Jan 14 Over the past couple of days, I've put a little effort into getting the tractor running. Not so much that I've attempted to start it, but doing a few things that need to be taken care of before I actually try to fire it up.

Saturday, I removed the four spark plugs after cleaning the area around each in the cylinder head and blowing out the rust and debris with compressed air. Once they were out, I inspected each plug (they looked pretty good, but the bases were fairly rusted), and then put ¼ ounce of oil in each cylinder to lubricate the pistons. For some reason, I've always been told that "Marvel Mystery Oil" was the proper lubricant for doing this, and since I happen to have a container of the same left over from working on the Housetruck, I applied that product. Getting it into the cylinders was a bit of a job, as there isn't much room between the top of the cylinder head and the metal tube that the spark plug wiring runs through. It took many squeezes of an eyedropper bulb to get even the ¼ oz. transferred from a measuring glass.

Yesterday, I repeated the treatment, and while I was on the phone with TMAX (just because he called when I was getting ready), I used a pipe wrench on the hydraulic pump drive shaft to turn the engine over. Success! It wasn't seized up!

After about a half turn of the crankshaft, I realized that the tractor was in gear, and attempting to back over the 4x4 blocks that were behind the rear tires.This put torque on the drive system, and prevented me from turning the crankshaft much farther. This was actually a bonus, as it allowed me to get up on the tractor and step on the clutch. Releasing the clutch relieved the torque build-up and allowed the tractor to roll off the blocks, and it also allowed me to take the tractor out of gear. The value in all of this is that I now know that the clutch disc is not frozen to the flywheel and/or pressure plate, which is a common problem on most any manual transmission vehicle when it has sat for an extended period.

Before the day ended, I wire brushed the plugs before reinserting them.

Today, I decided to put some time into getting ready to crank the engine. The first thing I wanted to do was to remove the front-mounted hydraulic pump, because I don't know what condition the hydraulic system is in. If the system is dry (fluid leaked away from all the rusted components), I didn't want to run the hydraulic vane pump dry. If there is actually hydraulic oil in the pump, I was worried that cranking the engine (and turning the pump) might cause fluid to escape through the rusted parts, possibly spraying me and/or creating a hazardous waste problem in the yard. Taking the pump off wasn't too difficult, although rusty, the bolts and nuts came loose, and I was able to remove the pump drive shaft from the front pulley of the engine.

These old tractors use a 6-volt electrical system. While many owners have modernized the electrical wiring to be 12 volts, there are just as many "purists" who will tell you to leave the wiring 6-volts unless you have some reason to change it over.

Actually, I was aiming for something in the middle, 8-volts. Going to a four-cell battery was an old trick to improve the performance of 6-volt vehicles. The additional voltage wasn't enough to warrant changing a lot of the accessories (lights, radio, gauges, etc), and most 6-volt generators could be coaxed into putting out the extra charging current and voltage needed by adjusting the regulator. The main reason for the higher voltage is brighter headlights (not an issue on a tractor) ~and~ faster starter motor operation, which is always welcome when trying to start on a cold morning.

Part of the reason that I was going 8-volts was that I had an Optma brand "blue top" battery that had one bad cell, and I wanted to use it for something. I spent too much time calculating the location of the internal buss bars that interconnect the cells in the battery, drilling a precisely located hole in the top cover and installing a screw-in lead terminal. It was all very grand, but the eventual fact was that the battery had more than one dead cell, and when I tried to crank the tractor the terminal voltage fell to 2 volts, not enough to be useful.

Back to the drawing board, or more correctly, the garage, where I had a couple of salvaged-and-believed-good 12-volt marine "deep cycle" batteries. One of these was installed under the hood of the tractor and connected with cables that had the connecting terminals cleaned up to bright metal. With the spark plugs out of the cylinders to relieve compression and the rest of the tractor's electrical system isolated (disconnected) , I used a clip-lead to energize the starter solenoid.

Wow! It cranks! I was concerned that the exterior appearance of the starter might mean that it was as crusty and corroded inside as it was out, but apparently it still has some life left. After about 15 seconds, there was a puff of smoke from the solenoid, and I pulled the clip lead loose just as the oil pressure gauge began to rise. The connection between the battery cable and the solenoid was not very good, and it was heating up. A few minutes with a wire brush, and some new, not-rusty bronze washers and it was back in business. I was able to run the starter for 15-20 seconds at a time and not cause the terminals to heat up. There was a reassuring whooshing sound coming from under the hood, as the pistons traveled up and down.

So, What do I know now that I didn't before?

• The engine isn't locked up
• It appears to have compression, although this may be a matter for further investigation
• The starter and solenoid work
• It has oil pressure (10 pounds while cranking is good!)
• The clutch appears to work, or is at least not stuck
• The engine turns clockwise, looking from the front of the tractor

That last is a bit of a surprise. I am certain that I read somewhere that this engine turns counter-clockwise, but that is apparently bad information.

So, I think that next up will be seeing if there is any spark. It's not at all unusual to have the ignition points become corroded when an engine sits. Without a spark, there's no reason to try and introduce fuel, so that's really the next logical step. The distributor is buried under everything at the front of the engine, and the stupid front loader framework makes it that much more difficult to get to. Fortunately, I have lots of time to fool with it, and the blessing of some dry and sunny weather, albeit colder than I'd prefer.

More as it comes in...

Jan 17 After posting the above, I got a message from Dave, a long-time viewer of the site reminding me that these tractors use a positive-grounded electrical system, as opposed to the much more common negative-grounded system that most vehicles in the U.S. employ. I'll copy-and-paste my reply to Dave here, as it contains some additional factoids that are relevant to the tractor's progress:

Sharkey wrote:

I was aware that the N was positive ground, and that's how the battery is installed. The rotation of the starter motor is not affected by the polarity of the battery because it's a series wound field motor, it runs the same direction regardless of polarity. Changing these tractors over to negative ground is done all the time without replacement of the starter motor. The engine wouldn't turn backwards in any event, as the Bendix drive would prevent engagement of the flywheel if the rotation was backwards. If the starter was permanent magnet, the rotation would be dependent on polarity, and that would be a problem. I will be keeping the tractor positive ground, but for a different reason - the ignition coil. I remember reading (probably in a 1950's Popular science magazine when I was a kid) that although an ignition coil will work when connected backwards, the spark is jumping in the opposite direction on the spark plugs, and this causes some issues, either spark intensity or wear on the electrodes. Since the ignition coil on the N is integral with the distributor, it's not possible to simply swap the ignition coil for a negative grounded one. Right now, I'm not looking for additional projects, or to throw a wild card into the equation, so positive ground stays until I have to replace the coil. Some N users have hollowed out the stock front-mount coil and put a high tension connector on the outside so that an external round automotive coil can be used. If I ever have to go this route, I may consider changing the tractor's polarity. If I have to replace the generator, I have an alternator that has a rear-mounted hydraulic pump (power steering). I may use this so I can convert the tractor to a live PTO. This would require negative ground conversion and some change to the coil. Right now, getting the correct ballast resistor so the stock coil doesn't draw too much current at 12 volts and burn out is my bigger concern.

OK, so a couple of days ago, I began investigating the ignition system on the N. First off, I put an ammeter in series with the ignition coil's primary lead and cranked the engine. Nothing, not a dickey bird. The means that either the coil was open, or, more likely, that the points were corroded, as I expected previously.

The distributor on this engine is front-mounted. Not "mounted at the front", but mounted ON the front of the engine. It's impossible to do anything with the distributor without removing it from the engine. Normally, this is the very last thing you would want to do on an engine, as removing the distributor upsets the engine ignition timing and also means that replacing the distributor is a royal PITA because it usually drives the oil pump -and- has helical gears that engage the cam shaft in the engine, which means that is doesn't just come off, it rotates when it withdraws. Overall, removing a distributor is considered a last-choice option. If working on the points means contorting your body inside the engine compartment, then that's what you do for a long as it takes the get the job done, because removing and replacing the distributor is so much of a job and then the engine has to be re-timed.

The designers of the N were either simple-minded, incredibly generous, or knew that all-thumbs farmers would be having to work on these tractors, so they made the process of removing the replacing the distributor much, much easier. Yes, the distributor must come off for all service, but it only goes back on ONE WAY, the way it come off (automotive distributors can be reinstalled in a huge number of incorrect manners) -and- removing it doesn't disturb the ignition timing, as that's all done inside the distributor, instead of in the relationship of the distributor to the engine block.

So, I removed the four spark plug wires (after labeling them), removed the coil (it's part of the distributor assembly), removed the distributor cap, then removed the two bolts that hold the distributor to the front of the block. I had to pry on it with a screwdriver a bit to loosen it, but it came right out. The only trick to putting it back in is to have observed which direction the rotor was approximately pointing when you removed it, and put the rotor back into that approximate position when you reinstall it.

The inside of the distributor was pretty nasty. Lots of sticky white aluminum oxide from the corrosion of the interior of the distributor housing. The points looked to be very narrowly gapped, and the contact surfaces were sickly green.

I'll be cleaning this up tomorrow evening, as best as can be done without completely disassembling it. A full rebuild would be the best course, but that's not in the offing right now. Simply running some crocus cloth over the points and setting the gap might get the tractor running, but the distributor is not the place for creeping corrosion, this is a problem that will come back and bite me in the future if I don't put some time into taking care of it now.

Jan 22 Well, I lied when I said that I wasn't going to rebuild the distributor:

Once I had the points out, it only took a couple of more screws and a snap ring and the whole assembly was apart and ready for proper cleaning. The points themselves looked like they had been ceramic coated, there was a thick, hard, and very smooth coating of something covering the contact areas and sides. This was the reason that the point gap looked to be so small. A few minutes with an Xacto knife and it was all chipped away. The empty housing was scrubbed and rinsed in parts degreaser solvent, then hosed off, blown off with compressed air, then left on top of the wood stove to bake for a few minutes.

I oiled the centrifugal advance mechanism and checked and oiled the bearing bushings in the housing. Everything seemed to be in good shape, so I reassembled the distributor, installed the points and gapped them to .015 after running some crocus cloth between the contact areas to burnish them up. Cleaned the cap and the ignition coil, (the big black box on top of the distributor in the photo above).

The one thing that did still need some work was the spark plug wiring. When I removed the distributor cap, I noticed that the #1 plug wire had lost it's brass connector at the end. The ignition wiring on this tractor is classic old-school, copper wire. In the olden days, you went out and bought a generic set of wires that only had the spark plug ends installed. You cut the wires to length and installed these crimp-on brass connectors at the distributor end. Well, whoever put these ends on had stripped the wire back, run it through one of the triangular holes in the end connectors, and pushed them home into the distributor. I guess that worked well enough, but the #1 plug wire had let go, so I decided to re-make all four wire ends by cutting the connectors off, stripping back the insulation to expose new wire, then soldered the connectors in place neatly. Normally, the connectors hang on with little grippy teeth that pierce the wire insulation. Soldered works better. No more lost wire ends for me.

After that, there wasn't much else left to do, so I cobbled together a temporary ballast resistor for the ignition coil primary so it could run on 12 volts.

The previous owner told me that the gas tank leaked, and since it was dry now for a few years, I decided to leave it that way and build a temporary fuel feed for the carburetor using a hose barb that fit the carb and a section of urethane fuel line fed by a one-gallon gas container filled with (gasp) "clear" premium fuel (i.e., no evil ethanol added). I use this gas in my chain saw, and it was the easiest fuel to access around the place. In order to get anything else, I'd have had to pump some out of my pickup, which was just one more thing I didn't want to have to do.

After a flow of fuel was fed to the carb, there really wasn't anything else to do, so I connected the ignition primary to the battery, pulled out the choke knob, set the throttle lever to the middle, and sparked the loose wire that energizes the starter solenoid to the battery. It cranked over about twice and then started up like it had been shut off for only a day! I had to fiddle with the choke a bit to find a setting the engine liked, but it ran fine. It sounded awful, something like a tractor with a bad muffler... oh wait, that's right! There was also a lot of blue smoke, the result of the Marvel Mystery Oil I had dumped down the cylinders last week.

I checked the radiator, and there was a small amount of water splashing around, but since I hadn't seen any coolant in the top of the radiator when the engine was off, I decided to cut the ignition and add some water, just to be safe. About two quarts and it was showing above the radiator core tubes, that's enough.

OK, now it runs, gotta do something else. I just had to drive it somewhere, if only to the shed which I had prepared for it, as the weather is supposed to change from clear and cold to rain tonight. But there's the problem of where to sit... How did I solve that one?

The universal building block, a plastic milk crate! With this temporary seat in place, I drove around the yard a bit, trying out each gear and testing the brakes. A bit of disappointment there, the right brake sort-of works, it will skid the tire if you get up and really stand on it, but the left brake doesn't do anything at all. This is unfortunate, because it's the one that's tied in with the clutch pedal and would normally provide most of the braking when driving the tractor. Eventually, I'll have to take the axles out and look at the brakes on both sides, I've had too much experience with my ElecTrak and no brakes to want to go through that anymore.

By the time I drove it into the shed, the motor was warmed up and not running all that well. It sounded like it was running too rich, bogging. I'll have to take the carburetor off and disassemble it and see how it looks. Could be that the float is set wrong

Now I have to start spending money on this thing. New muffler and a new fuel tank to start off, and I'm cruising Craigslist for some new/used front wheels and tires.

Can't wait to get the rusted yellow loader off of it, either.

Feb 1 The saga continues, however slowly...

Last time I had the tractor running, I fiddled a bit with the PTO. This tractor has a rear hydraulic lift for the three-point hitch which is powered from the PTO shaft. I wasn't sure which direction the PTO shift lever needed to be in to engage the pump, so I brushed up on my research and applied that to this application. No action from the hydraulics in either position of the shift lever, not even a twitch from the lift. Back to the internet for more advice.

Several sites admonished that water in the differential case would cause the hydraulic pump to fail to build pressure, so the next trick was to check for condensation in the sump. After cracking open the drain plugs a few threads, a couple of ounces of clear water dripped out. "Great" I thought, problem solved, maybe. Opening the drain plug for the transmission resulted in some thick beige goo oozing out instead of water. I let this continue for a while, thinking that it was probably some homogenized water and gear lubricant that was hanging out in the bottom of the transmission. After a bit, I decided to have a look inisde the top of the transmission, as the filler plug is nice and big, and looks directly down the side of the gearbox. Well, what I saw inside was more of the white stuff, lots more, the whole transmission (and presumably the differential) were filled with the stuff, and it didn't look like it was supposed to be in there.

More research. The "tips and tricks" mentioned that if the gear oil looked "milky", that it had water in it and needed to be changed. To me, something that looked "milky" was supposed to have a kind of white translucent sheen to it that isn't natural, not something that was pure white, or very close to it.

Now, at this point this tractor is still experimental, and I wasn't about to go out and plop down $60-75 or more on 5 gallons of 90 weight gear oil. If the lube needed to be changed, then that's what I'd do, change it back into pure oil. Separating oil from water is not all that difficult.

First, I needed to drain the oil out. All of the web sites cautioned that I needed to be ready to deal with 5 gallons of oil that was going to come cascading out when I pulled the drain plug. My drain pans hold a little over a gallon, and the tractor isn't tall enough to get a 5 gallon bucket underneath the transmission, so I was going to have to pull the plug, partially fill the drain pan, then put the plug back in and stop the flow before the pan overflowed. It wasn't all that difficult, actually it was a lot easier than changing the oil in my small tractor where there is no room to get your hand where it needs to be, and then get burned by hot oil and drop the plug into the funnel feeding the pan, causing it to overflow (this seems to always happen when changing the oil on that tractor).

Anyhow, I got a couple of panfuls of lubricant out and poured it into clean used motor oil containers. Here's what the pan looked like afterwards:

As you can see, it really doesn't resemble oil at all. Actually it looks a whole lot like Latte coffee, which is a bit confusing, because I am kind of attracted to it because of this. Whipped cream on your drink?

My thinking was that in order to get rid of the emulsified water in the oil, all I needed to do was heat the oil above the boiling temperature of water. The water would boil off and evaporate, while the oil would remain unchanged. So that's what I'm doing, half a gallon at a time, using a single burner electric hot plate to supply the heat.

Because I don't need the oil to be much hotter than 212°F, I'm using a variable transformer to limit the amount of heat to about 220°. I don't know how much heat the oil can take before it changes or breaks down, but I do know that temperatures much higher make the turbulence in the thinned out oil very active, and it tends to splash out of the coffee can that I'm using as a cauldron. A small digital thermometer helps me keep tabs on the temp and adjust the transformer for the correct amount of heat.

This morning, I improved the process by adding a surrounding ring of metal to shield the can and keep in some of the heat. The thermometer is now poking in through the plywood lid.

OK, so what is this getting me? Well, after six hours at 220°F, all the water had boiled off and the murky appearance had cleared. There was still a tiny amount of bubbles coming up from the oil, but I had decided that the process was complete. This is the end result:

There were a few drops of liquid water at the bottom of the can, and a tablespoon or so of some sludge-like substance that might be rust or something, but the bulk of the material was completely clarified. I easily held back the water and sludge while pouring the contents of the can into the beaker.

The process continues, one coffee can full at a time. The resulting clear oil is being put into a clean 5-gallon plastic pail, and once I let the tractor's gearbox and differential drip out for a few days, I'll put the lubricant back in and try the hydraulic pump again. Of course, there are still many reasons why the pump might not work correctly, but water in the oil won't be one of them.

Feb 4 Last week my new fuel tank was delivered, and I went into town yesterday to pick it up. The previous owner said that the old tank most likely leaked, and considering the amount of rust and dirt of all sorts that it probably contained, a ninety-nine dollar fleaBay replacement seemed like a good value. Attempting to solder up, epoxy, or otherwise seal up the old tank just wasn't worth the effort at this price. It''s made in India (one step up from China), but then what is actually made in this country anymore?

The hood and grille have to come off to install this, which means that the old, rusty loader has to come off as well. It might be time to put up a Craigslist advert and see if I can find a local buyer who wants it for parts.

The box that the tank was delivered in had a catalog and a 2013 tractor calendar included. The catalog showed photos of Ford N series tractors fitted with brand-new, modern front loader attachments, so it's obviously possible to put something much less clunky and more functional in place of the ratty rust pile that's on it now. All it takes is a loader bucket full of money...

Feb 13 Well, I've finally shut down the oil-refinery-on-a-hot-plate, as the last of the gear oil has been clarified. Doing a half gallon at a time, you'd expect that it would take ten sessions and you'd be done, but the lower the oil came from the gear case the more dissolved water it contained, and the thicker and slimier it became. The last bit out of the very bottom had the consistency of gruel, it came out in gobs, rather than as a stream of thick liquid. This stuff took a lot longer, and a lot more cooking to evaporate out the water and settle the solids.

I had been thinking during this process that there was probably a thick layer of slime in the bottom of the gear case that wasn't coming out of the drain plug. The hydraulic pump, which was the whole reason for draining the fluid, takes it's input from the bottom of the gear sump. That means that it was subject to the very worst of the muck. I had pretty much decided that I should drop the pump out the bottom of the gear case and clean up the pump housing, and get rid of the muck before trying to refill the tractor and run it. When I removed the right side inspection cover, I really couldn't see very much, but what I could see looked as bad as I had imagined.

When I moved the three-point hydraulic control, it felt like it was binding, and watching it through the inspection plate made it look like it was not moving anything in the bottom of the sump, where the pump lives. It turns out that it's possible to look upwards into the drain plug hole, which is a nice 2" diameter, and see the control valve for the hydraulic cylinder, and see the wishbone-shaped control yoke coming down from the hand control under the seat. Neither of these looked like they were moving, and although I wasn't absolutely sure how they were supposed to move, I was sure that they weren't doing it in proper response to the hand control.

I got online and ordered up a gasket kit for the hydraulic system. It wasn't very expensive, but now I was convinced that I had to drop the pump and see what was going on.

After getting the control yoke off (not much fun, jambing my hands in the inspection hole), and removing the power take off drive shaft, I removed the eleven 7/16" bolts that held the pump to the bottom of the gear case. A little persuasion with a BFS (Big Freakin' Screwdriver), the pump dropped onto the boards I had set up to support it. It was a little tricky to maneuver back and out of the gear case, but it didn't hang up on anything. My suspicions were confirmed, it had about an inch and a half of nasty oil and water slime covering it and sitting at the bottom of the casting. The control valve was not moving, and didn't yield to fairly firm attempts to move it by hand, so I decided to let that ride until I had cleaned everything off and could get a better look at what was underneath the film of goo.

It was a pleasant surprise to find that the control valve wasn''t in a blind hole, but a tunnel had been cast into the pump body so I could use a rod to drive the control valve spool out of the body from the other side. It didn't take very much hammering (tapping, really, I was being very careful) before it popped out. It looked fine, but had a tiny amount of surface rust in two places. Once this was cleaned off and the rest of the spool buffed to a shine, it went back into the now cleaned out valve body and fit like it was machined to glide in an out on a film of oil.

At any rate, here's the finished product, ready to put back into the tractor.

The mating surfaces have been cleaned of old gasket material, and while it would have been a nice touch to completely disassemble the pump and throughly clean all the parts individually, that's not in the cards right now.

More tomorrow, I gotta date with a hot shower to get this grease out of my pores.

Feb 14 Yesterday, it looked like I might be over the greasy part of this job. The last of the gear oil was off the burner and in the saved bucket, I had drained the last drops out of the three motor oil jugs that I had been using to transport and store the nasty used oil, I had drained out and cleaned the three pie plates, two oil drain pans and several soup cans that were used to catch, portion and store the oil during the process, and all of the oily rags, wet newspapers, etc were disposed of.

As part of the reassembly process, I had run a 7/16x14 thread cutting die over the two dozen bolts that I had taken out, and wire brushed the metal filings out of the threads. The PTO shaft and bearing bushing were wiped down and the splines cleaned out. Everything seemed ready for the arrival of the gasket set I had ordered. It looked like things would be clean and clear sailing from here on.

Then I remembered that I needed to scrape any gasket material off of the tractor surfaces where I had removed the pump, inspection plate and PTO. Thinking that it would take only a few minutes, I went out to the shed with a razor knife blade, a rag and my drop light. After plugging in the light, I got my first good look inside the differential housing where the PTO had been removed. Oh joy! There were loads more huge blobs of yucky slime covering the bottom of the housing and every horizontal surface inside the differential. I began lifting the gunk out with a putty knife. In some places, it was an inch thick.

After a while, the putty knife had reached all it could, and I began having to put my gloved hand inside the PTO opening to reach more. Soon I was in up past my wrist. Still there was more to remove, farther in. You can see where this is going. The putty knife proved useless for reaching into some of the less accessible areas and contoured spaces of the differential housing, so eventually I resorted to just using my hand to scoop up fistfuls of muck and draw it out of the casing. In the end, I was going in all the way to my elbow to get the front of the cast iron housing and in front of the ring gear. I found out pretty fast that there are sharp things inside there when my glove was lacerated and I got a prick from some left-behind shard of casting that wasn't ground off in manufacturing.

In all, I ended up with almost three cups of goo, and there is still more where I can't reach it. I'm thinking I'll fabricate some kind of small rake device to reach around the differential gears and at least grab the biggest curds of grease.

When it's all over, there will still be areas that haven't been throughly cleaned of old lubricant and emulsified water. I figure that once the tractor is working and has heated up and circulated the clean oil in all the places I can't reach, I'll end up having to drain the sumps, remove the gear oil and then go through the heating and clarification process at least once again. This is yet another reason to reuse the old, cleaned up oil. Putting in new oil several times to flush out the transmission, differential and hydraulic pump would be very, very expensive. The method of getting as much dirt as I can and depending on the remainder coming out in the future is a poor substitute for tearing the entire machine down to tiny pieces and cleaning each part individually with solvent. that process is called "restoration" and it''s a slippery slope towards compulsive tractor collecting and hoarding. I don''t want to go there.

In an effort to add some completion to these six-year-old blog posts, here's the speed-of-light update on what happened with the Ford 2N tractor.

I did get the tractor running and the hydraulic system functional. Rebuilding the carburetor the first time didn't help it idle very well. Neither did the second rebuild, nor the third. Eventually, I just decided to accept the fact that the tractor had a lumpy idle, and only really made power with the choke pulled out a little bit, and moved on.

The tractor store over in the valley had parted out a few of these tractors, and I purchased a used seat and fender. They apparently thought that these pieces were made of a rare and valuable metal, as the two together cost me almost one third of the tractor's original purchase price back in 1943. I also bought a fleabay muffler and exhaust pipe, opting for a stack rather than a rear exhaust.

In May of 2014, my friend Mark came down from Portland, and we spent several days on the tractor getting it into usable shape. Mark is a master at getting rusty bolts apart, he has a lot more patience at it than I do.

After a few hours of work, we had the front end loader on the tractor removed. I used my 1971 Case 580CK backhoe (purchased for $800, and no, I'm not going to blog about it [oops, I guess I just did]) to lift the rusted hulk off the Ford. The loader was a total loss, it was so crumbly and rusted that I hauled it directly to the scrap recycle yard.

We put the Ford in the carport and spent a few more hours repairing, removing the sheet metal so that the fuel tank could be changed, putting in halfway permanent wiring and restoring the fenders and exhaust system that were removed during the loader removal.

Mark was itching to see the tractor drive, so I rigged up the fuel tank from my IH Cub Cadet garden tractor, and let him go down the hill, cautioning him that the tractor had no brakes, and that I didn't know if it had enough power to make it back up the hill.

Apparently, he wasn't too concerned and threw caution to the wind, here he is going full-tilt in third gear:

We left the sheet metal off the tractor so I could finish the wiring and order and install new radiator hoses and a thermostat.

The next weekend, Mark returned, bringing a used 60" rotary field mower that he had purchased at my request. The mower was in pretty rugged shape, and we spent the better part of two days straightening, welding, and reinforcing it. It turned out pretty well, and I made plans to purchase some replacement blades, as those on it were worn and unbalanced.

Finally, I had something worthy of using for pasture maintenance.

The tractor looked a lot smaller without the loader, and it was a lot easier to steer too, without all the weight up front. The front tires needed replacing, and the proper ag tires were $130 each. Because the wheels were rusted beyond use, I needed to replace them also at $80 each, this was getting expensive quickly. The front hubs on the tractor required specific wheels, but this bolt pattern went out of use decades ago, so the wheels that are available are $$$. Fleabay to the rescue again, I purchased some front hubs from a Ford 8N, which use a bolt pattern that has become common for ag equipment. Mark picked up a couple of used wheels on the last trip down, and the two of us went to the wrecking yard in town to scratch around in the used tire pile. I found a pair of like-new bias ply 7.00-15 truck tires that the yard operator let me have for free. Scored again!

The first mow of the Spring season was much faster than I had been used to. My garden tractor took about 20 hours of mowing over the course of several days to do the whole field. The Ford did the same job better in about two hours. Because the wheels and tires are bigger, I got bounced and jostled around a whole lot less, and didn't feel like I had been beaten when it was over. Fuel economy was lots better too!

Since getting the tractor operational, I've had to replace the water pump, and the rear seal for the PTO leaked and needed to be serviced, but overall, it is much less work than the garden tractor, and much less expensive than the couple of times I had contracted the work out to someone else. That was $250 per mow. Now I can mow as often as I like for the price of two gallons of fuel per hour.

Because the legend of early tractors is that they are farmer killers, I use this tractor exclusively for mowing, never hauling with the drawbar, etc. It has exactly zero safety equipment, no ROPS, etc. It still has very little in the way of brakes (the right-hand brake works - sort of - and is handy for helping pull the tractor to the right during tight turns while mowing). The PTO shaft to the mower gearbox does have a slip tube on it for safety, but I still treat that PTO shaft as if it were a coiled rattlesnake when it is moving even a little bit.

Eventually, I'll replace this machine with something more modern, but for now, it gets the job done.