[AT] Farmall M hydraulic control rods

[Dean Vinson]

Just had a nice turn of events with the tractor.  It had been missing the
control rod for the remote hydraulic valve, and those things seem hard to
come by.  When I bought the tractor last year it had the control rod for the
Lift-All, and then a few months ago I bought (sight unseen, an unwise
decision) what I thought was a rod for the remote valve.  Turned out to be
another rod for the Lift-All, but at least it was straighter than the one on
my tractor.  So I swapped them out, and saved the original one to straighten
it up and maybe sell later on.

Last week I finally saw the correct rod on eBay, but it was being sold as a
pair with a Lift-All rod.  Oh well, it's only money, so I made sure to win
the auction.  So I finally had a rod for the remote cylinder, and three
Lift-All rods.

The fun part was that now that I had a rod for the remote cylinder, I could
see how similar it was to the Lift-All rod.  Different bends, and the remote
rod doesn't have the little stop peg that the Lift-All rod has, but the rods
themselves are the same length.  So last night I took a hacksaw, file,
propane torch, hammer, vise, etc to the original Lift-All rod that had been
on my tractor when I bought it, and turned it into a rod for the remote
cylinder.  It's not 100% identical to the genuine rod, but it's mighty close
and you'd have to be Chief of Detectives in the Correct Police to catch it.

So it'll go on the tractor, which feels nice since it had been on the
tractor before.  And now I can re-sell that pair I just bought, which is
good since I'm pretty far over my play-with-the-tractor budget for this
month.

Pictures are at http://www.vinsonfarm.net/suburban_M.html, at the bottom of
the page.

Dean Vinson
Dayton, Ohio
www.vinsonfarm.net