Un-Common Sense

IT WORKS!!

2011-09-20T22:57:00.000-04:00

Great Grandad's Waltham Pocket Watch is now in working condition. I purchased a new balance complete. There were two listed for this watch. The short version was just flopping around in there so maybe the longer version will work? As usual, taking apart is easier than putting together. Attaching the new hairspring to the balance cock was difficult especially since the hairspring needs to pass between two fingers on the regulator. GRRR. I'm sure there's a trick to this that I'm just not seeing, but I managed to carefully fumble it into place and tighten the screw. The escapement seemed to function as it should, so I set the balance in place and went in search for the screw. Must have done something right. As I was tightening the screw the watch started running. It's been going for a little over an hour and keeping pretty good time. It still needs a good cleaning. I'm happy just to have it running again.

Just what I needed, another interest/hobby!

2011-09-08T12:56:00.007-04:00

WATCH MAKING/REPAIR

We were cleaning out some desk drawers. That started me looking for a safe place to keep my great-grandfather's pocket watch. When I am involved, nothing is ever that simple. I started looking at the watch, got some numbers off the innards, went on-line, and in a few minutes discovered more history about this watch than any living member of the family knew or could remember. The watch was manufactured in 1901 and is one of the highest grade watches made by Waltham. The case is a fairly common gold-filled type that shows a LOT of wear. Most of the gold is completely worn off the back. The case has served it's purpose. The watch movement and face appear to be in excellent condition.

Of course, now I'm thinking it would be really neat to get this watch working again. I must have a disease. If something is broken, I cannot resist the urge to try and fix it. My Dad took the watch to a shop many years ago and was told it would cost more than it was worth to fix it.

My previous experience with watches is limited to taking links out to shorten the band and replacing batteries. Most of the watches I have dealt with have a snap-on type back. This pocket watch is an open face, lever-set type. The front and back of the case are threaded and relatively easy to screw off. Taking the back off exposes the very nicely finished clock work. One of the first things I noticed is the balance wheel, that should rotate back and forth on it's axle. This one is very wobbly.

I studied everything I could find on-line, and determined that the balance is not right for this watch, the axle is too short. My guess is that this watch was used as a parts watch to fix another one that the rotten individual could sell. That means I'm a little stuck. I need a new balance, and maybe some of the associated parts between the balance and the escape wheel. That is basically everything that makes the watch go Tick-Tock. This could get expensive.

Working on this pocket watch is a challenge. The guts are held together with screws about the size and weight of a fruit fly. I need fairly powerful magnification just to SEE some of them. The balance and clock-spring are very fragile parts.

FACT: Buying lots of parts to fix anything is likely going to cost more than it's worth. What I wanted was a couple of "parts watches". Broken watches are cheap and always full of good parts. I now have acquired a whole box of watch repair tools, two "parts watches", and a bunch of other miscellaneous parts. The bad news is that my great-grandad's watch still does not work. However, both of the parts watches I bought are now working! They looked too good to sacrifice for parts, and only needed to be cleaned and oiled. That was good experience and good practice for working on the more expensive watch if I can find the parts.

So, I have added Watch Repair to my list of hobbies.

Yes, we had an earthquake - Several

2011-08-24T15:25:00.002-04:00

"The Great Earthquake of 2011"

This is now old news, however since we both work in town, at least 25 miles away from the epicenter, we headed home yesterday worried about what we might find. Our home is only 7 miles from the epicenter. Based on what we have heard about earthquakes, the effects should be much worse the closer you are.

However, we have learned something in the last day. Earthquakes East of the Rocky Mountains are different. Much of the information being repeated in the media is obviously second and third-hand garbage. The FACTS as witnessed are that significant damage from an earthquake East of the Rockies often occurs 60 or more miles from the epicenter. We saw damage on the news in Baltimore MD, Washington DC, Richmond VA, and our imagination began painting a picture of total destruction at home. Praise GOD, that was not the case. The damage at home was no worse and really far less than many places much further away.

A universal truth is that sub-standard construction and poor maintenance may stand for decades waiting for something like this. We have seen massive sections of collapsed brick veneer with no sign of a single tie. In some cases there was no structure to support the brick. Some chimneys in the area collapsed. Most appear to have been very neglected. Mortar joints do need to be maintained and repointed to prevent moisture from getting into the masonry. Water freezing in these joints can pop mortar out and damage the masonry itself. Much of the damage we saw being blamed on the earthquake was either poorly constructed ot had obviously been neglected for many, many years.

What we actually found at home was a small mess of debris knocked off shelves and out of cabinets. In most cases cabinet doors stayed closed but there was a booby-trap stacked inside. We carefully opened every cabinet and got a hand on anything breakable before it could fall. We did lose some ornamental/antique items that fell off shelves and broke. Oh Well.

Structural damage was limited to two hairline cracks in basement masonry walls. These new cracks follow the mortar joints, starting about 3 feet off the floor, and go to the top of the walls. The cracks are only visible on the inside walls. We could find no evidence of cracks in the brick on the outside. Most of it is above grade since this is a walk-out basement. We will need to keep a close eye on the brick and repoint if/where there is any evidence that moisture is getting into the walls.

"The Great Earthquake of 2011" seems to have caused more news and hype than real damage, Thank You, LORD!

More Plumbing Woes

2011-08-08T13:52:00.002-04:00

My path from the shop to the house takes me right past a door to the crawl space. I was done for the night and on my way in to get cleaned up for dinner when I heard water dripping. That's never a good sound coming from a crawl space. Sho-nuff, a pinhole leak had sprung in the last piece of copper pipe. I thought all the copper was long gone, but this piece was left because it has the tap in it for the icemaker. It had already soaked an area about 5-feet in diameter around the leak.

Plumbing is one of my least favorite systems to repair. I have a knack for turning a small drip into Niagara Falls. There is no "quick fix" for a pinhole leak or dripping faucet that my talented hands can't screw up. It's always that last 1/4 turn that splits the pipe wide open. It is absolutely incredible how much water can gush forth from a split pipe in the few seconds it takes to shut off the main supply. So, being older and wiser than once was the case, I am NOT going to start fiddling with this on a Saturday night. A small pinhole leak is much better than no water at all.

Sunday morning, the first thing on my list was "Fix Plumbing". I'm not sure what was at the top of the list before I discovered the leak. I rummaged in the shop and put together a bucket of tools and parts. My inventory had nothing to fit the 1/4" plastic line for the icemaker, so that would have to be disconnected and fixed later. Happily, the icemaker tap and leaky copper was in a dedicated pipe that only went to the laundry, and it had a valve! Even better it's one of the ball valves that I know will actually work. I could do this repair without turning the water off or draining the rest of the system. Close valve, cut PEX pipe on either side of the leak, remove copper pipe and fittings dating back to civil war era, replace with straight piece of PEX and two crimp unions.

My crimper is a manual set of plates that are clamped around the crimp sleeve with two bolts that have to be tightened with a wrench. It's painfully slow to use, but makes very nice crimped connections with the PEX copper bands. I also installed a 1/2" TEE and a ball valve for the icemaker connection. All I need now are fittings and adapters to go from 1/2" PEX to 1/4" plastic tubing.

Lowes had what we needed, but it took 30 minutes for Sharon and I to put together the combination of fittings and adapters from their display. Some were threaded fittings, some compression, and of course, PEX crimp. I built this rube goldberg adapter kit sitting in front of the TV. It is best to make sure everything fits and goes together as expected before crawling under the house.

Threaded fittings are lousy for sealing anything. If you look at the way threads are cut, even for a tapered plumbing thread, the male threads do not completely fill the female threads. There is always a void where the ridge of one thread fits into a valley. The only way to seal a threaded fitting is with some type of sealant on the threads. Teflon tape works, but always seems like a leak waiting to happen.

Success! Hopefully that is the last of the plumbing repairs for a while.

Hot Hot Hot

2011-07-25T14:10:00.002-04:00

You know it's hot when the breeze coming from the radiator fan on the tractor feels cool. It was 103 in the shade again on Saturday, July 23rd. I was running a rotary cutter behind the tractor and ran a tank of gas through the chain saw.

I need to buy or build a small saw mill. The tree I cut up this weekend would have made some nice boards. It had no limbs and straight grain for at least 20 feet. When trees are leaning over the driveway, they need to come down. At this point my only options are letting them compost or cutting firewood. There is already enough firewood stacked around the property to last several years. Some of it will likely rot before I get around to burning it. The wood stove in the shop doesn't use much just burning on the weekends. The Sawmill project has moved way up on my liet.

Another Adventure

2011-07-03T02:11:00.002-04:00

It's been a while. I've been staying busy clearing woods and dragging dead pine trees off the hill next to our driveway. It's a lot of hard work with axe, blade, and tractor. I still have several acres that need to be cleared. Some of the trees have fallen into tangled knots. I'm generally leaving those alone.

Both tractors have been reliable and very useful dragging trees and running implements.

I just bought another 8N from eBay.

It was about 80 miles away, so I couldn't drive this one home. I rented a truck and loaded up my winch, ramps, and an assortment of chains, ropes, and tie-downs. We ended up finding a place where the ramps could sit almost level and just pushed the tractor into the truck. The rest of the trip was just a lot of driving except this is 4th of July weekend. There were a lot of people on the road dragging boats and campers. A large percentage of them appeared to be lost and confused.

Finally made it home safe, now I need to unload the tractor in a safe manner. That's no fun. I set up my ramps and started to give it a shove when it occurred to me that there was no way to do that without risking some part of the tractor hooking me or running over me when it got on the ramps and started moving. There just wasn't enough room in the truck to push and get out of the way.

The 2N and my longest rope solved the problem. There was enough length in the rope to allow the tractor to scoot down the ramps as I continued to back up and took the slack out of the rope.

Living on the Edge

2011-03-24T07:54:00.002-04:00

This may be evidence of a LACK of common sense.
I was at a building in Richmond last night for a power off test. The only way to know that systems on generator work as they should is to turn the power off, see if the generator starts, and prove that everything that needed to be on generator actually is on generator. Last night was a good test, we also had a thunder storm and high winds, WooHoo! This is the second time I've ended up on the roof of a high-rise structure, by the river, in a thunderstorm, with high winds. You'd think once would be enough for anyone, and most people would be bright enough not to do it the first time, GRIN. A bolt of lightning hit a tree on Brown's Island right across from the building. One of the Contractor's was facing that way and momentarily blinded by the brilliant blue-white glare from the biggest arc-welder ever made. We were relatively safe, standing under 8 tons of steel structure, equipment, and the building does have lightning protection. Still, the secondary effects of a near miss can be very bad. I could feel the hair on my head growing. We quickly moved our little parade back inside until the storm moved down-river.

Kevin
Living on the edge!

Spring Fire Season in Virginia

2011-02-23T19:15:00.008-05:00

It started with Hurricane Gaston. That storm damaged so many trees on our 11 acre property it was impossible for one person to completely fix. Just cutting downed trees around the house and keeping the driveway open was hard work. Then, at least once every year, wind or ice storms added to the damage. Some areas of our property have become almost completely inaccessible and downright dangerous, with trees leaning in all directions.

The problem trees are mostly Virginia Pines. These eastern pines grow tall and straight, but have very little root structure to hold them up. After talking with the local forestry service, we paid for a professional "timber cruise". This gave us a very useful report on types of trees, and recommendations on how to manage the forest. As it turns out our property has an interesting variety of cedar, gum, maple, oaks, and of course pines. There are also some great old sycamore trees along the creek bottom where I built our mini version of a Pennsylvania Dutch covered bridge.

The bridge provided easy across to a couple acres of our land on the other side of the creek. My favorite recommendation out of the timber report was to simply let "nature take it's course". Eventually the hardwoods will take over as the pines die off. I like that, mostly because it's by far the easiest thing to do. However, it isn't fast, and it does nothing to solve the problems associated with trees falling on the house and across the driveway.

Several years ago we were quoted $800 per day to cut dead and leaning trees, with no clear estimate of how many days it would take to clean things up. They would work for as many days as I was willing to pay them. Cutting dead and leaning trees is certainly very dangerous work and no doubt worth every nickle of that daily rate, but I couldn't afford it. So I kept nibbling around the edges keeping trees off the house and keeping the driveway open.

Then a recent fire burned over 1300 acres less than 15 miles from our property. You can see smoke from that fire in the trees in this photo.

That lit a fire under me to do more. You can see the result of my new effort in the last photo. My intent was to start cutting fire breaks and separate the "fuel". That way, if a fire did get going in our woods, it might be confined to a small area, or at least be easier to access and control.

Working with chainsaw and axe I cleared just enough of a path to get my 1946 Ford 2N into the woods with a bush hog on it. The tractor is about 5 feet wide. As you can see, it worked well and now that I am into the woods, I am quickly learning how to do custom bush hog work. This small Ford tractor is ideal for this kind of work. A bigger machine simply couldn't get into the areas I can go with the little Ford tractor.

More photos :

I've been at it for a couple of weekends now. The tractors and my body have accumulated a few new bumps and bruises along the way. This is FUN, but it's also hard work. Running down saplings occasionally has one going the wrong way and abusing a headlight. A low limb caught the exhaust on my 52 and bent it back. The cutter tends to throw an incredible amount of debris in just about any direction. Some of the missiles whizzing by could be dangerous. One stick cracked me in the back of the head. It sounded like Babe Ruth just hit a home run and knocked me a little sillier than usual. It's only a matter of time before one of the sharp pointy missiles punctures a tire or a lung. I'm going to get some used conveyor belt and make a guard for the front of my cutter.

Distracted Drivers Suck

2011-02-23T18:20:00.002-05:00

I was nearly killed at lunch time today by a distracted driver. Cross-traffic was stopped or stopping and my light turned green. As I accelerated through the intersection, making a left turn onto a four-lane suburban road, a large dark-blue or green SUV shot through an open lane to my left, and passed between my car and a pickup that was following me. In the short glance I got of the driver in the SUV, she was looking down at something, NOT looking out the windshield. I do not think she was aware that she had just sped through a red light! No horns blew, there wasn't time to react, but there were some very shocked expressions in other vehicles stopped at the intersection. I doubt if the distraction was anything worth dying over. It really shouldn't take more laws to stop people from doing things this dangerous and just plain stupid.

It is already illegal to text while driving in Virginia, but sadly, our sometimes not-too-bright representatives decided to make the law a secondary offense and then set the fine for a first offense at only $20! Another sad joke is we already have similar laws on the books with higher penalties. In most localities drivers can be ticketed for "careless driving", "reckless driving", and even "failure to pay full time and attention to the road". These are much better laws than targeting one device with a specific law that is often impossible to enforce. We don't need more laws, just more aggressive enforcement of laws we already have. If you are a danger to yourself and others, you should be ticketed, fined, and repeat offenders should lose their license.

"Rake" Leaves - Not Me

2010-11-16T08:10:00.002-05:00

There are many ways of dealing with leaves. Most are not on my "FUN" list. Yes, I do own a leaf rake, but I prefer to let it hang on a nail in the shed. Many of my neighbors have leaf blowers. Those seemed like a good idea at first but, judging from the noise every weekend, they require nearly continuous operation. Raked or blown leaves simply will not stay put. The wind continues to blow them every which way. I have better things to do with my time than chase the same leaves around the yard for 16 hours or so every weekend.

There are ways to minimize the amount of actual work. This is a war folks! Plan your attack as if the yard is a battlefield. Those leaves are the insurgents. The goal is to get the leaves off the grass with minimum effort, in minimum time, and just ONE time if possible. Leaves are good insulation and fertilizer so bagging and hauling them away is a complete waste of energy and natural resources. Most yards have low spots that could stand to be filled-in. Those are natural compost spots. If you have leaves, you must also have at least one tree. Trees are a minor pain to cut around and grass often does not grow well under the trees anyway.

My lawn mower is by far the best weapon for this battle. It is set up as a mulching mower for most of the spring and summer months. My grass clippings disappear back into the lawn to make more soil and nutrients.

In the fall, I change my mower deck to side discharge, then carefully plan my attack. The mission is to move the enemy the minumum distance necessary to clear the yard, chopping and piling the insurgents around trees and into flower beds. The chopped insurgents stay where I put them much better than leaving them whole, only to return on the next breeze.

The ground up stuff looks better than most mulch to me. It's FREE, and does a better job of insulating flower bulbs and roots from winter frost.

All of my trees end up with a "ring" of mulch that naturally fills in with things like violets, buttercups, and ivy. The random assortment around each tree suits me just fine and is almost completely maintenance-free. Yes, sometimes the wild growth does turn out to be poison-ivy.

If I could figure out how to turn poison ivy into a cash crop, I'd be a rich man. The stuff grows extremely well around here in every form. We have individual plants, ground cover, and climbing vines. Fortunately, I'm not grossly allergic to the stuff, it tends to stay in the original spot where I came into contact with it and runs it's itchy course. I shoot it with Round-Up and hope for something better to come up next time.

Fall Fun

2010-11-15T08:12:00.006-05:00

We are well into Fall now, Thanksgiving is only about 10-days off. The house is mostly buttoned up and ready for cold weather. I still have one screen to replace with storm window on the shop. All teh windows on the house are dual-or triple pane so closed is closed.

Have you closed your foundation vents? Even if you have the automatic kind, check them. They can get hung up or broken. The mud daubers like to build nests in ours. I often have to chisel out the combination of dirt and whatever the bugs use for glue before our vents can be closed.

My list still has a few things like "re-insulate the plumbing you just fixed". I've checked the finishes (particularly on the north side of the house.

The chainsaw is ready for tree trimming. We expect this year will be no different from the past few and we will get at least one ice storm that drops Virginia Pines across the driveway.

Run your emergency generator. If the fuel has been in there for more than about 6-months, drain it off and replace with fresh. The old fuel will probably burn ok in tractors, lawnmowers, or even your car as long as it looks ok and is the correct type of fuel (obviously). Mix the old fuel with plenty of fresh and use it up. All of our vehicles and equipment use the same regular grade pump gas. That's another reason I stay away from diesels. The main reason I no longer own a diesel is I got tired of every stitch of clothing I own smelling like diesel fuel. If you see a bunch of water in old fuel, get some DryGas from the parts store to mix with it. At around $3 per gallon, I'm going to try to use every gallon I buy no matter how old it is.

It took over a year, but the 2N tractor is ready for action. I was really slow fixing this one up, the big difference was I didn't need it. The 52 has been taking care of all the weekly chores. Here's a photo of the tractors:

Step-by-step photos and descriptions of the repairs to each tractor can be found on my tractor site at myfordtractors.com.
Kevin

Emergency Plumbing Repairs

2010-10-28T11:06:00.004-04:00

This rant was caused by three hours spent crouched in the crawl space last night fixing the latest in a series of plumbing leaks. My legs HURT!

When you pay a "professional", there should be some assurance that the work is done properly, in accordance with code, and manufacturer's recommendations. A pro should know what they are doing.

Adding insult to injury, this work was properly permitted and inspected by the local building inspector.

All of the hot and cold water piping in our house was originally copper with sweat fittings. The plumbing contractor hired to do our addition used PEX with brass fittings. The original copper system was having issues, mostly related to age and erosion from slightly acidic well water, so I took no offense at using PEX. With the correct fittings it should last and offer better freeze protection than copper pipe.

The first issue with the installation was some twist-on Quest compression fittings the "professional" plumbing contractor used to transition from the copper to PEX. The fittings soon failed and appeared to have been way over-tightened. I removed the failed Quest fittings and replaced them with copper-to-PEX adapters that are soldered to the copper pipe (the way it should have been done in the first place). Over the next year, I gradually replaced all of the original copper pipe with PEX myself. I bought an inexpensive manual compression tool to compress the copper rings. It is very slow, but effective.

The PEX that I installed myself serves the kitchen, laundry, and one bathroom. This plumbing work has had zero failures in the last 8-years. Over the same period the "professional" PEX installation for one bathroom in our addition using identical materials has failed in several ways. In every case the failures have been directly related to improper installation. Radius bends were too tight, metal clamps have worn holes in the pipe, fittings have failed at the crimp, and excess heat from soldering ruined the fittings on our water heater. That was fun! A check ball got loose and lodged in the pipe downstream from the water heater. We had plenty of pressure but very little flow at the faucets. The leaks have created other issues with rotting wood, mold, and ruined carpets.

The next time someone urges you to have work done by a professional, pull a Websters off the shelf and hit them over the head with it. "Professional" is an utterly meaningless term when applied to the quality of work performed by contractors or mechanics. Anyone who receives money for service is by definition a "professional".

I have been told that the plumbing contractor should have been brought back to fix the problems free-of-charge. If I'm having problems with workmanship, the last thing I want to do is give the same jackleg another whack at it. Plus, most work by contractors is only guaranteed for one year. Good luck getting anything done for free.

Remove and Replace Exterior Door

2010-10-15T00:53:00.003-04:00

OK, This will be the first Handyman Post. What I originally intended to do here.
The most recent project, removing and replacing our back door. The old door was both rusty and rotten. too many years without a storm door in front of it. Thankfully, the frame was not too bad.
1 - Remove interior trim.
2 - Carefully measure the old door and frame.
3 - Inspect rough opening and floor framing for Rot.
4 - Buy new pre-hung door and any framing that must be replaced.
5 - New door frame should be at least 1/2" smaller than rough opening.
6 - Pick a nice Saturday with sunny weather forecast for overnight and Sunday.
7 - Remove storm door and then remove exterior door trim.
8 - Remove any extra length hinge screws that go through door frame into studs.
9 - Use a metal-cutting blade in a reciprocating saw to cut any nails.
10 - Door should become loose in opening as you cut hardware.
11 - Get some help and remove the door and frame as a unit.
12 - Reinspect rough opening and floor framing.
13 - Check for square opening. Check for proper framing.
14 - Door openings should be framed with extra jack studs holding up a header.
15 - Make sure opening is square and properly framed.
16 - Install new door and frame following the manufacturer's instructions.
17 - Door frame must fit in rough opening with enough clearance that the door frame is not twisted out of square.
18 - Instructions should indicate how to shim and attach door frame to rough opening.
19 - Verify and correct any out of square issues with door assembly.
20 - Do use shims to prevent door frame from moving as you finish anchoring it in place.
21 - Use spray minimal-expanding foam to seal between door frame and rough opening.
22 - New exterior trim is part of pre-hung door assembly.
23 - Caulk brick mold where it meets siding or brick.
24 - I use the type of caulk that can be painted.
25 - Re-install or replace interior trim.

Here's a link to myfordtractors.com

2010-07-08T09:11:00.003-04:00

Clicking on this link should take you directly to the new site.
myfordtractors.com

My email address has also changed to:
kl@myfordtractors.com

The old email address is being forwarded for now, but that will only be for a limited time.
KL

myfordtractors.com IS UP!!

2010-07-08T09:05:00.003-04:00

My new web site, myfordtractors.com is up and working!

These moves are never as simple as it seems they should be. I have done some testing and the page links within the site seem to have survived the move (fingers crossed). Both web sites will remain up for a while, but I will start changing pages on the old site to redirect to the new dot com location, starting with the least popular pages.
KL
Ok, it's done. All of the old pages are redirected to the new site. There were some "page not found" or "site unavailable" issues. Those seem to have been resolved.

The lesson here is NEVER use a free web site to start something that may outgrow the allowable bandwidth. You lose whatever ranking your site had when you move it to a dot com. Nobody supports moving from a free web site and retaining rankings.
KL Sep 11

8ntractor Web Site Moving Soon

2010-07-06T15:39:00.003-04:00

My 8ntractor web site will be moving soon. It has become very popular and it's time to moce it to a regular domain name. The name I've chosen is myfordtractors.com and pages should start redirecting to the new site in the next few days.

Whaddya Think - SNOW in Virginia

2010-02-07T21:57:00.004-05:00

We are paying the price for several relatively mild winters. This is winter with a capital "W". A major snowstorm here is 6 to 8 inches and 4 inches can be enough to close schools for two days. We got 14 inches! Good thing I have 2 tractors, the 46 is in pieces right now, but the 52 is in good shape. I started plowing Friday night with 8 inches on the ground hoping to keep our 900 feet of driveway open. We got a total of 20 inches out of this storm.

This is the ranch. Not buried yet. The family that built it was from Vermont. The steep roof really sheds snow well. The avalanche is hard on gutters though.
Then the 1-2 punch Jan 30 we get 14 inches and only a week later on Feb 5th another storm brought snow, sleet and ice. It only piled up about 10 inches but this was by far the worst storm yet to deal with. We lost power 3 times, trees were falling and snapping off. Saturday morning we had at least 14 trees down across the driveway. No idea how many fell on our property. By the Grace of God, none hit the house or other buildings.

Lots of work but the drive looks pretty good. Hopefully we will get enough sun to melt and evaporate what is left.

Trees loaded with ice and snow make great photos but they are DANGEROUS. These could fall or snap off any second, some were.

Had to slip in a photo of the 52. It has been working hard these past few weeks.
The current rumor is that the next major storm isn't even going to wait a week, it is supposed to blow in around the middle of the week.
STAY TUNED

"New" Tractor - Adventure

2009-10-22T07:49:00.003-04:00

Christmas came early this year. Oct. 19, 2009

This tractor was sitting out on RT 522 Sunday with a sign saying "Tractor and Implements $1500 OBO". The owner was a young guy, maybe mid 20s. He said the tractor was his father's and had been in the family since it was new. The engine has recently been rebuilt and runs great. It has been sitting out for at least two weeks with a few tire-kickers but no offers. I made him an offer of $1000, without seeing what he had for implements, SOLD. We had to wait until Monday to get some money from the bank. Monday evening I found out that it came with a bush hog, plow, blade, and cultivator. Then, when I was loading implements Monday night, they told me the 4'disc and 6'disc that also go with the tractor are down the road at an aunt's house, Woo Hoo!

It was obviously more than my trailer would hold. I was planning to make several trips, but they also had a trailer, so I paid the guy's brother an extra $50 to help me get the stuff home. We loaded implements on the two trailers and made a quick run up RT 522 to the house. When he saw where we lived, he told me we didn't need a tow truck for the tractor. His family owns all the property in-between. All we had to do was cross RT 522 and go trail riding for about 3 miles. We could easily make it before dark. Great! He jumped on a 4-wheeler to lead the way. The plan was working right up to the point that the tractor ran out of gas. Yes we checked it, and it looked like there was plenty in the tank. However, halfway home, in the middle of a cornfield, it sputtered for the last time, and died. I had already opened the reserve by then, Bummer.

There was no moon Monday night, none, so it got very dark, very fast. It also got very quiet, lonely, and spooky waiting for the 4-wheeler to come back with gas. All I could see was stars, and the looming shadow of trees around the cornfield. All I could hear were bugs and some cows in the next field talking about the tractor that just ran out of gas. They seemed happy, I was probably their best entertainment of the season. As the minutes creeped slowly by, the trees seemed to get taller, darker, and more ominous. Every once in a while there were strange noises from the woods. My imagination insisted on turning those into a hungry pack of vermicious knids.

Eventually the guy came back with a buddy in a 4x4 and some gas. Of course the headlights on the tractor didn't work, but with the 4-wheeler in front and 4x4 behind, off we went. What they had forgotten to tell me is that the trails would get much worse before they got better. Have you ever been mud-bogging, at night, on a 2-wheel drive farm tractor? It only took about an hour, but seemed like several hours of wallowing through mud holes and navigating ravines without actually being able to see what we were getting into until we were in it. At times muddy water was up past the running boards. I do not remember any actual major mountain ranges, swamps, or rivers near our house, but it sure seemed like we found all of that and more.

We made it! That was FUN! (in a scary, twisted, wet, cold, muddy, way that most normal people wouldn't understand) GRIN.

My Web Contributions

2009-08-07T23:11:00.001-04:00

I published a web page several years ago that has gotten a bit out of hand. I needed a small tractor but could not justify the expense of a new machine. So, what started as a file folder full of notes and diagrams turned into my Ford 8N obsession.

My tractor site is at the following link. If you are looking for 12 volt conversion info, the notes and wiring diagrams may help you. As always, anything I make available on the web is free.

My Ford 8N Tractors

I also started a site for my PT Cruiser.

PT Cruiser

Later, KL

Under Construction

2009-08-07T16:11:00.000-04:00

Come back later. This one is just getting started