. the alternator is now less than mid way through it’s adjustment range, I cannot budge either the fan or the alternator with any amount of pressure I can apply by hand, and after using my trusty echo to jump start it, I mowed in the heaviest grass on the place for over an hour…. and the tractor runs cooler than I have ever had it run in those conditions. 80 degrees F and I was in the sweet spot for most of the hour.
And there is more story to come, as Robert trys to fix the battery cable!
Life is never boring on a small farm with an old Tractor!!
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