You might remember my 1952 Farmall Super M:
Pictured here with the '98 Ford 1920
Over the last couple years the transmission in the old Super M has been getting progressively louder, this isn't unusual in a machine with straight cut gears. At this point I've owned the machine going on 20 years and I've never serviced the transmission. Dad thinks it's not been serviced since the 1960s when my great uncles quit farming.
The transaxle holds 13 gallons of gear oil so first I acquired the replacement oil which brings up a fun northern Maine story. It's been a little hard finding 80w90 gear oil in the kind of volume I need so I called up MPG (Maine Potato Growers) who had plenty in stock at the best price I've seen. Dad and I headed over but it turned out the computers were down. Well that's no problem, the guy took dad's phone number and said "I'll call you tomorrow." and that was it, we left with $130+ in oil with the promise that tomorrow we could pay for it...
Anyhow it was with some trepidation that I removed the drain plug:
I was greeted by 11 gallons of tar...
Yeah, 11 gallons out of what should be 13. I hadn't run the machine since November, in retrospect I should have started it up and run it around to warm things up.
With the worst drained out I put in 4 gallons of diesel fuel for a rinse cycle. I drove the machine around the yard a little and drained it again:
That stuff was clear only 20 minutes before
This time 6 gallons came out so I suppose I got 12 gallons of the original crud.
I left it sitting open to hopefully get some more crud to drain. I should probably do another rinse cycle but really with new oil we should be ready for another 50 years.
As an aside the factory recommended drain interval is yearly...
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