School work.

Man, I really love it when my projects line up with school work. My  next mill task was to bore a hole, so instead of doing the school project I brought in something of my own that needed bored out. The axle on the latest garden tractor was worn pretty bad...so I bored the kingpin holes out to accept a bushing. You can see the bushing I'm using in a couple of the pictures.

Didn't want ya'll to think I've just been lazing around!

Earthcavator done!

Nothing but rain here lately, but I was able to re-assemble the Earthcavator inside the shed yesterday. I don't know how in the hell I can bring myself to use it now, but it sure looks cool.

 

Update on the last update.

Ok, here they are...all I need are some weight plates. I also did a little bit of painting this evening so Deb's 140 should have the bar tires and weights installed this weekend. What fun!

Small project update.

I haven't gotten much done lately thanks to bad weather, but I did get these couple of things done. I've had the plans for wheel weight adaptors in head for two years, but finally got them ready for paint. The small bolts mate up with the factory wheel weight holes in the rims. I used 1" all-thread so I can just buy some wal-mart weights, rather than going through John Deere and paying $1 per pound. These are for the 670, not one of the garden tractors.

The other thing was finally getting the hyrdrostat for the 317 put back together with new seals and bearing. If you look closely you can see the bushing that was used to repair the bad input shaft I showed in an earlier post.

That's it for now...I'll just keep watching it rain.

Happy birthday to me!

How about a little painting?

Yep, we are back to JD greene font, though this isn't part of the 317 project.

I finally got everything needed together to try my hand at painting...priming actually. All went pretty well, though one of my high pressure lines from the tank to the regulator blew off a couple times. I don't like those "push lock" hose connections.

I used the latest JD primer, which takes 3 days to cure so there won't be much more done with this for a few days, but I think things will look good. I did a full set of wheels, the "earthcavator" blade, and the tool box that mounts on my trailer.

A break from garden tractors.

Alright, a switch from the JD green font for a day. Not because I've not been working on the projects, but I forgot the camera last night.

These are from Monk's "olympic day" or something like that. Me and Deb both had to work, so we only got to see some of it, but these are from the events we did catch.

317...repairs continued.

Well, I had a somewhat productive evening at school. I built up the worn shaft with 7018 welding rod and turned it back down to size, but I'm not happy with the results. I had to much slag inclusion in the weld and turning the shaft really made it show up. Tomorrow I'm going to turn it back down and use a bushing to take up the slack. I did get a bushing made to adapt a small hydraulic cylinder to the steering setup I'm building for this tractor. I put one picture of it on here, but I'll save most of that stuff for when I mock up the steering setup to make sure everything is going to work together. I don't get as many pictures taken at school because I'm usually watching the clock trying to finish before it's time to head home. Tonight I got most of the hydrostat put back together with new o-rings and seals, but I boogered one of the seals and had to stop. It doesn't really matter since I've got to have the shaft ready before I button the pump back up.

317...Phase 3...repair

Now I'm hitting the phase that will take a while...repair. Some of the things are just elbowgrease and time, others will cost some money.

This is one that was just elbowgrease and time. I showed in a previous entry where someone had blown a hole in the frame to access the oil drain. First I took a die grinder and angle grinder to clean up the hole. Then I seached the vast piles of junk to find some 1/4 steel to make a patch out of. I used an angle grinder to get the patch fitting pretty tight, then headed to Greg's to use the welder. There wasn't much happening out there so Duane hung out and supervised while I welded things up. While there I also welded on a bracket for the power steering valve that I'm retrofitting to the tractor, but I'll save those for another time. So far I've got quite a few things to repair/replace so I expect to have a long list of phase 3 posts.