[AJD] THT (part 1)

Karl Olmstead olmstead at ridgenet.net
Wed Dec 29 19:02:25 PST 2004


Just got back from a lengthy tractor hauling trip.  I drove up to John 
Boehm's place north of Sacramento, CA on Christmas day in order to pick up a 
'37 JD  BO.  John's son had partly disassembled the BO in order to unstick 
the engine and assess its condition.  I told John that I would prefer to 
reassemble the engine myself, but was seriously concerned that I wouldn't be 
able to do so; I've never been inside a John Deere engine.  To my amazement, 
John invited me to come up and participate in the rebuild.

Now John's a contractor; time is money to him.  I felt that offering me a 
couple of days of his time to assist me in rebuilding an engine was 
extraordinarily generous.  In fact, I told him that I thought he was crazy. 
But it was an offer that I couldn't refuse; my Christmas present.  And a 
good chance to spend time with John and Kathy, who are special people.

Drove up Christmas day.  417 miles.  Lots of dense fog.  And one burning RV 
that tied up traffic above Stockton; somebody had a rotten Christmas.

We disassembled the rest of the BO engine on Sunday and cleaned up the 
parts.  The usual stuff; heavy sludge accumulation inside and lots of caked 
on grease on the outside of the engine.  I hate cleaning parts by hand. 
Twelve hours on the project that day.  We pulled the block, clutch, first 
reduction gear cover, main bearing retainers, crankshaft and oil pump.  The 
pump was nasty; I spent a couple of hours getting the sludge out of it.  The 
oil pump drive shaft was pretty worn, and not original, I think.  I'll have 
to pull it again and replace it with better steel, as well as putting a 
bushing in the oil pump housing.  Pretty sloppy.  One of the gears was 
missing part of a tooth where something hard got pumped through it, but the 
other teeth were fine.

I finally got all the rings off. Many were stuck.   Only broke one; an oil 
ring.  Cleaned up the pistons.  By then I was ready to quit for the day.





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