Oh and the pulley!

The pulley forgot to mention.
It was falling off, the bolts came loose and only two of the 5 remained, and they were almost off, it was binding because it was falling off. haha. 5 new bolts, a wrench and that was fixed.

On with the Tractor Show

Ok, deck needs a cable to lift the front of it.
and a couple of plastic pulleys for that cable.

No biggy.


How to get around this till the back ordered pieces come in? Hummmm. maybe wire it up.
Got some wire, found a good place on both sides to hook it, raised it, added wire to hold it, (kinda like super strong twist tie. haha) and blam, it works, lets take it for a spin.

Got out in the yard, started the blades! Success! Lets cut some crass...

Ten Minutes later

Humm. the engine isn't running well again, have to pull out choke to keep it running. Oh well.

2 minutes after that.

Hummm. engine is running crappy and has stalled a couple times. Seems really warm.
Mower works, when it works.
Is it overheating??
Maybe. I did adjust it, maybe its reving too high? Has oil? Fun! the oil is steaming. that can't be good.
We are so close to a working mower. Time to get the push mower out and do some more by hand. Trying to wack some of it down, its about 2 feet now, higher in spots, its closer to hay at the moment. haha.

Well I will have to try to adjust it so that it runs better and a lower RPM.
But if you have been following along, I don't know F-All about engines. especially small simple ones appearantly.

On with the Show.

on to the mower deck

ok got the tractor working, fairly well, it runs, moves and all that.

Next was to put on the mower deck, had it working for a while, but then it threw the belt off.

noticed that one of the guards on the pulley was bent down.
so I bent it back up and it was rubbing so after some creative bending it is in place with no rubbing and the pulley is rolling free.

so I took it for a drive, the belt is still incredibly loose, but works, but for some reason the deck seems to be binding or grinding, like the pulley is stuck or something, and because of this is stalls out the mower when I try to run the blades.

So besides getting a smaller belt.. I believe... I think I have to figure out why the deck seems to be stiff or something. its very odd.

seems to be the only thing now. then I will have a fairly good working mower.. fairly.. its got its quirks but it works..

Oh and the alternator is shot. won't charge the batter and no lights.
don't care if the rest works. haha.

IT WORKS

The tractor lives!!!

Ok so one inch smaller belt was the key to its movement.

GREAT!

So I put the mower deck on.. *crossing fingers*

It works!
Belt is quite loose tho.
Hummm.. try it anyways.

20 minutes later and the belt disappears.. where did it go.. oh there it is under the tractor. good thing it needs the belt to turn the blades as the belt is hanging on one of them. haha.

Ok noticed one of the guides is bent on the deck, and the belt is quite loose.
another problem, the engine doesn't like the deck, it wants to shut off every time its going through a little bit of grass or if I turn on the deck too quick. Geez, that some weak 18hp. Weird.

But we finally had a big step forward with the tractor.

Life tho. has jumped backwards.
Property taxes have doubled and that sucks, adds 200 dollars of bills monthly to us. which we didn't have.
Jeep's front driveshaft is cooked. CV Joint is dead. Son-Of-A-B*tch!!!
Oh well I guess it wasn't the front U-Joints afterall.
although they are starting to go too. sigh, but I thought that was were the noise was coming from, but it was my front CV joint in the driveshaft.
I guess I will be 2WD for a while. Unless the boys in the Jeep Club come through for me. *cross fingers*

Were a belt away from hopefully completing this mess

One belt.. thats it, we think.

The belt on it we thought was stretched because when we put it on right, it was too loose, so we got another one.. he didn't have the right size so he let me try that one, it was too small and too thick. so he got me the same one we had the next day, and I put it on, better but still too loose. Today he was closed, so tomorrow i will go in and get a slightly smaller belt of the same thickness.

Crossing my fingers.

Monthly mortgage went up today.. Sigh.. Our property taxes got hiked. this isn't good, I am gonna have to find a second job. The paper isn't paying well enough yet. Sigh.

today was belt day

Well after all thats happened with the tractor, you'd think I would give up.

No, there is a belt to put on but that may be it.

I tried to get one today, but the one he gave me was too, short.
not but much but it was.

took a pulley off to get it on and still couldn't get it on, so its obviously I need a slightly larger belt. I hope after that everything works great and then I can put the mower on and use it.

I think the tractor may be finished if we ca find a belt to fit.

Then we hopefully are done, reassemble, and use. needs minor fixes hopefully after that.

I don't know anything about tractors.

I don't know anything about tractors, I will admit that.
I don't know anything about engines either.
Clutches, belts, pulleys, etc..

Hell I am not even confident I can drive anymore!!!

The little bit I thought I did know, appearantly I don't have a clue about anything.

That aside Rick came by again, and imagine this. the tractor is running again.

Maybe the tractor just doesn't like me, but he seems to like Rick.



What did we learn today.

One: Using jumper cables to run from the battery to the power, with all those surges I put it through and all that cranking appearantly makes heat. and well, My jumper cables melted.
This caused the power failure the other day. Nothing wrong with the starter, nothing wrong with the solenoid. Just bad line between the battery and anything (cause we were using the jumpers for everything connecting to the battery). So the engine is fine .. again.

Two: We finally figured out the clutch problem. why did we have only one gear forward and 3 gears reverse. for the longest time we couldn't figure out what was wrong with the belt. why one pulley was slightly off angle (which if you read earlier we tried to redirect, with slight success). Well after discussing it and figuring between me and Rick, we got the belt on a different way, aka, The Right Way. My brother had the belt on wrong. So now the pulley goes the right direction (after bending it back to where it was) and Now I have 3 gears forward and one reverse.

YAY!!

Plus the belt won't fall off again, once we get a new belt.

The belt was stretched a little, and the other day when I burned it, I burned off a bit so that loosened it a bit more. so now its too loose.
So we will go and get another belt tomorrow. Well if Gerry has one.
Hopefully not too expensive. sigh.

We will see.

The only other problem is the choke is loose, we have to take it apart to fix it, but we aren't gonna worry about that until everything else is working well.

lets see how we are doing on our checklist

Next Up on the list of to do:

1: Make tractor to continue to run. -> Done I think
2: Make tractor go forward and backward without losing a belt -> Done I think once we have new belt
3: Figure out gear box -> sorta, needs more playing
4: Make sure gear box works well enough to use. -> I think so, again after the belt change we will see
5: Put mower deck on tractor and test. -> still on the list
6: Mow the now hay field I call a lawn. -> This might get done with a hand mower Rick let us borrow before the tractor is done.

Things looking up again. high low high low. good thing I am an optomist.