[Farmall] Another O-12 project, part 4

[Roy]

Karl
What is a needle scaler?
Thanks
Roy
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karl Olmstead" <kolmstead4 at msn.com>
To: "Farmall List" <farmall at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 20:26
Subject: [Farmall] Another O-12 project, part 4


>
> Spent two or three hours today with a needle scaler knocking rust, grease 
> and old paint off O-12 parts in preparation for sandblasting and painting. 
> Got the front motor mount basket, the sides of the radiator and three of 
> the radiator hose connections cleaned up.  Now there's a huge red spot in 
> my shop, all around where I was working.  Needle scaling is not clean 
> work.  Should have done it outside.  I'll probably set up an electrolysis 
> bath to clean up the top and bottom radiator tanks.  But I'll zap them 
> with the needle scaler first. Nothing beats a needle scaler for fast 
> removal of deep rust and old paint.  Cuts way down on sandblasting time, 
> and it also knocks off old gasket material.
>
> I try and keep about 350 feet of dirt road leading to my property graded. 
> We had a lot of rain last weekend, so the road was pretty rough.  I fired 
> up an O-12 today and dragged my 350#, 8' I-beam up and down the road. 
> Ordinarily I consider my Farmall C with big bore, high compression pistons 
> to be about the lowest power tractor that can pull the drag, but the O-12 
> did all right.  I tried this once before, back when I first got the 
> tractor, but it wouldn't pull the drag then.  Apparently the improvements 
> I've made are paying off.  Ignition timing and governor adjustment.
>
> I could run the O-12 in third (high) gear, which is good for about 10 mph. 
> The little engine had about all it could handle; it wouldn't accelerate to 
> full RPM.  I found that I could pick up speed a bit if I played with spark 
> advance.  More is better, at full load.
>
> This was the same O-12 that I fixed up a couple of months ago so that it 
> could be in the movies.  That deal fell through, but I figured this was my 
> best old tractor for pulling the road drag.  While I was fixing up the 
> tractor, I put in a new radiator core and flushed out the engine cooling 
> jacket.  Must have worked; I only saw small wisps of steam coming out of 
> the radiator as the tractor worked hard.  The O-12 I'm working on now will 
> need more cleanup; there are signs that the cooling system is just about 
> plugged up.  Time to break out the pressure washer.  With the radiator fan 
> mount and bottom coolant elbow removed, I can spray high pressure water 
> into the cooling jacket and knock out some of the rust.
>
> I'm hoping to get most of the radiator and motor mount parts cleaned up 
> and painted this weekend.  Still need to rebuild a magneto and fuel pump. 
> Maybe next weekend.  I'm still at least a month away from getting the 
> tractor running.  This is going to be an odd looking tractor; only the 
> stuff I've worked on will be painted.  Makes it much easier to go back in 
> a year or three and figure out what's done and what's not.
>
> -Karl
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