I hope I don't lose my membership

 In the Procrastinators Guild.

Over the last couple weeks I sealed up the hydraulic tank on my garden tractor loader project. I got the machine back in 2017, you guys might have forgotten about it. Checking back it looks like I haven't written about the loader since 2017 which is weird, we've come a long way...

Heres a shot from back when I got it:

Last week I reinstalled the tank, it had leaked where I added the hose fittings so I slathered the inside with POR15 gas tank sealer. It didn't leak overnight so yesterday I fired it up. It did NOT want to run but finally got going, smoked a lot but I'll be darned if it didn't work pretty good.

I moved some snow out of the shadows on our yard over to the storm drain which gets more sun.

Everything was going great until:

That's the upper bucket cylinder mount, or rather there should be a mount there. Apparently I'd only tacked it on and the tacks broke. I wanted to move the mount a little higher anyway.

While I was working I finished cutting the bucket down: 

I took 3" off each side of the bucket, bringing it down to 38" which is still about 2" wider than the machine. Took probably 25# off the weight of the bucket making it much more manageable for the machine. There's still some more to come off but it's much improved.

I'm going to take it over to buddy Ben's house for final welding, he's got a big stick welder so I can really burn in the mounts, my MIG works okay but doesn't really have enough heat for the job...

Loader advancement

Finally got some more time with the loader, first off that stupid top link had to go.

There was a little tension in it... That Harbor Freight 7" angle grinder was a good investment, its a little low on power when I really play the gorilla and lean on it but it does a good job.

Outgoing at the top, incoming below. 2.5"x.18", way overkill but I figured go big or go home. That turned out to bite me later on.

Lookin good right?

Heres the problem, thats my new 10" hydraulic cylinder replacing the 16" that was there, notice how the bucket is tipped slightly down but the cylinder is sucked all the way in. The bucket can't curl up any... Turns out when I had measured to replace the cylinder I'd measured to the TOP of the new brace. I should have bought an 8" cylinder and 2" tube steel. In the first step I shortened my top mount which helped a little but not enough, the second step involved modifying the bucket.

I cut the cylinder mounts off the bucket and moved them 2.5" down. While I was at it I took off the 1.25" bushings and installed proper 1" so the pin won't beat itself to death.

The bucket curls correctly now. Theres still more work to do, I need to go back and pretty up the new mounts, probably box them in some for added strength too. Then I want to cut the bucket down considerably. Its waaaay to heavy for this application. Its 47" wide where the plans I bought call for 42". I think considering how heavily its built I'll cut it all the way down to 40". I'll lower the top by 3" and pull in the leading edge by 4". Is that easier than making a bucket from scratch? I don't know but the ribs on this one make it super strong which is why its super heavy. Once its done I'll never hurt it...

More time with the loader

Dang Blogger keeps changing my posts. I checked today and my last two posts have black text even though my standard is supposed to be white. I had to go into each post and change it.

Anyway I've got a couple updates on the loader, when we last left our hero the loader was working as intended, well mostly anyway. I parked it behind the garage by where I keep the snowmobiles so I could keep an eye on it and of course we got some snow. I bought a new 12" cylinder for the bucket to replace the too long one so I decided I wanted to move the machine into the garage. Its a loader, it can dig itself out of the snow right? Well sorta.

I knew there was a tire with a slow leak and it'd gone soft but it seemed to be holding okay. After half an hour of digging out of the snow it finally let go and the tire spun on the rim. So everything went on hold while I bought tubes.

Fortunately (?) a tube is easier to install when the tire is already loose on the rim. I'll need to invest in new tires soon, these ones are badly weather checked but they'll do for now.

So with the tire back on and the wheel and wheel weight installed I made some more progress toward the garage until:

Cylinder top mount let go. Look close and you'll see some real booger welding there. Well fortunately its spring and the snow melted fast so last week I managed to get the tractor into the garage and got that link off the cylinder.

Wonder if somebody was really proud of that work?

I boxed it in and added a BUNCH of weld to make a new, stronger unit:

Boxed in sides mean I can run a bead of weld all the way around the outside so it'll be waaaaay stronger when I attach it. Unfortunately I don't have anything to attach it to yet...

On the learning front I've decided how to deal with the big hydraulic reservoir, you remember this one?

5 gallons of oil hanging nearly 2 feet off the rear of the tractor. I'd worried about using a smaller reservoir and still having enough capacity. So I went back to the loader plans I'd bought before from www.loaderplans.com. He uses the right side tower as a reservoir, I was still nervous so I emailed him, nice guy, he got right back to me and I realized that since these are double acting cylinders you don't need much extra fluid capacity since the cylinders are always full, just pushing in one direction or the other. So I'll drill some holes and see if the tower is water tight. Assuming they are I'll re-plumb everything and add in a filter which is conspicuously missing from the current system.

Turning my attention to the hydraulic pump, the system is REALLY jumpy, best I can tell I've got a 24GPM (gallon per minute) hydraulic pump which is way oversized. Correct for this machine would be more like 5GPM. So I'll be sourcing a smaller pump and building a new bracket.

Last thing, as I got the tractor into the garage I figured I ought to change the oil. I'd been running it pretty good and who knows the last time it'd had love? Hadta use a stuck bolt extractor to pull the plug:

The points were all rounded pretty bad. I think somebody had been putting it in way too tight and tried to get it out with a crescent wrench. A few minutes on the belt grinder got it back to shape:

Its a little undersized now but a 9/16" wrench fits on it with only a little slop and I didn't put it in crazy tight. It doesn't leak now and I'm curious why some ham-fist cranked it in but whatever, I'll take it as a win.
A little Mobil 1 5w40 synthetic oil made the engine way quieter, the stuff that came out was black as night and felt thin I don't know what it was but it amazes me people use cheap oil, after all the machine doesn't quite use a whole quart, why not spring for the good stuff?

Anyway we're making progress. I'm not going to be able to touch it for a couple weeks but when I get back I plan to work through our two major projects, the bucket rotate cylinder and the tower reservoir...

A new toy

I've been looking at garden tractor loaders off and on for a couple years now. I even bought plans to build my own which of course was relegated to the "round tuit" pile.

Today I picked up a 1977 Cub Cadet 1650 (16hp, hydrostatic drive) with a loader on it. I think the loader was homemade with some modifications after initial construction.

I paid $1200 which is about half what I would normally expect to pay for such a thing. The electric PTO clutch doesn't work so I can't engage the hydraulics to run the loader but it starts easily even in the teens and is able to slide the loader bucket along pretty well.

I've been researching the PTO clutch and as with most things I won't really know whats up until I dig into it, the clutch itself is pretty simple and only about $150 if I find it needs replacement. The previous owner said it worked and then started blowing fuses, the wiring is a little hacked but not too bad so I'll pull it apart and see whats going on.

The hydraulics look like they were rigged by a halfwit, I plan to replace some of the hoses with hard lines since they're too short to route better than they already are. I'd like to replace the single cylinder currently hooked up for the bucket with two cylinders on the lift arms. Getting that stupid looking big cylinder out of the way would allow the hood to open correctly.

Anyway its a fun new toy and as I told the neighbor it'll keep my out of the bars.

A couple easy fixes

"I love it when a plan comes together." - Hannibal Smith

The other day plowing snow after sundown I noticed that the ammeter on the Cub Cadet was reading negative. A check with the multi-meter proved that the ammeter was correct and we were discharging.

A bit of google-fu found some troubleshooting instructions that mostly revolved around the voltage regulator, being the "brains" of the system that seemed a reasonable place to start.

The VR on these is real old school technology, basically unchanged from the '40s. First find the bat terminal and ensure it gets 12v even with the key off. Mine didn't... This set off a line of thinking that maybe the problem was actually just dirty contacts so I proceeded to remove each contact and scrub with a wire brush. Turned out to be the correct choice, 12v was restored to the bat terminal and charging commenced:

Not bad for a no-money job.

A few years ago I made a short video about the Jetta in the snow. Since we had a larger snowstorm this time I thought I'd make a follow-up. Then I made 2 mistakes.

#1. Behind where I had parked is a hole, the hole was bottomed with ice. I didn't use enough power to get across the ice and go the car stuck. Queue hilarity getting the car out.

#2. Some months ago the muffler fell off this car, that in itself is no big deal, the resonator is still there and does an adequate job, the car isn't too loud. However theres an aluminum heat shield above where the muffler goes which got bent down under the car by the force of the snow. A couple big sheet metal screws and large washers fixed that. I also managed to put one washer on a existing stud with a new nut:

Moving right along the snow flap on the back of the '98 Jag got bent so it drags up under the sled. It makes noise while you ride and catches when the suspension compresses. The flap is held on with 4 torx screws, I removed it and used the heat gun to get it bent the right way again. Then I secured a couple tears with zip ties and reinstalled:

Need to be careful in the summer with how I attach the tarp on this machine so I don't bend the flap again.

Not a bad day's work...

The boys of summer

Spring is here and Sunday I spent some time puttering around the yard. Put down 6 cubic feet of mulch, put some composted cow manure on the asparagus bed, Angie raked the yard...
While all that was underway I had the oil draining out of the snowblower, got that changed and realized I hadn't changed the oil in the Cub Cadet last year since the plow has to be pulled to do it. So I got the plow off and the oil changed, it sure cranks better with 5w40 instead of the 15w50 I'd had in it previously. I'd gone with the heavier oil since it burns some, we'll see how it does with the lighter oil.

I pushed the snowblower back into the garage and brought out the Snapper. I'd changed the oil in that when I put it away last fall so its mostly ready to go although I want to replace the rubber wheel on the drive. It doesn't do reverse real well right now. The wheel thats on it is one I put on when I brought it back into service. I think that was 2009 but I can't find any record of it in my notes. 6 years would be a pretty good run anyway I'd think, its a cheap part too.

My plan is to drag the Cub Cadet to camp with us in May and drag the Cub Cadet thats there back here. I've got a mowing deck for the one at camp thats never been installed. We don't use that Cub Cadet the amount I'd expected we would, we just don't have that much towing work, so it'd be nice to have it as an additional mower. There are many times when we could get a lot more work done if we could mow with two machines at the same time. So thinking about that I decided it'd make more since to put the mower on my Cub Cadet so it can be a mower when we get it up there.

This is what they call a "timed deck" where the sweep of the two blades overlap so they use a toothed belt to keep from hitting each other. Its a nice finish mower but not the kind of bushhog mower we normally use at camp. It'll be interesting to see how it holds up. I don't think we'll use it all that much since it starts so hard. Lately if I don't run it every day it needs a little shot of carb cleaner to get going. My long term plan, as I've said before, with this machine is to transplant a diesel engine into it. Sadly the $600 diesel engines of 2 years ago are gone, these days a 10hp diesel runs $750-$800, a 13hp goes for $900 which is a temptation. The 10hp rating is really a "burst" rating, the engine isn't rated to run at that speed (3550 rpm) long term. Its rated speed is more like 2500 rpm where it makes more like 8hp. The good news is that it makes max torque at more like 1500 rpm. The chart is hard to read but it looks like 18 lb ft at 1500 rpm. An online calculator tells me that the K161 with 7hp at 3600rpm is 10 lbft so it sounds to me like the 10hp diesel will be a nearly 50% increase in usable power...

The ups and the downs

Some times you're the Louisville Slugger, some times you're the ball.
The clutch for my '71 Arctic Cat Panther 303W came in so yesterday I figured I'd get that installed along with the second crank seal. Started working on the crank seal and realized that when I'd first tried to install it not only had I rolled the seal but I'd torn it. Oops, time to order a new seal.
Then I figured I'd pull the magneto off the '78 Pantera engine. I bought a harmonic balancer puller for the Panther but the Pantera engine uses much smaller bolts. I bought the correct size bolts but just managed to ruin the bolts. Turns out theres another type of puller just for that kind of flywheel, well at least I already had to place an order...

Finally I needed to make a new pin for the Cub Cadet plow pivot lock. This allows me to keep the plow in any of 3 positions. The original bolt had broken so I'd been using a spike which finally broke. I bought another bolt and to facilitate getting the bolt back out I decided to weld two washers onto the top of it to make a handle.

You can see where I ground the threads off the end of the bolt. Thats a 9/16x6" bolt, it turns out the bottom hole is probably 1/2" while the top is rounded out to 9/16". I should probably take the plow off, weld up the top hole a little and bore it to 1/2" or just bore the bottom one out to 9/16". Either way some summer I need to replace the sheet steel of the plow body, I'll do both jobs at the same time.

Here's the bolt in place:

I should have turned it some more to make it easier to see. I should also get a washer to go under the head which would make it sit a little higher and allow it to rotate a little more to relieve a little stress. Of course if I do that I'll weld it to the head so it doesn't fall off when I pull the bolt out.

Tractor wiring finale

To finish up my Cub Cadet wiring adventure, it turns out that when the previous owner ran a line to the batt terminal of the regulator all he actually had to do was to move the grey wire from the hot side of the starter to one side of the ammeter. I actually spliced the grey wire to a little of the previous owner's very long wire since the grey wire had quite a large ring terminal on it. Viola it works, that easy. One downside is that it doesn't measure when cranking since that comes off the switched side of the starter switch but everything else is measured including the
headlights.

With the ammeter sorted I took a look at the bracket which at one point must have been chromed but is now just rust. I let it soak for a few hours in a bath of evapo-rust, then cleaned it, dried it and hit it with some primer and yellow paint.

I let it dry overnight and then sprayed the backside. When that was mostly dry I baked it in my toaster oven but had the heat too high and bubbled the paint. That subsided into an interesting crackle look which goes with the mostly rotten paint on the rest of the tractor.

Here with the engine off, headlights on we've got discharge.

With the engine running it charges:

When I turn on the headlights the charge rate dips for a second before it goes back to the same spot. I was pleased to see that the starter/generator charges even at very low engine speed. My other Cub Cadet seems to want more engine speed before it charges, I guess I should order a starter/generator rebuild kit for that one as well.

After all that fun I took a few minutes to add slime to the left front tire which was low and put some grease in all the zerks.

Most importantly I was able to start the tractor cold without starting fluid for the first time in about a year. I was so happy with it I went out and bought a padded seat cover. The machine had one when I first bought it but it got torn off last spring so I'd spent a year sitting with a dirty old towel on the metal seat. I'm ready to plow snow in luxury.

More tractor wiring fun

Turns out my first instinct about the key switch on the Cub Cadet 70 was exactly right, I pulled it out and found that the switch was grounding to its body.

Taking a look at the thing I noticed that the end cap where the electrical connections go was loose and tilted when they key turned. If I pushed the cap in everything was fine until I worked the key back and forth a couple times and the cap popped out again. Finally I pushed it in and peened the rim of the lock body over with a chisel, primitive but it worked.

Now the key supplies power to the coil the way it should.

While I was there I pulled the wire from the ammeter to the regulator, as I said yesterday this wire really wasn't doing anything. The last step (I hope) will be to move the grey wire from the hot side of the switch out to the ammeter. This should allow the ammeter to detect charge state while running. With luck I'll be able to use the ring terminal thats already on the grey wire without modification, as long as it will fit through the hole to the ammeter which is mounted on the right side of the steering pedestal.

Whoops

After yesterday's success I put the battery charger on the Cub Cadet overnight, today I went out to see if it would start better than in the past considering all the electricity was getting to the starter/generator. I hit the starter and it cranked over much quicker than before but after maybe half a second of cranking I was "rewarded" with smoke and burning plastic smell.

My tractor has an ammeter which has never worked. As part of the cleaning I did yesterday I cleaned the terminal where the ammeter is connected to the starter switch. It turns out that the other side of the ammeter was connected to the L terminal on the voltage regulator. This is WRONG, it should be connected to the BAT terminal on the regulator. Fortunately the wiring on the Cub is pretty heavy so all I got was a couple melty insulation spots which I fixed with tape.

I went on to make up the last heavy wire which goes from the switch to the starter/generator so now the whole path to the starter/generator is 8ga which is very heavy for a garden tractor and I'm confident that it'll never be a problem.

Unfortunately now when I turn the key switch on the voltage regulator clicks and the ignition coil loses voltage. Interestingly if I turn the switch just part way it doesn't happen and the tractor will start and run. I *think* this means that when the ammeter was wired incorrectly it forced the key switch to take full current which I *think* is allowing the switch to short out when turned all the way. I need to pull the switch and see if its something I can fix or if I need a new switch. Fortunately 2 position switches aren't terribly expensive.

The ammeter STILL doesn't work because although it doesn't cause a short anymore its still not wired right. Right now its wired from the hot side of the starter switch to the BAT terminal on the regulator but the starting switch still has a line from the hot side to the BAT terminal. To work correctly an ammeter has to be inline between the hot side of the starting switch and the BAT terminal where mine is currently parallel. The wiring on my tractor would work okay for a voltmeter except it'd drain the battery since it can't be turned off. A volt meter should really be to the switched side of the ignition switch. So to fix this I need to disconnect the original wire from the starter switch to the BAT terminal which would just leave my ammeter.

At some point I really need to re-wire the whole tractor. Another problem I worked on was that the wire from the ignition switch to the coil was cracked badly. This wire wraps around the back side of the engine and is bad on my Cub Cadet 72 as well. I used a weatherproof butt connector and a length of green wire which should have been black. If I feel real bad about it I'll blacken it with a paint pen. Of course later on I found a spot thats cracked beyond where I'd fixed. I've also got the old link to the starter/generator just hanging out. I debated cutting that wire off but left it. I'll be on the lookout for some cheap wire loom to build my new harness around at which point I'll buy the correct color wires and redo things right.

Tractor repair time

Yesterday I spent some time cleaning out the garage to fit the Honda CB900f back in. It'd been out "for sale" for over a year and sadly the shop it was at is closing down so I had to take it back. I've let the garage get very messy this summer and it really needed cleaning. That meant I had to move my 1964 Cub Cadet 70. I use the Cub Cadet mostly for plowing snow. Its got a mowing deck but it isn't as maneuverable as I'd like for our small lawn, the Snapper is a better mower really. Last winter the Cub Cadet had gotten challenging to start, often requiring a shot of ether to get going. I've got another Cub Cadet, a model 72 at camp that doesn't get used much and that ones had a fairly recent engine rebuild so my plan had been to swap them when I go north for deer hunting season in November.

Last night I got thinking that maybe the bad starting was just slow cranking. I cleaned the battery terminals and cables and the connection at the starter/generator. None of that made any difference. I measured the voltage drop at the starter/generator and found it around 4 volts! Not good, no wonder it cranked slow. I had some 8ga wire Fred had given me for the '78 240D which I'd never used and a couple crimp on ring terminals so I made up a new cable from the battery to the starter, this one was the winner, the old one was small and had a splice in it to an even smaller wire.



On the left the old wire with the splice, on the right a comparison of the new wire and the old, see how much bigger that new wire is.

I also made up a new lead from the battery to ground. Honestly I'm not sure how the old ground worked at all, it'd been attached to a painted surface. Again my new wire is much larger than the old. I also put heat shrink tubing over the new terminals. The existing terminals on the cable already had heat shrink.



With my new cables installed voltage drop at the starter/generator is now less than 1v which is entirely acceptable. I'm still going to replace the wire from the switch to the starter/generator. I would have already but I ran out of ring terminals and it was too late to go to the store. This is probably excessive but when it is done I'll know that the cables are all good and that I'm getting every bit of starting voltage I possibly can.