[Farmall] Award

[Karl Olmstead]

Well-known Farmall collector Karl Olmstead recently qualified for the 
official "I'm STUPID" award.  For reasons known only to Mr. Olmstead, he's 
kept this pretty quiet.  Here's his story:

Remember that F-20 that I started for the first time in front of friends on 
July 4th?  The one that I had lavished countless hours on getting it ready 
for its first run in several years?  And how it barely ran?  One of the 
steps in the preparation process was removing the rocker arm cover and 
hosing down the valves with carb cleaner, then blowing any sludge and dirt 
away with an air hose.  Then I oiled the rocker arms and the valves with a 
squirt can.  Put the cover back in place and went on to other chores.

Last weekend I was fishing around in my carb cleaner bath and I found the 
priming tubes that belonged to the F-20.  I had removed them and put them in 
the cleaner basket, but they rolled out and were lying on the bottom of the 
carb cleaner bath.  Significant emotional event occurred; I whacked my 
forhead with my hand, yelled a few cuss words, and knew why the F-20 
wouldn't run right.  With those priming tubes missing, there are two holes, 
nearly half an inch in diameter, directly into the intake ports in the 
cylinder head.  Talk about a massive vacuum leak!  It's a wonder that the 
engine ran at all.

Maybe this weekend I'll try starting the tractor again.  I may have to 
short-circuit the oil filter; it's still on my workbench getting fixed.  All 
tractor work has come to a halt here; we're hitting 115 degrees every day, 
and my evaporative cooler in the workshop can't handle that.  Nor can I.

My plan on the oil filter mount is to align my mill with the threaded hole 
that holds the filter cartridge cover housing in place, fill all the warped 
areas of the mount with J-B Weld, and mill a new slot for the cover housing 
to mate with.  My machinist buddy has convinced me that the most important 
feature on the filter mount is that threaded hole; everything else needs to 
be parallel or perpendicular to it to prevent leaks.

-Karl