The Tractor Rides Again

The new setup in the lathe did the trick.  It ran so well I didn't want to stop to take  a picture until it was done.  Finished the second end and then put a couple of bends in the rod to match the original close enough to work. And work it does.  Mowed the whole yard without losing my steering once.  That's such a comforting thing to be able to say.

If it lasts 40 years like the first one did, whoever has it by that time will be able to just put a couple of new ends on it and it will be as good as new again.

The photography is pretty crappy but here's mine on top with the original below:

"Tractor Time" or "Getting Lathed"

I guess the tractor thought I wasn't paying enough attention to it now that its running so well again.  I was mowing the lawn last weekend and it dropped a steering linkage.  Naturally it was the one that doesn't have removable ends.  They don't make steering linkages for these forty year old garden tractors anymore so I decided I'd make lemonaide out of the situation and build a new one myself.

Tractor Supply had set of garden tractor steering knuckles that used the same size nut as the old one so I bought those and a three foot long steel bar of about 5/8"  diameter.  The new knuckles are made to screw onto a rod so the idea was to cut the bar to the right length, put a couple of bends in it to match the bends in the old one and thread the ends to take the new knuckles.

The new knuckles screw onto a 7/16" rod with 20 threads per inch so the "building" part of the project involved turning the rod's end down to 7/16" and threading it to take the knuckle and then cutting the rod to length and turning and threading the other end for the other knuckle.

The turning is the "making lemonaide" part too.  I know next to nothing about how to use a metal lathe and will be getting on the job training.

The rod won't fit all the way through the lathe's headstock so I wound up chucking one end and running the other end in a steady rest.  The first end turned out really well:

For the second end, I decided to turn down a section where the end would be and then cut the rod and thread it.  This is one of the learning parts:

The setup is all wrong.  I should have kept the steady rest closer to the bit.  As it is, there's a lot of flex in the bar and it is making the cutting go really slow and chattery.   When it came time to eat supper and I only had this section turned down to .45" I decided to take the opportunity to kick back and rethink  what I'm doing.

The new plan is to remove the bar from the lathe and cut it to length on the band saw.  Then I'll put the finished end in the chuck.  The rod will go into the headstock at least a foot so I won't be chucking on the new threads and, with it cut to length, it should make a much more rigid setup with just a few inches of the bar sticking out of the chuck.  I was trying to avoid having to set it up in the chuck twice because all my lathe has is a 4 jaw chuck that doesn't self-center and it can sometimes be a real pain getting things centered.  I think it will work better if I do it this way.

So I learned a little about using the steady rest and maybe later this week I'll learn some more about centering stuff in the 4 jaw chuck.  By the weekend I should have a tractor again too.

Progress on All Fronts

The old tractor mowed the entire lawn flawlessly today.  I even went across the street and mowed the five foot tall weeds in the ditch.  It did it without a hiccup.   Not really a big deal in itself but the change from the months of tractor-related frustration is worth celebrating.

Before I did that, I took Ruth, the old Jeep (named for Festus' Mule on Gunsmoke) and a trailer load of branches and such to the dump, filled her and a 5 gallon can up and made it home without any parts falling off either of us.


I have decided that I will load a minimum of 50 rounds of something every week.  That will keep me coming back to the reloading room and will take away one thing that has hindered my getting to a range lately.  That thing being lack of ammo.


The range on my buddy's farm is already underwater and we should get some more rain out of Mr. Isaac starting tomorrow so I have time to do a lot of loading even at just 50 rounds per week.

OK.  The range isn't quite that bad but it is underwater.


In what was perhaps my best  ever gun show reloading deal, I was able, some years back, to buy four Little Dandy measures and a cigar box full of  every rotor made for it for $40.

 I usually keep one on a CH  'H Press' because I put together a home made internal funnel contraption to adapt the measures to my charging dies and its a good way to keep track of the funnel.   When I'm not planning to load on a Communist  Progressive press, I usually use the CH because its fast enough for me.

Went into the reloading room thinking I'd load my 50 this evening but the wrong rotor for what I wanted to load was in the measure.  Either that or I had put a different Little Dandy on that particular press to load something different.   Anyway, I didn't feel like changing things around so I decided to kick back and write about it instead.

You Might Be A Winner

My old tractor had been so troublesome the past several weeks that I had begun to wonder if it wasn't prophetic that the engine was made by Onan.   I decided to tackle this week's breakdown early yesterday morning.  A little tinkering with the float level and the tractor ran like a charm.  Kept running when I put it in gear and it kept running when I engaged the mower deck.  It mowed grass.  It even kept running when I ran over a pile of copper wire that wrapped around the blades and stopped them from moving.   That's how strongly it is supposed to run and it did.

When I got done mowing and cutting the wire off the blades, I checked the lottery ticket that I bought on Monday.  I don't usually buy lottery tickets but I don't usually find myself in Leesburg either so, while I was there Monday, I figured it couldn't hurt.  I won five bucks.  Winning is winning and don't try to tell me any different.  I won the lottery - dammit!

With two victories under my belt I decided to go for broke and hit the reloading room wherein I assembled a small quantity of M2 Ball equivalent. 

Three tiny little "victories" in one day.   Nice.

Das Tractor.

Sticking with the Das Boot (That's pronounced "BOAT") theme, had I been the Captain of U96, it would be sitting at the bottom of the Straits of Gibraltar with a suffocated crew.  The pump wouldn't have worked, blowing the tanks would have righted the boat but not provided quite  enough buoyancy to float it and even if it had managed to get to the surface the engines wouldn't have started.  We would have sat there until the Brits came back and shot us all to mince meat.

Got home today, no rain, no work scheduled.  Noting to do but putz around the house.  Hopped on the tractor to mow the yard and the battery ist kaput.  Dead cell. These "Lawn and Garden" batteries that the auto parts places sell around here seem to be designed to last one summer.  This one dates to February 2011 so it has been on borrowed time for a while.

I could use the push mower except that the First Wife (same person as the "Lovely Bride" depending on whether she's ticked me off) thought the air filter was clogged (it was) and that the engine could get more air if she took it out and put it in backwards so the clean side was out.  (It didn't).

No.  I did not make that up.

So, instead of loading ammo or shooting or  hunting or even working, I am going to spend my Saturday buying a battery for the tractor and cleaning the push mower's carburetor.  I ain't buyin' no Lawn and Garden battery neither.  I'm gonna get the biggest car battery that I can stuff under that tractor's hood.  I'm gonna take welding cable and make new battery cables for it while I'm at it.  Maybe after all that is done I will be able to actually mow the yard like anybody else.

That's a big "maybe."

Tractor Progress

Tractor is running great.  Needs a new battery and air filter now but runs like new.

More Tractor Troubles

Seems like I am just stumbling over myself trying to get the old tractor up and running.  The new fuel pump solved the problem last week but it suddenly started running rough, puffing black smoke and finally it shut off.  Removing the air filter cover, I found that it would crank up and run but would shut of when I put it back on.  Besides that, it puffed a geyser of air/fuel out the top of the carburetor on every other stroke.

Tractors don't get ventricular fibrillation.  Normal ones don't but something had to be holding the intake valve open.  The attack came on so suddenly that I convinced myself that the intake valve seat must have dislodged from the block.

Pulling the front head revealed the culpret.   I took the picture after I solved the problem so the intake valve is closed but the shiny metal on the block next to the intake valve at about 4:00 to 6:00 O'clock is where a small screw was rattling around on the valve seat.  It was big enough to get stuck between the valve and the seat but too big to fall completely through into the cylinder.

How'd it get there?  Well, when working on the fuel pump, I also checked the carburetor's float level and when I did that I dropped some nuts, washers and screws.  I thought they all fell onto the frame in front of the engine and that the little carburetor screw was just small enough to have fallen down into some crevasse where I couldn't see it.  In reality, it fell into the carburetor.

No harm, no foul and maybe I'll learn something from it.  As soon as the battery is charged we'll be back in business.

In the mean time, just to make Buckshot happy, here's one of those pictures of hot chicks working on a car.

Situation Normal

All fouled up.

Started the tractor this morning to mow the back yard and it ran great for about 5 seconds.  The electric fuel pump was dead.

$51 later I was putting on a new low pressure electric fuel pump. Worked great until the geyser of gas shot up out of the fuel bowl vent.  Seems its not really a low pressure pump after all.  So much for my first ever trip to O'Reilly Auto Parts.  Still, after sitting a few hours for the flood to subside it started up in a cloud of black smoke and cleared itself out.  It was running but not very well.  Turning the fuel pump on and off didn't make any difference.  The vacume powered pump in the carburetor was supplying all it needed to run.   Finally it just quit.  Just like shutting off the ignition switch.  It has gas, electric power to the coil and clean spark plugs.  Waiting on the shadows to reach the spot where it died so I can check to see if there's spark to the plugs.  Too hard to see the spark in direct sunlight.

Spent pretty much the whole day fooling with it.  Still ain't mowed the yard.

Need to make a stand for my rimfire ammo measuring dial indicator but I'm just too danged disgusted with a whole day wasted and nothing gained.

I suppose tomorrow is another day.


Evening Update:  Intake valve problem.  She ain't gonna run for a few days.