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Been working them hard here lately for the start of the garden!!! Love these tractors!

Got this idea from Don (Lee1977), and I pretty much copied his work. I see all these heavy hitches, so I waited to build one until I found the one I liked best. Don's hitch has two recievers so he can use the truck bed lift and still pull a trailer. His tractor is in the first pic. My hitch wasn't dry enough to handle yet, so I'll mount it tomorrow. Then I'll mount the lift. Mine is the second pic.

Made new engine/shaker plate mounts for the 512-D.

More progress. Wet sand & paint tomorrow.

A GREAT BIG THANKS to @WHX?? for stopping over to help me wet sand this morning. With his help I was able to get some parts sprayed and still have some time left to do some other things today. Got a quite a few parts sprayed but still have a bunch left to spray yet. Didn't happen with out pics.

Workday, first Mowing, short Wash than Plowing.

Ha Ha, made you look. Just testing out the hydro on a parts machine. [ Note ] Range & H.P. is limited...

One more shameless pic. ...Did I mention that I really like how this "upgrade" turned out?

Follow up from page 4 # 97 Hemlock down. All trimmed up and ready to be relocated to its new home spanning the Brook. Probably cut 2 lengths roughly 20'.

Okay Don we forgive you for posting a day early so I guess it's okay for me to post almost the same picture on the correct day, ole buddy. @c-series don

Stress or strain?

My daughter drew this one for me...

Put some paint on the 953 fronts.

I'll try to make this brief but that's not really my nature Picked up a 312-8 last year that had sat for several years and had a k301 with a stuck exhaust valve. The valve was in pretty bad shape so I pulled an M10 from a donor. It needed a fuel pump, one charging magnet and the spark plug wire had been eaten by some critters. It had also sat for a couple years as well. I gave it a fairly thorough once-over de-carboned, valve adjustment, new head gasket and JB welded a new charging magnet in the flywheel oil change, spark plug, ignition coil, air filter cleaned the carb, NOS fuel pump, replaced fuel lines, filter, petcock, back-flow valve Changed out wiring harnesses and did the swap. It's been running, smokes a bit on acceleration but has plenty of power and 110 psi compression (no means to do a leak-down). The issue I was having was painfully long cranking to start. I've been fiddling with this for a couple months now and have been at my whit's end. It had seemingly good spark and fuel supply but I went ahead and put an electric fuel pump on it yesterday. Still no help. Swapped carbs with another machine and no change. I went back over everything this morning and found the magneto gap at a generous .016" . Adjusted to a tight .013" and that seems to have worked The spark must have been weak so I guess the moral of the story is to not overlook the details and do things right the first time

Show off what your doing from the seat of your Horse!!! Fixed up a mowing deck for the 1277 and put the plow on the C1014. Getting ready to level a topsoil pile and going down the block to mow the small park to test the mowing deck out.

Like everything else here, planted these with my sons when they and the trees were merely saplings. Now they all have blossomed into maturity and beauty providing irreplaceable sights and memories. The saying that “ you reap what you sow “ couldn’t be anymore appropriate.

Today I put my new Wheel Horse belt on my commando 8 “Archie”. I tried to roll my grandparents front yard and it slipped on tiny hills.Friday I also dragged my baseball teams home field with Archie and I’m gonna do it again tomorrow before our first game of the season.

You won't get any disagreement here. Body being attached to the frame is bad enough but aligning the one ton cast iron grill so the hood will fit well is soooo time consuming.

frequently tow my . spikers / aerators , we have a heavy clay based soil , for us most effective to spike in damp / wet lawn , the bird action verifies that , worms , related bugs , make it a food fest for anything living out there . also have both of my spikers , with ball hitch mounts , makes hook up and , multiple connections , seamless . of course , lubricate the ball related hitch points . just an idea, pete

I can't draw a straight line with a ruler. Such talents always amaze me!

Thanks Bill. I still have to make the brace up front for the tranny mount plate. But the hitch is mounted up now.

Another take on @SylvanLakeWH's image.

If I was going to do that I would find a carriage Bolt long enough to go all the way through both of them and run the nut for the first set right up to them just as they are now. One thing to keep in mind is, make sure you understand just how wiiiiiiide that is when you're driving it around. Don't ask me how I know that.....

Ran out of black filament and had some ivory I didn't need right away, so used it while I'm waiting for the black filament to arrive. The ivory just looks beautiful I almost cant bring myself to paint it!

After we got all the coatings done I was gonna move on to setting the boards in place. I measured the length of the trailer in comparison to the 8' standard lumber. The trailer mount was about 1-1/4" shorter than the 96.5" boards. Rather than trim them Trina and I decided to remove the rear deck retainer. 4 welds cut and blammmo. I found some 5/16" x 3" carriage bolts. Drilled the boards and frame, 1 per. All boards are set with a frown so whatever water hits it will be prone to running off. Nearly complete. Just need to add conspicuity tape up front on the sides and fasten the wires in a few spots.

This morning Trina decided to put a tube in the trailer wheel/tire for her go-to pulled rig. The 1976/77 Ohio Steel trailer painted to match Millie. She used a 3/4" bolt held in the bench vise to keep hold on it. Got that all done and popped it on. After that BBT and the Momma moved some wood and did other yahd putterin'. They moved and stacked this pile. Around 6.5 ft wide x 5 ft tall.

After a mowing and a quick bath…

Van Sickel in IH gloss red Steve. Really lays down nice but I think he could put lipstick on a 🐷 and make it look nice. I use the same stuff out of a rattler for small pieces and it looks good. Seems it's very durable you have the patience to let it cure proper.

The bottom bracket of the S/G belt guard was broken off. Trina found a spare hunk o metal laying around and made a bracket for the Millie engine. It'll get painted later this week.

No problem... it just goes faster with two guys. 'Sides clearing the path for some red on 701 parts & too crappy out to do anything around here. Lemme know when you start to build the motor I'll come over and supervise... Consensus for day @953 nut is be it these be the favorite model they are PIA to resto!

I didn't know @Pullstart had a trail cam in his weight room also...!!!

Happy Birthday @jimkemp! Hope it's a muffled one!!!

Like pushing a small pedal ( maybe from a 60s mower deck ) to engage the belt and it also hits a switch to power it up. Release the pedal so it powers down and releases the belt That will probably be plan B if it creates havoc with the S/G just running it reverse. It would be nice just to simply hit a thumb type button and go reverse. Reverse shouldn't be used too much but it's certainly better than needing to get off and push it. Floor boards will be in the way and prevent just going Flintstone reverse Anyone have a spare 60s style mower deck engagement pedal and the linkage with idler? @WHX?? One that looks like crap? LOL

Looks great. If you were so inclined you could Put a chunk of 2" angle over the ends and bolt through. Basically like what was done to mine but on the opposite end. Great protection for the boards when you run a tractor on it and the mower deck catches.

I have mentioned many times here that I am a mentor for the local high school's robotics teams competing in the F.I.R.S.T robotics series. Well, both the junior team and senior teams qualified for the world championships this year. The championships were held in Houston with over 600 teams attending from all over the world. Worldwide, there are about 3200 teams competing. The field of teams is divided into 8 divisions. 256 teams make it to double elimination playoff in each division. The winning alliances from each division then go into a double elimination to determine the champion. There was one day of practice, two days of qualification matches, and one day of playoffs. The senior team was the #8 seat alliance captain. The junior team, in a different division, was selected to be on the #4 seated alliance. The senior team was eliminated in the third round of the double elimination playoff, while the junior team made it to the semi-final round of the playoff. Not bad for a couple of teams from a high school in a town of 25,000. The senior team also won the Excellence in Engineering award in the division we competed in. We have won this award several times at various regional events, but this is the first time we have won an award like this at the world championship event. The championships were held in the George Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston. That place is amazingly large. The following pictures are of the 8 competition fields taken from opposite ends of the hall. These pictures do not show the pit areas that are beyond the end walls in the pictures. This building is on the order of 1/4 mile long. Of course, the fields and pits for the two teams were on the opposite ends of the building. One of the teams had a really neat pit cart to transfer their robot between the pit and the field. Another team had an interesting decoration at their pit: I stood talking to the people in the pit, while I positioned myself as if I was talking to the mannequin. Caused a couple of kids to do a double take while they walked by. The senior team had some downtime while they were waiting for the junior team to finish their match schedule one of the days. They got board and discovered that the fan would levitate one of the inflatable game pieces. Was really fun watching the people's reactions when they saw this when walking by. There was probably a million dollars worth of robots and supporting equipment in the pits, yet a simple demonstration of Brunelli's principle left some people gobsmacked. When younger kids walked by, I'd point out the 'magic' we were doing. Sorry about the blurry picture.. the poor phone camera wasn't sure what to focus on with the cube floating and spinning. Most of my work as a mentor is done during the design and build part of the season. Once the robot is up and running, I don't have much to do. Since I didn't have much to do at the world competition, I volunteered to be a robot inspector. I was part of the tech inspection required for the robots to compete and spent some time on the field giving the robots a quick once over just before they went into their matches. Spent 3 1/2 days standing and walking on a concrete floor, got tired out, and tired of large crowds, but interactions with the kids, other adults in the program, and watching the competitions was more than worth the aggravations. Edit added 4-23. Finally got back to our Mid Mo. location today and had a chance to look up the world rankings of our teams at the end of the season. There is a web site that does some fancy statistical analysis of all the teams scoring through the entire season. This site ranked the senior team at #38 in the world - just one notch under a team from Houston that is heavily supported by the NASA operation there. The junior team ended up being ranked at 245. This is out of a total of about 3,200 teams.

Yes I'm 100% certain of the direction it turns. I had to power it up just make sure it works. Set like the drawing above it will reverse the direction to the wheel when power is applied. It's painted Simplicity orange so that's just a guess. Looks original paint. This is an old school one because it has the flip cap oil ports on it

While she showered wrestling sweat off, Rylee’s boyfriend Henry helped me plant four trees today. They seem to be a pretty awesome fit for each other, being only 13. Much too young to hope for futures, but hopefully if it becomes one it is well cultivated. We placed three apple trees and a red maple in the front yard. He dug the holes, under my watch and suggestion. I chopped one root, but otherwise all digging was him. We carefully backfilled and watered the trees and I’ll mulch them soon. Cas, I hope to see them blossom in the years to come! Trees too

Ha! We yern for chaos!! Plus you can't fit the big stuff in with one on 🤣🤣

Just scored this Agrifab trailer! Pretty good size And we also have a nice Ohio steel one a little heavier but plastic

Apples' first mow at the new home! Wet thick grass had the blades bogging down...brain goes "gonna have to tighten that deck idler...sigh"...Then about 2 rounds around the yard later..."Well heck ya dummy this thing has mule drive!" ....twist twist golden! Mrs. Lovin her new Horse!

Checked the welds. All looked good. Earlier today I cut the tall "toolbox" off the front. Never liked since we bought the trailer. It's always leaked and was tough to reach the bottom. Removed the biggest portions of rusty scale from a few areas. Washed with acetone. Trina sprayed some paint on the upper/outer surfaces. I sprayed Fluid Film on the others. Went with the dark brown sand filled gritty textured paint that I originally bought for Colossus. I made some changes to that color scheme so we had 3 full cans. Ran a little shy at that so we used black here and there.

C-105 not charging…temporarily rigged up a used regulator from my stock pile and she was charging again. Then I attacked the horrible task of swapping out the regulator properly. Those 1/4-20 nuts behind the reg are an absolute pain in the butt to get to. In the end I won and she is good to go! I did notice that under where the regulator mounts it’s all painted? So I wire wheeled the paint off where it mounts and added another negative or ground wire.

Earlier today Trina separated and stood up the deck lumber. After that she and the Momma shredded the old deck outta the trailer frame.

Funny you should say that Richard... he had it hanging upside down and I said we need to get this beast higher up so you can see what you're spraying. That's the side that shows. I need a bigger beer belly to rest it on while he hangs!

Here's what Trina came up with based on a text I gave her.

Gents - my point is that weight centered in or on the tire and rim just adds weight and does not constitute an overhung condition (unlike a hang over condition - that is totally different)...